With water availability, labour prices and government all against the farmer, it is too hard for smaller farms to survive and even the large farms are struggling.

If our farms fallover, regional towns will quickly follow and then the rest of the country will be in big trouble. Governments at every level need to help our regions be building cheap, reliable electricity and secure supplies of water.

Decades of government dropping the ball on these issues has left us in a scary position. I talk about this in my new segment, Our Nation Today, with farmer Trevor Cross and Mike Ryan.

Let me know what you think.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts] Regional Queensland literally feeds and clothes us, Yet so many short-sighted government policy decisions will hit these regions first and hit the regions hardest. Travelling around Queensland, I’m constantly reminded that the one-size-fits-all policies just don’t meet the needs of rural and regional centres. We’re talking about the fundamentals that urban areas take for granted. Affordable, secure, and reliable water, energy, and food. Reasonable insurance premiums and freight rates, roads, and rail fit for purpose. Access to health and education that gives people the confidence to settle in the regions. There’s nothing more fundamental than food.

A prosperous agricultural sector is essential for supplying Australia’s food needs and the needs of the rest of the world. In the financial year 2021, the gross value of agricultural production is estimated at $66 billion, a staggering figure. And it’s easy to forget that being a farmer is a tough gig because even in good years it’s 24/7 and the balancing acts of risks within a farmer’s control, and those beyond never stops. There’s been a lot of talk about an agriculture-led recovery after the COVID restrictions that smashed our economy and the need for confidence to pick up the pieces and to keep going. Many in our farming community have sustained shattering losses with ready to pick food being ploughed back in and a major reduction in the planting of next year’s crop, simply due to worker shortages.

I see a role for government in creating the right environment for businesses to flourish. Part of that is to help mitigate unnecessary risks, such as having strategically placed dams and a well-connected water infrastructure grid which should have happened years ago. So instead of the Queensland government spending $10 million to cart water for Stanthorpe when the town ran out, it would have been better spent on a longer term solution such as more town weirs to hold more water. We know that our water reserves and existing dams are not keeping up with population growth. Government should aim to minimise its unnecessary intrusions and yet any farmer will tell you that excessive regulations such as the reef regulations and vegetation management laws create an impossible business environment for farmers.

Layer upon layer upon layer of stupid and destructive rules and regulation leaves the farmer with ever-decreasing profits. And yet we expect farmers to just saddle up and continue to make it work. Today Mike Ryan talks with Trevor Cross, a successful Queensland horticultural grower based in Bundaberg. I first met Trevor in 2017 at his farm and was impressed with his passion for farming, his business savvy and the hard work that he and his team do everyday to put many veggies such as tomatoes, capsicums and zucchinis into our supermarkets.

[Mike Ryan] Trevor, thanks for joining us.

[Trevor Cross] Thanks Mike, good to meet you.

[Mike Ryan] Now, tell us about your farming business, the size of your holdings, where you’re located, what you grow and what you export.

[Trevor Cross] We’re in Bundaberg in Queensland, we farm about two and a half thousand acres of small crops. So we grow tomatoes, gourmet roma’s and cherry tomato. And then zucchinis, capsicums, chilies, melon, pumpkin, a few cucumber, snow peas, and sugar snaps, and just a few beans, so we spread that over about a nine-month period in the Bundaberg region. So most of our stuff actually goes Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne a little bit to Adelaide. And this year in New Zealand, it’ll open its exports again, it’s been out for 12 months with this virus. So it’s supposed to open up again this year, so hopefully that’ll be good for the industry.

[Mike Ryan] I can really empathise with what you do. I mean, my dad will probably kill me for this being from the land. I recall he actually decided to go into rockies and do rock melons and large acreage. Anyway, the bottom fell out of the market. And I recall he got a cheque from the bank for, I think it would have been something like sixpence in those days. And I’m thinking, why would you ever want to do this? And then he decided to go into avocados and citrus and stuff. And that’s just as terrifying. It’s a really hard business, isn’t it?

