The Australian Dairy Farmers’ latest annual report shows processors cranked up their funding to the lobby group by 6 per cent, from $1,044,196 in 2016-17 to $1,112,263 in 2017-18.
Over the same period subscriptions from the ADF’s state dairy farmer membership rose from $525,096 to $536,123.
ADF managed to curb its employment expenses, which dropped from $1.76 million down to $1.3 million in 2017-18.
The impact of no longer having to manage the administration of government and industry project funding to support the dairy industry, in the wake of the 2016 milk-price clawback, was evident in the financials.
In 2016-17 ADF received $1.2 million in project management grants and service consultancies, which fell back to $115,755 in 2017-18. The cost of managing those projects also fell from $869,481 in 2016-17 to just $81,077 in 2017-18.
The overall impact of cutting employment and project expenses allowed ADF to lift its surplus from $161,472 in 2016-17 to $836,085 in the 12 months to June 30.
The financials were released in the lead-up to ADF’s annual general meeting on November 29 in Melbourne.
Farmers have warned ADF is compromised by its ongoing reliance on processor funding, evidenced by its six-month resistance to supporting a mandatory code of conduct to improve contractual arrangements between processors and its dairy farmer members.
But by September this year ADF voted seven to six in favour of supporting a mandatory code.
Since then the Federal Government has launched the consultation process on developing the mandatory dairy code to address:
CONTRACT terms that unreasonably reduce the ability or incentive of farmers to switch to other processors;
CONTRACT terms that allow processors to vary key terms of the contract unilaterally; and
THE need for an effective, independent and cost-effective dispute resolution process.
Farmers can say what they want out of the code by attending a face-to-face regional meeting, contacting the government on 1300 044 940, or visiting haveyoursay.agriculture.gov.au/dairy-code-conduct for further information.