Australian Dairy Farmers
Tuesday 13 February 2023
MEDIA RELEASE
Update on unpaid VFF-UDV membership fees
Long-running talks between Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) and the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) have failed to resolve a dispute over the non-payment of $500,000 in member fees by VFF, ADF has announced today.
“ADF has been very patient over the past 12 months. ADF has endeavoured to pursue a resolution via mediation and negotiation, yet the parties are too far apart. It has become apparent that the only way to resolve this matter will likely be via court action,” says ADF President Ben Bennett.
“The ADF Board considers it has a fiduciary duty to the organisation, to ADF’s other State members, and to the dairy farmers themselves, to pursue an outstanding debt that has been unreasonably withheld.
“Farmers should be aware these are dairy farmers’ levies that have been collected by VFF on the grounds they would be remitted to ADF but have been unjustifiably withheld by VFF.
“Not only has VFF withheld these funds, but the dairy farmer members of VFF, the United Dairy Farmers of Victora (UDV) themselves have continually requested that VFF remit these funds to ADF.
“It is unfortunate to find ourselves in this position and while ADF remains open to finding an amicable resolution, ultimately we must resolve the matter once and for all and move on for the good of dairy farmers and the industry.”
Australian Dairy Farmers in chaos: Eight Victorian councillors ousted
The Australia Dairy Farmers peak lobby group is in chaos, after eight of its Victorian councillors were ousted in the lead-up to its annual general meeting today.
ADF has been forced to postpone the election of a new national president until Friday, but it’s unlikely the eight Victorian councillors will be replaced in time.
United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free, who was only confirmed in the role on Monday, led the push to oust eight of his own state’s ADF councillors, notifying them via email on Wednesday that their positions had been “revoked”.
“Most of them had a conflict of interest, so we decided, with advice from the VFF president (Emma Germano), that we remove them all,” Mr Free said.
He said that “conflict was in being Dairy Farmers Victoria members”, plus “most of them had already served their two year terms”.
But former UDV president Mark Billing, who spearheaded the formation of DFV as a new state lobby group, said he and the other councillors were still “UDV members and are all ADF business members”.
“(Fellow ADF councillor) Bruce Knowles and I went through an election to represent the south west (on ADF national council),” Mr Billing said. “We were all democratically appointed, but summarily dismissed.”
As for their terms being up, Mr Billing said that was not the case for two of the ousted councillors and that ultimately UDV had the discretion to vary terms.
Mr Billing said Victorian dairy farmer representation on ADF was already under scrutiny, given the Victorian Farmers Federation had not paid any subscriptions to the peak dairy lobby for more than 12 months.
The loss of eight Victorian ADF councillors leaves the ADF council with just seven from other dairying states.
Peter Hunt, The Weekly Times, 23 November 2023.
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Safeguard food security
IT IS time to consider food security in Australia and abroad.
War in Ukraine, inflation and rising costs of production and goods, floods and supply chain constraints make us ask an important question - are people able to access the food they need to live a healthy life?
During the coming months, the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture will be seeking to answer this question in its Inquiry into Food Security.
On December 9, Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) made a comprehensive submission highlighting the important role dairy plays in food consumption.
The submission identifies various actions to ensure this continues long into the future.
Food security: the challenge in a growing world
Feeding a world population of more than nine billion people in 2050 will require raising overall food production by some 70 per cent between 2005 and 2050.
In its own right this is a significant challenge.
Yet when we consider the United Nations definition of food security, we are not just talking about the volume of food consumed, but whether that volume is consistent with nutritional requirements.
Growing dairy and agriculture is the only way the global food security challenge can be met.
Strong dairy and food security go hand-in-hand
ADF is concerned about the growth trajectory of the dairy industry.
Our sector has experienced declining milk volumes since deregulation in 2000.
This is due to a range of factors, including - but not limited to - a lack of productivity growth, a decline in export market share, social license challenges, changes in consumer preferences and production systems and climate change.
“Initiatives to increase the profitability and sustainability of the Australian dairy industry will improve food security in Australia and abroad” - Craig Hough
The Australian Dairy Plan and its supporting programs and initiatives is the industry's blueprint for addressing these challenges and making dairy more profitable and sustainable into the future.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend consumption of at least two to three serves of dairy foods per person every day.
Unfortunately, Australians and the rest of the world are consuming much less than the recommended amount.
This is contributing to rising adverse health conditions like osteoporosis.
We often consider Australia as a food secure nation because we export about 70 per cent of agricultural production and import around 11pc of our food.
However, when applying the broader definition of food security - achieving dietary requirements, the nation falls short.
