‘End of family farms’
Senate inquiry hears of the threats facing growers
Orchardist Guy Gaeta has warned senators overseeing the inquiry into supermarkets that unless farmers are paid a fair price for produce by supermarkets, there will be no family farms within a few years.
Mr Gaeta told the Senate inquiry, which is hearing public submissions in Orange, NSW, that the supermarkets would often reject produce for no apparent reason – for example cucumbers that weren’t perfectly straight, or fruit that was slightly the wrong colour – and that farmers couldn’t argue.
“They are crying poor now because they only make 2.9 per cent, that’s billions, isn’t it?” he said. “Show me a farmer that is making 2.9 per cent profit in this time.
“There won’t be family farms left in five or so years, it is scary, and if you don’t have family farms you will lose your food security.”
Late last year the Albanese Government agreed to a Senate inquiry into the supermarket chains, their pricing and market power, as community anger and political heat around allegations of price gouging and misuse of market power put Woolworths and Coles under the spotlight of a public Senate inquiry.
Later this month, the Senate inquiry will hear from outgoing Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci and Coles boss Leah Weckert.
On Tuesday at the Senate inquiry, Macquarie River Food and Fibre chief executive Michael Drum said there was a “continual creep of costs forced upon the farmer”, coming from the supermarket sector as well as government policy, that was placing in doubt the future of the traditional family farm.
Mr Drum, whose organisation represents about 500 family farms and agricultural businesses, said there was a risk Australia would follow the US, where big businesses were buying up farms and squeezing out family farms.
“There is this continual creep of costs that are forced upon farmers,” he said. “And we are seeing it across the board. We are seeing it in the cost of compliance … we are seeing it in the Murray-Darling basin now with government intervention into the water market.
“When they are all happening at once, the cumulative impact makes it very difficult for the farmers to make it work if you don’t have a certain amount of scale that you can monetise the costs over.”
Mr Drum said because of this there would probably be more corporatisation of farming in Australia.
The inquiry also heard from Greenlife Industry Australia CEO Joanna Cave, who represents thousands of plant growers and whose major customers are bigbox hardware retailers such as Bunnings and Mitre 10.
Ms Cave said plants were categorised as food and groceries but that retailers such as Bunnings were not part of the code of conduct that exists between suppliers and the major supermarket chains Woolworths, Coles, Metcash and Aldi.
She called on Bunnings to be included in the food and grocery code of conduct and that the code be made mandatory rather than voluntary, as it is now.