COMPETITION is expected to be fierce among a myriad of farming groups wanting to access $5 million in government grants aimed at enhancing agricultural industry leadership and representation.
The new funding initiative was unveiled in the Coalition government’s $260m federal election agricultural policy package announced last week.
A Leadership in Agricultural Industries Fund (LAIF) will aim to support farm representative groups with leadership capacity-building but its implementation will hinge on the outcome of Saturday’s federal election.
The Coalition’s policy document says farm leaders are expected to champion agricultural issues with “rural authenticity” into urban communities, join trade delegations to open new markets and run national corporate organisations and agribusiness companies.
But at the same time they’re also expected to manage their individual farm businesses.
The LAIF will support emerging leaders and build capacity for farmer representative organisations to help lead industry through transitional and structural adjustments to strengthen the sector’s long-term viability, the policy said.
Another goal of the program is to communicate with farmers on questions regarding agricultural research and development levies.
A spokesperson for Agriculture and Water Resources Minister Barnaby Joyce said details of the eligibility criteria for accessing the $5m and how the Fund is to be structured would all be determined post-election.
A re-elected Coalition government would consult on the design with core stakeholder groups like commodity councils and levy-payer organisations where farmers volunteer their time to provide input into decision making.
National Farmers Federation CEO Tony Mahar said he’d spoken to Mr Joyce’s office about the LAIF proposal and how it would work; in particular relating to his group’s ongoing restructure plans.
The NFF’s streamline and strengthen project aims to unify national farm advocacy to eventually operate under the brand of “Australian Farmers”.
Mr Mahar said the $5m to be potentially distributed under the Coalition’s proposed LAIF needed to benefit the entire agriculture sector and maximise outcomes rather than just benefit one or two commodity groups.
He said the NFF also was keen to scrutinise the finer detail of the Coalition’s election promise and how the funding could be spent on up-skilling leaders on policy development; public speaking; media training; and business skills etc.
“The last thing we need is for this to become a mad dash for cash from every individual farming organisation,” he said.
“The $5m won’t go very far if every commodity or industry group needs to go on a trade delegation.
“We need to ensure we get the most benefit we can out of any spending for the whole farm sector but there’s a danger it could be spread too thinly.
“A myriad of groups will be looking to access the funding program as they would all see some benefit from leadership development.
“The last thing we want is for everyone to be cannibalising each other and then everyone ends up with $1.50 each.”
A 2014 report by the Australian Farm Institute said more than 50 separate Australian farm industry advocacy groups existed, including State Farming Organisations and the NFF which doesn’t have any direct farmer members but comprises commodity council and corporate members.
The AFI’s “Opportunities to Improve the Effectiveness of Australian Farmers' Advocacy Groups” report said there was also 15 Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) that collect grower-levies for R&D work that’s matched by government funding.
Some RDCs can also conduct promotional activities and under statutory funding arrangements some are restricted from conducting internal or external political campaigns or engaging in agri-politics, to actively support policy positions that impact political debate.
The AFI report also referred to challenges with the structure of Horticulture Australia Limited which has 43 individual members that are also national advocacy bodies from different sectors like apple, pears, banana and citrus.
But it said many of those 43 members also received funds from HAL for “consultation” and “service” activities related to R&D or marketing activities of which they have a high reliance on, to remain viable, which risks their objectivity, in assessing the overarching body’s performance.
HAL subsequently changed its name to Horticulture Innovation Australia in late 2014 and addressed concerns about funding allocations to representative bodies, through constitutional changes.
“With the total number of farmers in Australia now little more than the number of people in a single national electorate, it seems critically important that those involved in the sector find a way to ensure that the voice of farmers is clearly heard amongst the corridors of power in Canberra and the various state capitals,” the AFI report said.
“Yet the existing farm advocacy bodies in Australia are facing shrinking resources and loss of membership and finding it harder and harder to sustain their organisations.”
Cattle Council of Australia CEO Jed Matz said his group was seeking to establish a new cattle producer organisation which would combine policy setting, policy delivery and advocacy and be led by a board directly elected by cattle levy payers.
Mr Matz said the Council had been pushing towards structural change since 2013 and in early June asked both major federal political parties for an election commitment of $4m in seed funding to help facilitate this change.
He said the $5m Fund announced by the Coalition was unlikely to provide the full $4m called for by Council - but it would help to enable leadership development and structural change amongst peak industry bodies across all areas of agriculture.
“Cattle Council looks forward to seeing more details about the fund as it seeks to develop a sustainable funding model to adequately deliver the advocacy, policy and strategic services the grass fed industry needs,” he said.
Grain Producers Australia Chair Andrew Weidemann said improving and enhancing the agricultural sector’s leadership capacity and presence “can only be a good thing”.
Mr Weidemann said traditional leadership roles were developed via grass roots divisions of State representative groups, with volunteer farmer/members then graduating to perform roles at the next level and then potentially federally.
He said there was a “vacuum” in representative capacity given the growing strain on volunteers to run their farm business and perform broader industry functions linked to their commodity.
Mr Weidemann said the days of expecting free representation from farmers could well be a thing of the past.
“If you want to maintain the involvement of really active farmers who know what’s going on and have to live with the outcomes of any government decision-making you need to find a way to properly compensate them for all the time they need to give up when representing the industry,” he said.
“If the government’s looking at ways to improve leadership and provide better balance and relieve pressure for the individuals involved, that can only be a good thing.”
Mr Weidemann said he’d been involved on GPA for about seven years and in that time he and other farmer directors hadn’t been paid for giving-up their time voluntarily, to perform core industry functions.
In contrast, GrainGrowers - which was awarded joint Representative Organisation status last year for the Australian grains industry after a long-running campaign against GPA - is an NFF commodity council member with a $100 million capital base.
GrainGrower’s 2015 annual report said its directors and CEO were paid about $800,000 in total for that year and more than $1m the year before.
GPA’s directors have only been compensated for out of pocket accommodation and travel costs, like flights, since taking on the industry’s RO role following the demise of the Grains Council of Australia in 2010.
An internal GRDC document - obtained by Fairfax Agricultural Media last year - showed GrainGrowers received more than $2m from the GRDC from 2011 to 2014 representing 74 per cent of the researcher’s allocation to industry representative groups.
During the same period, , GPA received about $125,000 or 5pc of about $2.75m paid by GRDC to those groups, including SFOs, to assist consultation.
Mr Weidemann said, “It’s hard to attract new people to represent farmers when you’re asking them to work for free”.
“More and more of the advocacy or industry service work that volunteer farmers are expected to do is up against paid lobbyists or professional business people who do it on a full time basis and have a lot of other resources behind them,” he said.
Mr Weidemann cited recent work on the Russian wheat aphid outbreak and other emergency biosecurity responses as examples of where volunteer farm leaders were expected to divert personal attention and business resources, towards altruistic industry functions.