Excellence – Global Farmer in Australia

PROJECT IRON BOOMERANG

Lang Hancock’s 1979 Queensland-Pilbara Rail-steel Proposal comes to life in 2020.

On the morning of Sunday June 11th 1975, passengers aboard Lang Hancock’s 70th Birthday “Wake Up Australia!” jumbo-jet flight will be flying due east from the Pilbara towards Alice Springs over some of the most desolate country in the world. Below them will be the proposed route of the Pilbara-Queensland Railway — the visionary scheme which may within a decade forge a link of steel across the north of Australia. Here Lang Hancock puts a compelling case for a project which can do at least as much for Australia as the Snowy River Scheme; and without soaking the taxpayer.

‘We have our heads well and truly in the sand. How do we dig them out?’

Lang Hancock in 1975.

Now in 2020 Lang Hancock’s dreams are well on their way to becoming reality.

Lang Hancock discovered iron ore in the Pilbara in 1952 and defied the predictions from officialdom that Australia would be importing iron ore by 1965, instead by that time he was supplying half the Japanese market. By 1975 Australia was the biggest exported of iron ore in the world.

Here are a few extracts from a presentation by a man with an extraordinary vision: Continue reading “PROJECT IRON BOOMERANG”

Building for the Future

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill.

There now seems to be a general consensus within the community and especially within the agricultural community, that Australia’s reliance on China has lulled us all into a false sense of security. We have been complacent. We have been happy to accept the contribution China has made to our standard of living by making available to us a range of ‘goods’ at prices that have been more than acceptable.

We have been more than happy to receive their tourists in their tens of thousands and a similar number of students without whom some of our universities, especially the regional ones, cannot manage. There could well be cold economic winds this winter on some campuses.

China has infiltrated our lives to the extent that there is an argument that we cannot now manage without them.

But manage without them we must; we must change. China’s aggression towards Australia is a sober reminder that they are a communist totalitarian regime intent upon the control and subjugation of others including Australia.

Continue reading “Building for the Future”

Take control of the wheat industry.

Screen Shot 2017-10-06 at 3.00.03 pm — Wheat and Merino sheep are the parents of Australian agriculture.

It’s time to talk seriously about re-structuring the wheat industry in Western Australia and probably Australia. It’s time that wheat growers demanded recognition for the contribution they make to the national economy. When was the last time you heard the Prime Minister or the immediate past minister (Barnaby) or the current Federal Minister for Agriculture, or even the current crop of state ministers talk about the financial health of the producers of Australia’s biggest cash crop?

It’s time that the wheat industry faced reality, the bureaucracies they fund have failed them. Have a look at what Negative Profit means, it’s a euphemism for loss; then read on and tell me what you think, tell me if I am wrong in calling for change.

Continue reading “Take control of the wheat industry.”

Evolution or Revolution-Here come the Russians.

Bring in the Clowns

I blame politicians and their apparatchiks for my ever-increasing sense of despair regarding the future of this country and its agriculture. The evidence is clear and apparent. We are in debt up to our eyeballs and we shouldn’t be. We are a country rich in valuable natural resources from which we, the people, gain little benefit. We are rich in coal and gas and we have an power crisis for which we the people are paying dearly. Astonishingly, we continue to pay billions of dollars in subsidies to so-called renewable energy companies to generate the power we need, yet, even more astonishingly, we have failed to understand that when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, they don’t generate power. To add insult to injury the wind turbines and the solar panels used in this massive ‘con trick’ are imported, mainly from China.

Continue reading “Evolution or Revolution-Here come the Russians.”

We are giving Australia away.

