FROM THE CHAIR

I recently attended the National Farmers Federation (NFF) Members Council in Canberra. The members council come together twice a year to ratify policy positions and issues.

The role of the Members Council is to make policy decisions which support and endorse policy matters affecting the Australian agricultural, pastoral, fishing, forestry and horticultural sectors of the economy. The Members council is led by the President Fiona Simson and include one member from each commodity council and one from each state farming organisation. I attended in my capacity as the chair of CANEGROWERS Australia which is the peak commodity council for sugarcane growers in Qld and NSW.

The NFF Members Council has seven committees through which the policy formation is developed by farmers for farmers. CANEGROWERS Australia has representatives on all the committees and are intimately involved in the policy direction they formulate. I am on the Trade Committee which is chaired by Fiona Simson. Through this committee we have a close relationship with the Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell and the Assistant Minister for Trade and Manufacturing Tim Ayres as well as their staff. These relationships are important for our goal of gaining more international access for our sugar as well as reducing tariffs and subsidies on sugar worldwide. Trade is a complex area of policy work that relies on relationships across the world. Australia has long been a leader in this regard through our involvement in what is known as the Cairns group of farm leaders, who collectively represent countries who all desire a more liberalised, rules based trading environment. CANEGROWERS leads the trade direction of the sugar industry in collaboration with ASMC through the Agricultural Trade and Market Access Cooperation (ATMAC) project and associated funding from the Federal Government.

At the Council itself we had presentations from Senator Murray Watt Minister for Agriculture, Senator Tim Ayres and Senator David Pocock who is an independent senator from the ACT. NFF provides a very efficient and important mechanism for CANEGROWERS to have close access and form relationships with the Government, the opposition but also the independents. This is especially important when we look at the tenuous political balance in the Senate. There were also presentations from all the committees covering a wide range of topics connected to the sector.

The Labour government's decision to phase out live sheep exports was a big issue with the ministers getting strongly challenged to alter their position. This issue underlines the importance of maintaining our industry’s social licence against a backdrop of extreme views from people and activities groups who seem intent on shutting down agricultural industries. In our industry we have faced similar pressures but through our adoption of Smartcane BMP, and being on the front foot to respond to these pressures, we have managed to reduce the outrage and therefore avoid catastrophic consequences. One of the greatest advantages from our membership of the NFF is the opportunity it provides for us to meet with other industries to see where we are at and how we can improve at our business to service the needs of growers.

Learning from other like-minded oganisations allows us to share knowledge and compare approaches. Your organisation, CANEGROWERS, certainly stacks up well against our peers when we look at the innovation shown by growers to lead the development of a whole sugar sustainable supply chain approach and associated trade initiatives. All representatives at NFF are there to learn from each other but also work collectively to do the best job we can for agriculture in Australia. This philosophy of collective action and a view to working together for the benefit of all is a common approach by CANEGROWERS and our members and it is therefore no surprise that we feel so at home at the NFF table. 