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.”
“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.
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..