Who would have thought it? This year Australian agricultural exports could be just $3 billion less than the darling of every politician and the maker of billionaires in this country, iron ore. The leaders of this land love to wear the high vis vests, helmets and glasses, tug their forelocks and queue up to have a ‘selfie’ with ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and Gina Rhinehart or make sure they are seen wining and dining with the captains of BHP, Rio Tinto and anybody in the A League of world business. I haven’t noticed the Prime Minister or the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition queuing up to have their selfies taken with the President of the National Farmers Federation or the leaders of our state farmer organisations to say ‘thank you’ for the contribution agriculture is making to the economy of this great country. What a dreadful display of ignorance, an indictment against the government and the opposition of this country that they cannot spare the time to be seen saying ‘thank you’ to the thousands of Australian farmers, for striving to achieve the targets predicted in March of this year by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) that total agricultural production for 2017 will be $63.8 billion and that exports could reach $48.7 billion.

Continue reading “We are giving Australia away.”

The Absence Common Sense has Sent us Broke.

I have lost all Image result for pictures broken piggy bank faith in the political process in this country. I no longer believe that those whom we have elected over the last decade have the ability to run this country. We are one of the most naturally wealthy countries in the world and we are broke. Governments are elected by the people to manage the assets of the country for the people. Our governments have manifestly failed. They have abrogated the powers of government to multi national companies and financial institutions many of which are not Australian and who have demonstrated they have no interest in the welfare of Australia. Our assets have been colonised and to all intents and purposes stolen to build financial empires in other countries.

Nobody is born with common sense; it is acquired over time and by experiencing the joys and hardships of life. The mistake we the electorate have made, is that with a few exceptions we have assumed that those whom we have elected to run our States’ and our country had benefited from life’s experiences and when we elected them had at least a modicum of common sense and some experience and skill in financial management. How wrong we have been.

Continue reading “The Absence Common Sense has Sent us Broke.”

Situation Vacant – A Leader for Australia.

For the first time in my life we don’t have a real leader either in the Lodge or in ‘waiting’. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are a miserable pair, neither is fit for office. Hanging on to power and the thirst for power at any price, is devaluing what is the real Australia. We are losing our national character by allowing minorities, both within parliament and outside, to determine national policy. Our attitude to the generation of electricity, the life blood of society, is just one example. We have the best coal in the world and there are those who want us to stop using it ourselves and stop exporting it – in other words close the mines. We are close to having the biggest reserves of natural gas in the world and being the world’s biggest exporter of gas; demand is starting to exceed supply because the ‘miners’ have sold it all for a fraction of its worth, and because we have sold our birthright it is being forecast that gas prices will rise and there may not be sufficient for Australia this coming winter— is that possible? And slowly and inexorably as we approach winter, we all wonder how big our power bills will be. No doubt there will again be a call for blankets for the aged and the poor, when, as you will see, it is all so unnecessary. (The link ‘forecast that gas prices will rise’ may not work. Put ‘winter gas shortage fears as prices soar’ into your search engine, the story is there, or put in ‘gas shortage in Australia 2017’ and the page will fill. RC)

Continue reading “Situation Vacant – A Leader for Australia.”

Is the Australian wheat industry finished?

Two reports from the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC) on the competition Australia will almost certainly face from Ukraine and Russia in the wheat markets of the future should be compulsory reading for all wheat farmers in Australia. They provide a sobering analysis of the wheat market and will force the sensible to seriously contemplate their future.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Dame Iris Murdoch 1919 – 1999.

Stranger than fiction.

The post harvest stories, some of them as close to fiction as one can get without the author claiming to be a novelist, have recently appeared in both the national and the agricultural media. Minister Joyce is on the front foot; that is when it isn’t in his mouth, determined to persuade the Australian electorate, through a compliant media, that all is well in Australian agriculture and that the emerging Right in politics in Australia (Hanson) and around the world (Trump and Brexit), has nothing to offer to those who live outside the ever increasing majesty and grandeur of the State capital cities of Australia.

I have used the words ‘majesty and grandeur’ quite deliberately. Around Australia billion of dollars has been spent on State capital cities, much of that money is for the enjoyment and the pleasure of those who live in those cities. As we shall see, as billions has been spent on shoring up the city vote with new sports stadiums and the like, the infrastructure vital to agriculture has been allowed to deteriorate and in some cases decay to the extent that we are no longer world competitive — we can no longer, at times, but ever increasingly, compete for markets around the world.