Actions to safeguard food security, sustainability
Our submission recommends government take action on the demand and supply sides of industry to help resolve our problem.
On the demand side, we suggest that adequate dairy servings are included in the mandatory dietary standards for aged care - which are being developed.
We also suggested the government support industry's initiatives to increase Australia's consumption of dairy foods more broadly.
Dairy Australia's Dairy Matters campaign, an initiative that delivers on a commitment in the Australian Dairy Plan, promotes dairy's contribution to jobs, regions and bone and nutritional health.
These types of initiatives are critical for helping people understand the importance of dairy to them and their family.
Our submission also called on the government to address the misuse of dairy terms on food labels and to deliver accurate and truthful product labelling for consumers.
We also want to see action to ensure domestic trade is free and fair.
This would include addressing the imbalance between dairy suppliers and retailers, which has seen retailers misuse their market power.
A move to strengthen the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 would strengthen food security.
Free and fair global trade in agricultural products would improve food security too.
So, a serious commitment by the government to reduce non-tariff barriers (NTB) via the G20 is needed to make this happen.
Reducing food loss and food waste is important to strengthening food security.
That is because about one-third of all the food produced for human consumption is wasted.
The Australian Dairy Products Federation (ADPF) and Dairy Australia are partnering with Stop Food Waste Australia to develop a Dairy Sector Food Waste Action Plan to reduce food waste across the dairy supply chain.
We would like the Australian government to co-fund its implementation with industry.
Our submission outlines ways the government can support an increase in dairy farm productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supplying climate adaptation measures.
Our industry also needs support to resolve labour shortages, secure water supply and maintaining a biosecurity system that is able to respond to the growing risks of pests and diseases trying to enter our shores.
All of these priorities will help Australia meet its global dairy food security challenge.
Source: Craig Hough - ADF, Farmonline National, 5 January 2023
Stephen Sheridan installed as Australian Dairy Farmer chief
Record dairy prices may look good, Stephen Sheridan says, but input costs are closing the milk profit gap.
Rising input costs are squeezing primary producers and processors, the new chief executive of Australian Dairy Farmers says.
Stephen Sheridan recently took over the reins as ADF’s top administrator, succeeding David Inall in the top job.
Mr Inall now serves as chief executive of the Master Grocers Australia group.
Ongoing flooding across northern Victoria and the Riverina would compound Australian dairy’s input-cost challenges, Mr Sheridan said.
The new chief executive will tour flood-hit regions in coming weeks, talking with farmers about government and industry assistance.
“The cost of inputs, whether it be workforce shortages, energy prices, fertiliser, electricity, gas for the processors,” Mr Sheridan said.
“Feed costs, which have been affected by the floods. All of that is impacting input costs and in turn impacting your profitability.
“So inflation and interest rates are a problem across agriculture, but particularly dairy, being so energy intensive.
“While we’ve got higher prices domestically and higher world prices as well as increased demand, that’s the positive side of the coin, you’ve got to take a wholistic approach that these input costs are really eating into profit margins.”
He is also a current director of Rural Financial Counselling Service Victoria and a former manager with the Australian Wheat Board.
Mr Sheridan told The Weekly Times that rising house prices in Sydney and Melbourne had given many jobseekers pause for thought.
He said a generational shift towards regional areas would help to counter-balance the rural-to-urban population drift of the 1990s and 2000s.
“You’re seeing young people seeing the value of agriculture. In the past few years, with better connectiveness, better technology, is making a shift to regional areas more attractive,” Mr Sheridan said.
“During the pandemic, many people saw the benefits of regional living. That’s a positive sign for agriculture but that’s not to say there aren’t labour shortages, there are, but we’re better placed in terms of population movement than we were only a few years ago.”
Mr Sheridan grew up on a mixed cropping and livestock property near Dubbo before completing a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics at the University of New England.
“I’ve worked in everything from quality assurance to supply chain management, acquisition, trading — it’s given me a good appreciation of the commercial drivers of agriculture.”
Australian Dairy Farmers vote to force Saputo, Fonterra to pay more
The two-pronged plan aims to force processors to pay their fair share to Dairy Australia, instead of continuing to rort farmers.
Australian Dairy Farmers national council have unanimously endorsed their Victorian members’ call to oust processors from the industry’s peak research, development and marketing body, unless they pay their fair share of Dairy Australia’s costs.
The national council’s resolution was considered by ADF board last Friday, which is now developing a two-pronged strategy to put pressure on processors to pay up.
The first involves ADF talking to both Federal Coalition Government and the Labor Opposition on how they go about imposing compulsory levies on processors.
ADF directors are also considering their options on amending DA’s constitution to oust processors, if they fail to contribute to contribute to the R&D and marketing body.
