Whenever a curly one comes their way you can almost hear Sir Humphrey Appleby whispering: “Just announce an inquiry, Minister.”
Decisions are deferred, passionate individuals and lobby groups end up suffering inquiry fatigue and it’s rare to see any great reforms result.
It’s been more than two years since buyers boycotted the Barnawartha saleyards, prompting a wave of farmer anger in Victoria and the Riverina.
The Senate mounted an inquiry, which has gone nowhere, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s market study into the cattle and beef industry, released this week, is at real risk of suffering the same fate. In dairying, we’ve got Senate and ACCC inquiries rolling along, with endless rounds of consultation.
Meanwhile, irrigators are buying and selling water in murky markets through unregulated brokers, who often use their own accounts.
And let’s not forget our fruit, vegetable and wine-grape growers, who face contractual backflips or “quality” adjustments and don’t complain for fear of going on a “supplier holiday”.
Three foreign-owned meat processors now control 55 per cent of Australia’s red-meat processing sector: Cargill-Teys (21 per cent), JBS (28 per cent) and Nippon Meat (6 per cent).
Over in the dairy cabinet, price discovery and transparency have been lost amid an array of supply agreements that have left farmers struggling to compare pricing and exposed to poor decisions and clawbacks.
Pricing transparency and accountability have been further undermined in dairying by the sale of farmer-owned co-operatives to foreign companies, who are accountable to overseas shareholders. Bonlac went to NZ’s Fonterra in 2005, the Dairy Farmers co-operative to Japanese firm Kirin in 2008 and Warrnambool Cheese and Butter’s sale to Canada’s Saputo was finalised this week.
Pop across the aisle to the fruit and vegetables and you’ll see growers struggling to pin down a price with intermediaries, who say they’re wholesalers on a rising market and agents on commission when things go sour.
Australian agriculture needs mandatory price reporting, independent market regulators and audits to ensure a fair price. Of course the first reaction from most industry players is: “Who’ll pay for it?”
Meat and Livestock Australia estimates it would cost $0.20 per head (equivalent to about $1.9 million annually) for mandatory price reporting.
The beef industry pulled in $17.87 billion in 2015-16.
Water brokers say their sector is too small to regulate, yet the trade is worth $2 billion annually.
Australian agriculture needs action, not more reviews, otherwise the agents, traders, brokers and corporations that operate beyond the front gate will continue to use farmers as the shock absorbers of the agricultural supply chain.
Source: WeeklyTimes
Link: http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/opinion/australian-agriculture-transparent-pricing-delivers-fair-markets-for-farmers/news-story/73620afe996a98e782844024ae5cf0e9