The Nationals heartland is in rural Australia, it’s the country folk who get them into parliament. In WA they did a deal with the Liberal Party, which put the Liberals into government and some National members into key positions in the WA Government. Again, and have we seen it too often, a minority determining government policy? The Nationals are now worried that Hanson, the Hunters Shooters and Fishers Party and maybe others will replace them in Parliaments around the country and in so doing, replace them in holding the balance of power.

Minister Joyce wants everyone in the country to believe that record high prices for livestock and an ever-increasing demand for wool are the beginning, as one journalist put it, of a ‘golden era’ for the farmers of Australia. Coupled with what some are calling a record harvest, what could possibly go wrong for Minister Joyce and the wheat farmers of Australia? Well this for starters. Continue reading “Is the Australian wheat industry finished?”

Mary has a litle lamb – and all the world wants it.

Are we starting to see, ever so gently, the beginning of the food wars, which have been talked about in recent times and none of us believed in?
Are countries that cannot produce enough food for their own needs, starting to make sure they don’t go hungry in the future?
Can we in Australia fill the gap? We are always boasting about how many people we feed as well as ourselves. But our food imports are going up and our production per hectare with cereals is going down.
We are cutting back on Research and Development (R&D) and we are reducing the size of our Departments of Agriculture.
So the question remains can we and do we want to fill the world-wide demand for sheep?

The new covered sheep sale yards at Katanning. The best in the southern hemisphere. Capacity over 20,000.Photo courtesy ABC.

The recent announcement by the Walsh brothers from Bunbury in Western Australia that they had done a deal for lamb and beef with a Chinese company worth a billion dollars over five years is some deal.

This is great deal for Western Australia and the rest of Australia. The Walsh’s’ say they have been working in China for many years and this deal is the culmination of all that work. I wonder if we are beginning to witness a land and a food ‘grab’ as part of a strategic plan for China’s future?
Continue reading “Mary has a litle lamb – and all the world wants it.”

Is our current agricultural policy defending the people?

Mailler’s excellent article ‘Why is Agriculture Different’, begs the big question of the extent to which the agricultural industry’s relationship with government policy has resulted in a viable, sustainable and world competitive Australian agriculture? And if not, is the government failing to defend the people?

Empirical data – as Mailler brings to the fore – tends to show that the relationship of agriculture with government policy (in the context of global competition and the myriad of factors that express themselves through industry performance data and trends), has resulted in the industry exhibiting signs of systemic failure. The ‘vital signs’ of this industry are not good.

If one sets aside short term factors of drought, flood, fluctuations of commodity prices and looks at the long term trends, it is inescapable that revenue has been ‘chased’ by costs and in some cases overtaken by costs. The trends are seemingly inexorable.

While in any industry there will be leaders and laggards and those who fall off the bottom, the situation for agriculture as Mailler points out is not just the ‘tail’ that’s failing – it’s many of the core businesses that make up the industry.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with past and current agricultural policy, one must surely accept the notion that the outcomes are not good?

So what of policy for agriculture?

Governments have a primary duty to ‘defend the people’ and see to their wellbeing.

Photo: Courtesy Veeoz

For a couple of hundred years, most ‘western’ governments have taken this duty to extend from:

basic ‘human rights’ of health and education systems (safe drinking water, sanitation systems, hospitals, primary, secondary and tertiary education), through …
reform and development of democracy (wide range of concepts of what is democratic!)
military defence of their territory and its people from aggressors and on to…
making their industries competitive in the markets where their goods and services are sold.

Governments develop and implement POLICIES to cover all these aspects and more of our national life in pursuit of their big job to ‘defend the people’.

Importantly, governments generally see it as prudent to make the nation’s export industries profitable and sustainable in the longer term because their profits contribute so much of the resources to fund the implementation of all other policies!

One of my observations in Australia over the last 40 years or so is that agriculture has been progressively de-capitalised and made less resilient as a result of government policy. Local control of the industry is being lost as new capital, new vision and new policy comes in from overseas. Continue reading “Is our current agricultural policy defending the people?”