Amending ADF’s constitution would require 100 farmer members to call an extraordinary meeting of DA members to vote on removing the processor body Australian Dairy Products Federation.
While farmers contributed $32 million to DA last year, processors chipped in just $400,000.
Yet processors are still granted a seat on DA’s board and its selection committee, are listed as Group B shareholders and were even represented on the advisory committee that recommended lifting farmers’ DA levy contributions by 20 per cent to $38m.
At the same time Dairy Australia is spending close to $10 million a year on post-farmgate projects that benefit processors, ranging from manufacturing innovation, dairy health, school programs and international market development, all of which is funded by the $32m farmers pay in levies each year.
ADF directors say farmers have had enough of processors’ procrastination, given it had been calling on Saputo, Fonterra, Bega and others to pay a fair share of DA’s costs since 2019.
“We feel it’s time the processors did their part in funding (DA’s) post farm gate marketing and other work,” ADF director Heath Cook said.
“We don’t want to have to pursue the other options. But the ball is in the processors’ court.”
ADPF president Grant Crothers said processors were already contributing $400,000 to DA and they had offered to boost funding of the joint processor-farmer Australian Dairy Industry Council “to deliver a stronger dairy industry voice” and for “co-investment opportunities with DA”.
United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Paul Mumford dismissed Mr Crothers argument, saying “ADPF already has a say over DA funding as a Group B member”, which gives them a seat on the board.
Mr Crothers also said processors were contributing right along the supply chain, via the farmgate price.
“Processors will pay $4.7-$5 billion to farmers for raw milk, to fund the farmgate to processor supply chain in the year ending June 2022,” Mr Crothers said.
The 38-point list dairy will take to Canberra ahead of the election
COURTING CANBERRA: ADF strategy and policy director Craig Hough has released a 38-point list the peak advocacy body will present to politicians ahead of the federal election.
Australia's peak advocacy body for dairy farmers has released the wish list it will present to politicians in the run up to next year's federal election.
It's a long, 38-item, list and Australian Dairy Farmers' policy and strategy director Craig Hough said every single one was important and would boost members' bottom lines.
The big ticket items, he said, included the workforce strategy to help overcome labour shortages as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Still, it was clear both he and ADF chief executive David Inall had a favourite: making sure the elderly get enough dairy in their diet.
"A new big ticket priority would be the fractures research and prescribing minimum standards in aged care around nutritional standards," Mr Hough said.
"That's a demand-side intervention but it plays into the issue around malnutrition."
He said research showing the risk of bone fractures could be reduced with dairy consumption, while deficiencies in the diets of aged care residents had been identified by the Royal Commission.
The finding made this, Mr Hough said, the perfect time for the federal government to develop national mandatory minimal nutritional standards for food provision in residential aged care.
The long-running campaign to stave off European claims that would prevent Australian dairy manufacturers using common dairy food names like Gruyere, on one hand while on the other, demand the word "milk" be reserved for dairy only, would continue.
"ADF is calling on politicians to address misleading product labelling and marketing, including from plant-based alternatives to dairy, as well as trade barriers and supply chain constraints," Mr Hough said.
Another delicate topic on the ADF election list concerns investment in research and development.
Pointing to flatlined productivity over the last decade, the peak body was an increase in agricultural R&D funds, but Mr Hough said it was not suggesting an increase in the farm levy.
Mr Inall said dairy farmers seemed content with Dairy Australia's work on genetics but ADF would seek more input on DA's direction.
"It's going to be a bigger project for us next year," he said.
DA had invited ADF to have "wider and deeper" discussions about its five strategic plans, which would begin in January.
To grow jobs and liveability in regional areas, the ADF will ask for $300 million in funding for the National Agriculture Workforce Strategy, which would include agriculture in the school curriculum as well as improving training opportunities.
It also wants government to encourage more exploration and development of fertiliser production in Australia.
Environmental strategies include investing in the recommendations of the Dairy Industry Adaptation Pathways and Northeast Dairy Climate Futures projects; implementing the recommendations of the Productivity Commission's evaluation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan; and providing a second round of the Energy Efficient Communities Program - Dairy Farming Grants.
Mr Inall said ADF would meet with key representatives of all the major political parties in 2022.
ADF hoped to enlist the state dairy organisations and their members in canvassing politicians, too.
"There's nothing more important than boots on the ground and farmers going into electoral offices out in their country towns," Mr Inall said.
As well as releasing the comprehensive election policy statement, the ADF would produce flyers and talking points for farmers keen to lobby their local members of parliament.
Source: Marian Macdonald, Queensland Country Life, 22 December 2021