Farmers and artists unite
In the whole of the meat
industry, the farmer is the
one taking the biggest risk.
It is striking how analogous
the situation between the
farmer and agribusiness is to
the relationship between the
artist and the art market. While
it is a given that the primary
producer’s input is the part upon
which these whole industries
are built, it is also likely to be the
role least rewarded.
WHEN FARMERS GIVE UP STOCK
If you are in the farming game now in WA, chances are you
are either a buyer or seller of land. The people who buy land
that the farmers can’t afford to stay on are pulling out the
infrastructure needed for stock, and planting crops instead.
Cropping, like good stock work, is a bit of an art, but does
not require daily, hands-on work like animal husbandry; it
has become commonplace for the big landowners to go for
no-fence broadacre cropping and get out of stock altogether.
Some landowners are taking the option of hiring out-oftowners as fly-in, fly-out workers to cover peak cropping
times around seeding and harvesting. These workers don’t
bring their families and have no real stake in the region
so the school and other amenities – already shaky on
numbers – are suffering. Bill, like many experienced farmers,
has a backup income, which is to run the school bus. This
used to be a profitable sideline but is also under pressure
from the ripple effect of the 2011 ban and the increasingly
unprofitable farming life.
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