Unified voice needed
Ag-vocate says grain industry needs centrally managed body
❝ We have a heap of different organisations, doing a heap of different work...
— Oscar Pearse
MUSCLING up to do his best Winston Churchill impersonation, NSW farmer Oscar Pearse imitated the “Big Khauna” of farmer meetings.
During his presentation at the 2019 Australian Summer Grains Conference, he said anyone who had been involved in agriculture politics would know there was “always one” who stood up and performed a rallying “Churchill-style” speech.
“It goes along the lines of, ‘we have lost control of our farms and our land... We have lost control of the way we grow our crops. We must change, we must go back to a time when we – and not society – dictates what goes on our farms’,” he said.
“Then everyone claps and I start thinking ‘when was the last time we had control of our farms?’ The answer is probably about 7000 years ago... once you have a society, it will always dictate to farmers how they operate.”
Mr Pearse, who is a sixth-generation grain and beef producer from the Moree region, said marketing and effective communication from the agriculture industry, and in particular, the grains sector, was lagging behind.
Before returning full-time to the family farm, he forged a career in policy and stakeholder management roles for industry councils.
Nowadays he works as an ag-vocate when his tractor is in auto-steer, and he logs on to Twitter to get into “a fight with stranger”.
“When you are a farmer, and you are on social media, you feel like you are under siege,” he said.
He said before the industry could attempt to change the public discourse on particular issues, like water usage and chemical use, they needed to to look at their own structures and messaging.
“Do we, as an industry, put adequate resources into general agriculture communications?” he asked.
“Do we put resources into integrity programs that address these specific concerns?”
Mr Pearse praised the red meat sector for streamlining their industry groups.
However, he likened the grain industry’s system to being like his farm’s shed: a “completely chaotic” mess.
“It’s totally disorganised,” he said.
“We have a heap of different organisations, doing a heap of different work – it’s not centrally managed. There is no integration between the different messaging.”
Mr Pearse has spoke out about these issues before. See his full video at www.weeklytimesnow.com. au/news/rural-weekly.