It’s ‘one of the best’ for dairy
THERE was more upside than not for dairy farmers this year despite a raft of challenges.
Underpinning the positivity were good milk prices, strong returns for excess cattle and a season that was largely kind to most of eastern Australia.
Balancing the upsides have been labour shortages and a wet spring, which took some of the shine off the positive sentiment within the industry.
Dairy Australia senior industry analyst Sofia Omstedt said 2021 would go down as “one of the best years in recent memory” for many dairy farmers.
Ms Omstedt said a 7 per cent year-on-year lift in milk prices, favourable seasonal conditions in the first half of the year and subdued input costs resulted in one of the most profitable years on dairy farms since 2013-14.
While the wet spring had caused issues with flooding and haymaking, she said it also replenished water storages and dampened irrigation water costs.
Milk prices had been underpinned by a weaker Australian dollar and competition between processors to secure milk.
“Global demand for dairy has remained incredibly resilient during the Covid-19 pandemic and grown in the past three months as more countries emerge from lockdowns,” Ms Omstedt said.
“As Australia’s milk pool remains stagnant and is looking unlikely to grow this year, fierce competition for milk among processors is likely to continue to be a feature of the processing landscape going forward, which is supportive of farmgate milk prices.”
Australian Dairy Farmers president Rick Gladigau, from Mt Torrens in South Australia, said the seasonal challenges in some areas could not be downplayed. “In
NSW and parts of Queensland, they have had fires and have floods, droughts, mice, they’ve had everything,” Mr Gladigau said.
Finding labour was also a major issue — a lack of backpackers and border restrictions through Covid-19 taking a toll.
But good milk prices were a balm to these pains. “Prices are pretty good — of course we’ll always take more — and it’s the third year in a row prices have been up, and next year we are still talking a similar thing,” he said. “In all my time in dairying, the past couple of years have been one of the better continual times we have had in terms of reasonable seasons, pretty good milk prices to go with it.”
Mr Gladigau said input costs for the new year were a concern, especially fertiliser and chemicals.
Farmer optimism about the industry was varied.
Confidence in dairying is there, but it’s not stopping people leaving the industry — older farmers who have gone through the cycles before are seeing great beef prices, people wanting to buy land and cows, and high milk prices, so some are choosing to get out at the top,” he said. “It’s turned out a pretty good year ... if you consider milk price, wishywashy season for some, good cattle prices — it’s been one of the better ones I’ve had.”
Source: Fiona Myers, Weekly Times, 15 December 2021
Boardroom rebels
NSW farmer and NORCO director Heath Cook, who milks a 320-cow herd at Dorrigo, along with South West Victorian self-proclaimed outsider Ben Bennett, were elected to the Australian Dairy Farmer Board last week.
Both men say they want to bring greater transparency to ADF, which has been widely criticised in recent years for initially opposing the introduction of a mandatory dairy code, undermining attempts to establish a benchmarked milk price index and then supporting an Australian Dairy Plan that has hit a dead end.
“It’s a generational change,” Mr Bennett said.
“We’ve made it very clear this (being elected) is about making sure grassroots farmers’ voices are heard.”
Mr Bennett was widely regarded as an outside chance for a seat on the board, but quietly worked away in the back- ground during recent months to recruit new ADF members and the votes he needed to get across the line.
Mr Cook said the biggest issue the industry faced was re-building unity and proving the value of ADF. “There’s a lack of farmer engagement, with 90 per cent seeing us as irrelevant,” he said
Mr Cook’s strength of conviction even led him to resign from the Dairy Levy Poll Advisory Committee, after a majority of its members refused to give farmers the right to vote for a reduction in the $32 million, they pay their national research, development and marketing body each year — Dairy Australia.
Mr Bennett has also argued “farmers should be given choice”, while personally supporting an increase in the DA levy.
Both men have extensive commercial backgrounds.
While Mr Bennett is widely known for his colourful sense of humour in his role as United Dairyfarmers of Victoria Corangamite chairman, he points out that both he and Mr Cook bring plenty of commercial nous to their new ADF roles.
Mr Bennett has graduate and post graduate qualifications from New Zealand’s Massey University, developed meat industry training pro- grams and worked in technical, consultancy and managerial roles in New Zealand, Australian and even an Indian (buffalo) meat works.
Mr Cook brings almost 20 years’ experience as a technician, engineer and mine manager responsible for up to 250 employees and budgets of up to $250m in the Australian gold processing sector to the ADF role, before turning to dairying in 2007.
The ADF’s new chairman Rick Gladigau, who has been on the board since 2019, said: “If you think you’re going to change the world by getting on to the board, (then) you haven’t been on a board before.”
Mr Gladigau is a fifth-generation dairy farmer in the Adelaide Hills, milking about 90 cows. He left school 40 years ago to come back to his parent’s property, before buying his own place in 1993.
As for the future, Mr Gladigau said climate change, labour shortages and how to more effectively manage bobby calves were key issues the ADF needed to pursue.
A controversial resolution by some ADF board members to block NSW rivals from registering to vote at future annual general meetings was lost. The resolution would have amended ADF’s constitution to demand in the future farmers could only register to vote if they joined the recognised state body in which they operated, excluding rivals’ groups from joining the national lobby group.