[Trevor Cross] Yeah. The biggest problem with farming it’s actually almost like an addiction. You go out and start growing something, it’s very, very hard to stop it. It’s not so much about money, I don’t think, when you’re a farmer. It’s about just seeing a crop planted, seeing the crop grow and getting it picked. But the biggest problem is there needs to be some rewards on the way through.

[Mike Ryan] What’s the greatest challenge, say, to business such as yours on the land?

[Trevor Cross] In our industry it’s, because it’s a high-labor industry, it’s probably, at the moment, getting enough people to actually harvest crops. Because when we’re in peak-season we have about 350 people here, so… And there is going to be a shortage. I’m not quite sure how far we’ll be down, whether it’s going to be 10- or 20-percent down. So that’s probably one of the hardest parts. Water supply’s another major component to our operation, and just general costing. The costs keep going up and up and up and the end prices doesn’t really reflect what it’s costing to do business, anymore.

[Mike Ryan] So you have two and a half thousand acres, which is a very large, large piece of land. Do you think the days of the smaller farmer, for example, 20 or 30 acres are gone, and that you need to have, just to accommodate your cost and make sure you get a decent return, that you’ve got to have a large business instead of those, not micro, but the smaller businesses used to be.

[Trevor Cross] It’s volume now, whereas before it was just a family, a family could actually survive on a hundred acres and live fairly comfortable, now a hundred acres unless you’re doing really niche market product, you would never, ever survive. So everything’s been turned into bigger farms. We’d be one of the largest, freehold personal farms in town now, there’s probably a couple other families about our size that are just doing it, and the rest is a lot of consolidated money from investment companies, and they’re now are doing nut trees, mainly.

[Mike Ryan] What’s greatest impact on your business when it comes to costs? Which ones are the ones that stand out? Is it labour?

[Trevor Cross] Yeah, Labour used to run about 33- to 35-percent we’d work on for labour, and the way it’s going, last year I think hit early forties, about 42-, 44-percent, and this year, unless there’s a big market change I think it’ll go 50%.

[Mike Ryan] Wow. That’s incredible, isn’t it? How do you survive?

[Trevor Cross] Well, I just hope that there’s actually money paid at the other end. At the point of sale, at the first point of sale at the marketplace, most stuff is fairly cheap. At the last point of sale, it could be three… between two and four times what it’s paid for. So, that’s what the average customer doesn’t think, They think if it’s dearer in the shop, the farmer’s making the money.

[Mike Ryan] I was talking to Senator Malcolm Roberts, and he was saying, just talking about how the consumer in the major metropolitan areas, they all think that the produce that they see almost is manufactured in the supermarket, but, you know, prior to that, you’ve got so many factors. I mean, from the farmer to the chain. Farmer, to the, what do you call it?

The grower. Not grower, the buyer who buys up for the land and then they on-sell it to someone else. And then it’s sold to the supermarket. You think from the farmer to the actual supermarket, ’cause my dad used to always say, he would love to be able to take out a shotgun with some pellets and get rid of those middlemen. Is it still the same headache and pain in the backside?

[Trevor Cross] The biggest problem is with the whole system, if you actually get out of the place what’s supposed to set the right price how do we know what the right price is? And I think the days when people were actually stealing at the first point of sale, I don’t think it’s there anymore because everyone’s fighting for a dollar. So they’re getting screwed down more and more. All the grower actually needs is probably about 20- 30-cents a kilo more and they become very sustainable. And that’s not a lot.

It’s only 2 to 3 dollars a box on average, and everyone’s paying bills, because the Ag industry, and this is not just what we do, It’s every Ag industry, there’s a lot of people get employed before it even gets to the farm. And then after it leaves the farm there’s a lot of people employed from transport, through to your retailers, your wholesalers, and then the processors… there’s many, many people relying on the farming industry.

