Australian farmers are on the 'edge' of protesting like their European counterparts have in recent weeks, according to National Farmers' Federation (NFF) president David Jochinke.
Mr Jochinke said such protests are "fantastic to really show [farmer] frustration".
He said farmers must step up and "put a line in the sand" to defend agriculture against misinformation.
"I think we're getting to the edge where we might see a bit of German, a bit of Netherlands action, in the near future," he said.
The NFF president was speaking at the Farm Tender 2024 conference in Marnoo on Friday.
Some of the more than 200 farmers present asked him if he could see Australian farmers protest like the Europeans, where tactics like spreading manure at parliaments and blocking roads with tractors have been used.
While he suggested that such protests could soon be the case here, Mr Jochinke also said they had to be coupled with long-term and improved farmer communication.
"If people don't understand what you're protesting about, they're not on your side," he said.
"It's just a blip on their screen and as you know the media cycle moves on."
Mr Jochinke said the time when farmers could get their "hooks in" was when they put out a "continual message".
"If you're calling on the fire brigade the only time there is a fire, you don't have anyone trained," he said.
"So, you've got to make sure you're continually leading good stories in, telling the good news or even just demonstrating that we run good businesses.
"We've got to demonstrate and prove that we are very responsible businesses in our rights, let alone financially stable."
Mr Jochinke said the stories farmers put out didn't have to be on the "hottest topic" of the day but just about how agriculture is doing a good job on climate and rural sustainability.
He said to communicate farmers' stories, the media is "super important".
"We need the rural media so that we can organise ourselves and actually get the stories out there between ourselves," he said.
"But by talking to rural media, that is a bit of an echo chamber.
"They're not the real movers and shakers that can shake up our destinies.
"It has to be the metro media and we have to be able to talk in their language.
"We have to be able to demonstrate that by choosing a certain path, it's actually not beneficial for them or the country."
Mr Jochinke said when farmers were speaking to metro media, they needed to use non-farming terms and break agriculture's challenges down into something understandable for urban dwellers.
"Quite frankly, they see a supermarket shelf and the milk isn't there," he said.
"They don't see the process behind it."
The NFF president also said social media had an "influence".
"It just keeps the wheels greased to make sure everyone is being heard," he said, as he encouraged farmers to post about their challenges and give support for social media campaigns.
"We do need farmers to get behind us and even if it's just a social media tweet or like, it does make a big difference because politicians are very delicate creatures," he said.
"They look at those social media, the social likes, and actually probably are more sensitive to people telling them things there than anything else."
Mr Jochinke told farmers present at the Farm Tender 2024 conference that they needed to get involved in advocating for agriculture.
"There are a plethora of opportunities to take part in leadership courses," he said.
"If somebody is passionate enough, it doesn't take much for us to scoop you up under our wing and take you to any of these [parliamentary] houses to show you what's going on, to meet the politicians," he said.
He said the politicians making farm policies appreciated a "fresh face" or a farmer who had the ability to articulate an issue.
He said this farmer input had a lot more "cut through" because it reinforced what the NFF was saying.
Mr Jochinke said when it comes to agriculture's policy asks, using such farmer case studies and research to back up the points the NFF made was crucial.
"You never complain about the problem, you've got to come up with the solution," he said.
"That's the most powerful thing we can do."
To improve the cut through of the NFF, Mr Jochinke suggested that farmer representation needed to be better funded.
He said it was "bloody hard" to raise funds and if the organisation had to pay for volunteer time, it wouldn't be able to operate.
"I don't have a budget to run national campaigns other than if we can shake down a corporate that we can get a bit of funds out of," he said.
"I also ask everyone in this room, if you were to ask to be a member of a farm organisation, what's a fair price for that?
"Would you commit to that for the next 10 years and help us build something?
"If we want to get serious, we should be paying three, five and ten times what we do, if you want to give us resourcing to do that.
"Quite frankly as agriculture goes, we've never had that ability and I doubt we'll see it in the near future."
