By STEVE GRAY
TIME just seems to move faster for Brent Finlay than it does for the rest of us.
It was just seven years ago that Brent Finlay put his hand up to join his local AgForce sheep and wool board.
Today he heads the National Farmers’ Federation, Australia’s peak farm body representing the nation’s 134,000 farm businesses across 27 farm and industry organisations.
Just 10 weeks into the role and Mr Finlay is about to leave our shores again, heading to Singapore for trade talks.
He is scheduled to be home at the family property “Cooinda” for just seven or eight days over the next seven weeks.
The farm remains in good hands under his father Scott, whom Mr Finlay jokes is ’Australia’s oldest jackaroo’.
The drought occupying so much of the NFF’s attention is creeping closer to home.
“We’ve been really dry,” Mr Finlay said. “The best news I’ve had all week was I had 33mm of rain at my place Wednesday night.
“It’s tough in the Traprock but it’s tough in a lot of places,” he said.
Thoughts of home were displaced by the bigger picture when Mr Finlay addressed the Rural Press Club of Queensland in Brisbane last Friday.
“In your life you’ll need a teacher, you’ll need a doctor, you’ll probably need a lawyer at some stage, you’ll need a caretaker, an undertaker, but every day, three times a day, you’ll need a farmer.” – Brent Finlay
“We’re not looking for hand-outs, we’re just looking for a hand-up.”
“We’ve been smashed by a natural disaster that covers 70 per cent of Queensland, 52 per cent of NSW. It’s spreading south and east. We don’t know where the end of this is going to be.”
Farm gate profits at risk
PROFITABILITY inside the farm gate is his major aim as head of the NFF, Mr Finlay said.
“It’s not profitability through the whole supply chain, this is profitability back to farmers – we’re a member organisation,” he said.
“We need to have that focus to get our supply chains sorted out.
“There’s plenty of people through the supply chains at different times that are obviously making money.
“But unless we’ve got the money inside that farm gate we’re obviously going to struggle to develop those (overseas) markets and also to get product in quickly.”
Mr Finlay said the NFF will also target the impediments in the infrastructure supply chain.
“As farmers we can have all the efficiencies inside the farm gate, but when we actually go to take the $50 billion worth of farm produce that we produce outside farm gate we run into a lot of cost impediments, so infrastructure will be a major one (issue) that we need to look at.”
Mr Finlay said the second range crossing near Toowoomba was a “significant’ development for the region, but there were problems across the continent.
“We need agriculture to push right across Australia about improvements to infrastructure,” he said.
“It actually makes us less competitive that we actually could be.”
Family farms vital
THE United Nation has declared 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, Mr Finlay said.
“This is the opportunity for family farmers to tell their story,” he said.
“Ninety-nine per cent of farms in Australia are family farms,” Mr Finlay said.
“Family farming is the basis of agriculture in this country, and whether they’re small family farms or some of the biggest, farms we’ve got in this country are owned by families and family organisations, so it is the heartbeat of agriculture for Australia.
“Sixty-one per cent of Australia is farmed, and therefore owned, by Australian farmers,” he said,
“The only way I can do this job is, I’ve got an 82-year-old father – he’s a pretty well-trained jackaroo – he’s running the show.”
“So much of what we do in agriculture is based around family farms.”
Drought impacts a tough sell
MR Finlay toured drought-stricken areas with Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier this week, but he told the Rural Press Club it had been difficult getting drought onto the national agenda in 2013.
“I chaired the national drought working group last year,” he said.
“We could not get any traction in Canberra, whether it was in government – we had a few governments last year, three of them – or even through the bureaucracy.
“It wasn’t a priority, people weren’t interested in talking about drought.”
Only since the New Year has Canberra been prepared to recognise and act on the drought, he said.
Mr Finlay toured drought-affected areas of southern Queensland with Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce nearly a month ago and saw first-hand the impact it had on communities.
“The expressions on people’s faces, the way that people actually reacted, was exactly the same as what I saw in the Lockyer Valley, in the Condamine Valley after the floods in 2011,” he said.
“The look of shock on people not knowing where to go.”
“The minister saw that. We took that story back into Canberra and then started to really lobby about what we needed to do.”
Mr Finlay said the NFF’s drought relief package was released two weeks ago.
They have asked for a significant increase in the $420 million farm finance package; wages support for farm workers; assistance with mental health issues.
The total NFF package was uncosted, he said.
“We don’t really know where we are with this drought, whether we’re at the start, the middle or towards the end of it, and we know for some people they’ve been in drought for three years.”
“Some of our northern cattle people will probably not get a cheque for at least three years from when it does rain.”
Mr Finlay praised the Queensland Government for its help to drought-stricken farmers, but said “the New South Wales Government has been slow to move”.
“We’re not looking for hand-outs, we’re just looking for a hand-up,” he said.
“We’ve been smashed by a natural disaster that covers 70 per cent of Queensland, 52 per cent of NSW. It’s spreading south and east. We don’t know where the end of this is going to be.
“Before the onset of this natural disaster these were strong, vibrant, profitable communities. When it rains they will be again. If we don’t support them at this time it will obviously take a lot longer for them to recover,” Mr Finlay said.
“Support at this time will get them back on their feet, back into production, and it will also keep these communities strong. “
Foreign investors welcome
THE National Farmers’ Federation supports foreign investment in agriculture, Mr Finlay told the Rural Press Club.
“We are a big user of capital, we have a long history of foreign investment,” he said.
Mr Finlay backed a national register of foreign investments.
“We need to know where the money’s being invested and how the money’s being invested,” he said.
“We know in the state of Queensland we have a register, and certainly having a national register will help that and we need that as well.
“We are capital hungry. We have these super funds… that have a huge amount of money. Very little of that money is going into agriculture,” he said.
“I would think that it would be sensible that they should be investigating, and certainly in agricultural R&D, at least.
