Farmers Struggling to Keep Up With ‘Constantly’ Changing Environmental Laws: Peak Body

‘Across the board, we see so much cost to compliance and regulation, not only in Australia but overseas and stuff we export as well,’ said a peak body.
Farmers Struggling to Keep Up With ‘Constantly’ Changing Environmental Laws: Peak Body
A farmer fills a drinking trough for his cattle in Gunnedah, Australia, on Oct. 3, 2019. David Gray/Getty Images
Alfred Bui
Updated:
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Environmental policies are making life harder for farmers and it could bear a cost for customers and shoppers, a peak body has warned.

During a Senate hearing on March 12, Michael Drum, executive officer at Macquarie River Food and Fibre, a peak body representing 500 families and businesses holding river, water, and ground water licences in the Macquarie Valley Catchment, spoke about the impact of government regulations on farmers.

Mr. Drum said agricultural policies had driven compliance to “a much greater level than it ever had been in Australia,” adding more costs to producers, and subsequently for customers.

“It seems to us that individual policies come with a cost, but the cumulative effect of government policy state and federal has not been taken into account, and that’s severely impacting farmer’s ability to be able to produce things efficiently,” he said, noting that the compliance cost could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars for farmers.

“Across the board, we see so much cost to compliance and regulation, not only in Australia but overseas and stuff we export as well.

“It’s really difficult for people to keep up to date.”

Mr. Drum gave the example of the federal government’s intervention in the water market to protect the health of the Murray–Darling Basin and the New South Wales government’s restriction on the amount of water that could be taken from the basin each year.

“In isolation, each of those policies makes sense. And you say they probably don’t have a big impact,” he said.

“But when they’re all happening at once, and it’s in the cumulative impact, it is becoming very difficult for farmers to make it work if you don’t have a certain amount of scale that you can amortise those costs over.”

In addition, the executive raised the issue that water policy changes regularly, making it difficult to keep up.

“The rules are changing constantly. You can’t really ever have a stable existence when you’re dealing with water policy,” he said.

Proposal to Make Policy Costs Transparent

While Mr. Drum said the farming industry welcomed positive policy changes, he noted that farmers would bear the brunt of those policies if they were not properly costed or went through risk assessments.

“It seems to us that the costs are accepted at a sort of macro level and very generalised, and they [the government] really don’t seem to ever take into account the full cost,” he said.

“It doesn’t seem to us there’s a risk assignment done that says what if this is a problem.”

Mr. Drum also stated that Australia’s agricultural environment was open to so much risk and that the rising costs caused by government regulation would find their way to supermarkets and consumers..

Alfred Bui
Alfred Bui
Author
Alfred Bui is an Australian reporter based in Melbourne and focuses on local and business news. He is a former small business owner and has two master’s degrees in business and business law. Contact him at [email protected].
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