Noel honoured for off-farm service
A leading Australian dairy industry figure for most of this century, Yannathan’s Noel Campbell, was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Australia Day honours.
The award was “for distinguished service to the primary industry sector, particularly to dairy producers through executive roles with professional bodies, to the milk supply industry and to the community of Victoria.
Mr Campbell said it was “a bit of a shock” when he was advised of the honour; “it came out of the blue”.
He has enjoyed his off-farm involvement in the dairy industry as well as running his 180-hectare property milking 470 cows and credits the support of his wife Ann for enabling him to do both.
Leading roles with Australian Dairy Farmers, Australian Dairy Industry Council and processing companies Bonlac and Fonterra gave him an important understanding of the industry from “both sides of the farm gate”.
That provided a depth of knowledge that was invaluable in the key roles Mr Campbell had in negotiating free trade agreements with China, Japan and Korea in particular and the Trans Pacific Partnership that “fell over” when the current US government withdrew but now could be reformed minus the US.
He is confident the TPP will “get up” and believes it might be better for Australia without the US involved.
The China free trade agreement signed three years ago was a highlight of Mr Campbell’s period as chairman of the Australian Dairy Industry Council although farmers won’t see the full benefits for another seven years.
The FTA negotiations opened his eyes to the tradeoffs between industries and the importance of being there to advocate on behalf of the dairy industry.
The China agreement was a great result, Mr Campbell said, particularly because it is Australia’s biggest dairy market by volume.
Becoming chairman of Bonlac Supply Company in 2001 and also Bonlac Foods a year later was Mr Campbell’s introduction to industry bodies. And after Fonterra completed its purchase of Bonlac he chaired the Fonterra Australia Supplier Forum from 2009-2011.
His involvement with farmer bodies began in 2009, also, when he became a director of Australian Dairy Farmers and then served from 2012-2015 as its president.
Mr Campbell almost didn’t make it into dairying, despite being brought up on a dairy farm. He qualified from university as a mechanical engineer but the time it required for him to be away from home after marrying and starting a family turned his attention to a more stable lifestyle.
He continued in engineering for a short time while converting the property he bought at Yannathan from a beef farm to dairy early in the 1980s.
Mr Campbell said he was disappointed that over time the industry had lost its cooperatives.
That and foreign ownership of many of today’s major processing factories made it extremely important for close relationships across the industry, he said.
Mr Campbell sees family farms continuing to dominate the industry.
“They accept that good and bad years are part of agriculture whereas corporate farm owners tend to come and go”.
Mr Campbell is buoyant about the future for dairy farmers and the industry despite some challenges.
He said productivity improvements – farmers now run at about one staff per 130140 cows compared to one per 80 cows 15 years ago – continuing advances with machinery and technology and greater use of specialist contractors for things such as harvesting and fertiliser spreading had benefitted farmers.
The main near-term challenges Mr Campbell sees are attracting good quality farm labour, power costs and rightto-farm issues particularly in peri-urban areas such as West Gippsland. “Red tape” around right to, and ability, to farm are a frustration, he said, citing a case where it took nine months to get local council approval for a shed on a farm.