[Mike Ryan]What are your thoughts of the future of farming, say, in Australia?

[Trevor Cross] Well, I know if we keep going down this track we can’t last much longer. Even our business now we’ve actually got 400 acres of nut trees, and we’ll probably continue to change over just because of the labour price and for our small profits we’re making out of employing all the people, we may as well not have them. We may as well just go to where it’s all mechanical.

So, I don’t know if my boys will actually take over and do what I do, ’cause it’s a seven-day-a-week job. You’ve got to be in amongst the people and see what’s happening. I actually think, even in this area around Bundaberg, there won’t be too much of this industry left within probably four or five years. I think the majors will be all gone.

[Mike Ryan] That’s just terrible, too, because once you have less growers like yourself then you’ve got this monopoly and the monopolies are not what we want. I mean, look at the US and you’ve got these multi-billion-dollar corporations that control the price of produce, although you go to a supermarket and they do the same thing there too, they screw down the grower, although the grower being a lot bigger than what they’ve dealt with, they’ve got their sort of, at least it’s coming up to almost 50-50 between the grower and the actual supermarket chain.

It’s a really, really tough life. What do you think is the most important thing in keeping our farming sector successful and growing? What do we actually need to do besides revise wages, for example, on the land. You can’t keep paying out 50%. You’re going to make no money.

[Trevor Cross] Yeah. Everyone’s entitled to money, Mike. The wage earner is entitled to money, and they all want to lead a good life, but we’ve just got to get a share of that sale price at the end. Basically, I think all growers need just a little bit more money, and it’s not a lot, a couple dollars a box, as I say, it’s not a lot of money. And then everyone’s happy because I don’t think any man who’s been on the land for all his life deserves to actually have the bank come and sell him up, because of the poor market prices. I think everyone can work together.

If capsicums or zucchinis or whatever, ’cause we’re only seasonal, we do about eight months a year in Bundaberg, and then the South is just finishing up now, they would have had the most horrible year in their life. And people have been on the land all their life and next minute they gotta sell their farms because of poor prices. It’s only a couple of dollars a box, they wouldn’t have needed much more and they’d be still viable.

[Mike Ryan] So what do you do, though? If you weren’t on the land, what would you do?

[Trevor Cross] I don’t really know what I would actually do cause I’m not much into fishing, I don’t like doing anything else. And so that’s what I call it, a hobby.

[Mike Ryan] An expensive hobby though, isn’t it?

[Trevor Cross] Yeah but most… a lot of farmers grow because they’re addicted to growing. That’s what they’ve been bred to do. They grow. And they show up nearly every day. So it’s a challenge because you’re challenged against the weather, challenged against people and you become a plumber an accountant, you know, almost doctor, sometimes. So there’s nothing you can’t actually do. A good farmer can do just about anything there is to do.

[Mike Ryan] If somebody was wanting to find out more about what you do, do you actually have a website we could go to and have a look, just to get an idea and appreciation what it’s all about.

[Trevor Cross] No, I would say I keep pretty well under cover but we could actually have a bit of a look at doing something if there’s people interested and actually do something.

[Mike Ryan] Yeah. We must do that. I’m sure you’ll handle the technology as well as my dad.

[Trevor Cross] I have to get someone to help me, yeah.

[Mike Ryan] Trevor, great chatting with you. All the best. Thanks for giving us your time today, and also say thank you to your wife in the background, she’s done a wonderful job.

[Trevor Cross] No worries. Thanks, Michael.

[Malcolm Roberts] The harsh reality is that we, as a nation, will either flourish or decline with our regional centres and with Australian farmers. Our farmers must make a profit to make their livelihoods sustainable. And that, after all, is where we get our food. Our rural and regional communities have unique challenges and need a different set of solutions to ensure fair and equitable access to basic services and to grow viable communities. Thank you for joining me Senator Malcolm Roberts on Our Nation Today.