WAFarmers

27/08/2026

WAFarmers extends its sincere sympathies to the people of Nepal and Tibet following the devastating floods and landslides.

Our thoughts are with the families who have lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods, and with the communities facing the difficult task of recovery and rebuilding.

We also acknowledge the emergency services, volunteers and local communities working to support those affected.

25/08/2026

WAFarmers on the Visa Crunch
DON'T LEAVE WA'S HARVEST WAITING FOR A VISA

WAFarmers is calling on the Albanese Government to immediately reverse its slowdown in Working Holiday Maker visa processing, warning the decision could leave Western Australian farmers and regional businesses short of workers as another major grain harvest approaches.

WAFarmers President Steve McGuire said deliberately slowing backpacker visas was the wrong response to the Federal Government's failure to bring Australia's broader migration system under control.

"If Canberra wants to get migration under control, it needs to address the parts of the migration system causing the problem; Not choke off the backpackers heading into regional Australia to work," Mr McGuire said.

"We are approaching another major WA grain harvest and growers will soon need thousands of seasonal workers to drive headers, chaser bins and trucks and keep machinery running."

Mr McGuire said Working Holiday Makers were particularly valuable because many arrived with farming, machinery and mechanical experience and were willing to travel to regional areas for relatively short periods of work.

"These aren't necessarily inexperienced tourists looking for a few days picking fruit. Every year we see young farmers, machinery operators, mechanics and agricultural graduates from Britain, Canada and Europe who come to Australia specifically looking for harvest work.

A grain grower might need two or three additional skilled workers for eight or ten weeks. That is exactly the sort of seasonal labour demand the Working Holiday Maker program is good at filling."

Mr McGuire said the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme was important but was not a substitute for the flexibility provided by backpackers.

"After the grain harvest comes fruit, grapes and other seasonal work, while our country pubs, roadhouses, caravan parks and hospitality businesses also depend heavily on backpackers through summer.

These young people earn money in regional Australia and then spend it here. They buy fuel, food and beer, stay in caravan parks and pubs and travel around the State.

If they're sitting in Bali waiting for Canberra to process their visa, they're spending their money in Indonesia instead of Western Australia."

Mr McGuire said WAFarmers supported a properly managed migration program but questioned why the Government was targeting temporary workers who filled genuine labour shortages and overwhelmingly returned home.

"Good migration policy should be about attracting the people Australia needs, not simply finding the easiest visa category to slow down so the Government can claim it is doing something about migration."

WAFarmers is calling on the Federal Government to immediately restore normal Working Holiday Maker visa processing. And give priority to applicants who can demonstrate they have secured agricultural employment.

"If a Working Holiday Maker has the skills we need and a genuine job offer from a Western Australian farmer, get them on the plane and get them here for harvest."

Steve McGuire
President, WAFarmers

24/08/2026

Who's Policing Our Food by Trevor Whittington, CEO of WAFarmers

I made the mistake of watching the recent ABC Four Corners investigation into food fraud just before dinner. Like many Australians, I wandered into the pantry afterwards and started reading labels. Tomato sauce. Olive oil. Honey. Spices. Even the cheap bottle of spirits one of the adult kids had left behind. We had several of the products highlighted during the program.

Our household buys plenty of fresh Western Australian produce, but like every family we also buy canned, packaged, frozen and processed food. Somewhere between the farm gate and supermarket shelf sits an increasingly complex world of importers, processors, manufacturers and wholesalers.

If Four Corners is even broadly representative, Australians have every right to ask whether what they are buying is actually what the label says it is.

The irony is hard to miss.

Australian farmers have been regulated to within an inch of their lives. We tell government where our sheep have come from and gone to, what chemicals have been sprayed on paddocks, where grain has been delivered and where livestock have moved. We keep spray records, residue records, biosecurity records, quality assurance records and traceability records.

Every year seems to bring another form, audit or compliance obligation for the people producing Australia's food.

Yet somewhere after the truck leaves the farm gate, that obsession with traceability seems to fade away.

Australia produces more than $100 billion worth of agricultural products a year while importing around $25 billion worth of food and beverages. Fish, pork, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, spices, tomato paste, processed foods and bulk ingredients arrive from around the world and eventually find their way into Australian factories and onto supermarket shelves.

So who is actually policing it?

Not writing standards. Not holding another departmental meeting. Not producing another regulation for farmers.

Who is buying products anonymously from supermarket shelves, sending them for forensic testing and checking whether what's inside the packet matches what's printed on it?

The uncomfortable answer appears to be: not nearly enough people.

Australia has Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the ACCC, state health and agriculture departments, border agencies and local governments. Everyone owns a piece of the problem. Nobody appears to own the whole problem.

That, to me, was the real story behind Four Corners.

Governments spend billions protecting Australia from foot-and-mouth disease, lumpy skin disease, fruit fly and other exotic pests because they understand our clean, green reputation underpins a huge export industry. They mandate electronic ear tags, regulate agricultural chemicals and impose extensive traceability requirements on farmers.

Yet food integrity at the supermarket barely rates a mention.
Surely the two go together.

Australia's greatest agricultural advantage isn't simply our climate, soils or farming skills. It is trust. Overseas consumers pay premiums for Australian food because they trust it. Australian consumers should expect the same.

Denmark understood this years ago.

Despite having only six million people, Denmark is one of the world's major food-exporting nations. Rather than simply waiting for complaints, it has developed a dedicated food crime capability using intelligence-led investigations, random purchases, forensic laboratory testing and specialist investigators to hunt down organised food fraud.

In other words, Denmark puts food detectives on the beat.
Australia spreads responsibility across numerous regulators but lacks a dedicated national capability whose primary job is proactively investigating food fraud.

That distinction matters because Four Corners wasn't simply examining food safety. It raised allegations involving misleading labels, ingredient substitution, false country-of-origin claims and weaknesses in Australia's fragmented regulatory system.

If someone knowingly substitutes a cheaper product and sells it as something else, that isn't simply poor compliance.

It is fraud.

And fraud should be investigated like fraud.

Western Australia provides a good example of the gap.

Jackie Jarvis is the Minister for Agriculture and Food. Food is literally in the title. Yet looking through her department's annual report, I could find no dedicated food fraud investigation program. There are plenty of announcements promoting local produce, farmers' markets and food manufacturing, all worthy initiatives.

But where is the Food Fraud Unit? Where are the results of random supermarket testing? Where is the investigative team protecting consumers and honest Australian producers?

Nor should the supermarket chains escape scrutiny.

Following Four Corners, they were quick to assure Australians their traceability systems were world class. Perhaps they are. But as a former fresh produce grower, packer and supplier to the major retailers, I know how relentless the pressure on suppliers can be.
Price matters enormously. Suppliers are continually pushed to remain competitive while meeting demanding specifications. In a long and complicated supply chain, that creates an obvious incentive somewhere along the line to find cheaper ingredients and cheaper products.

That doesn't mean supermarkets themselves are committing food fraud. It means relentless downward pressure on price needs equally relentless independent scrutiny of what eventually ends up in the packet.

I eventually got out of supplying Coles and Woolworths. The experience taught me that much.

Meanwhile, honest processors and manufacturers are left competing against anyone prepared to cut corners.

Governments invariably regulate the people easiest to regulate.

Farmers are easy to find. We own identifiable properties, deliver to known receival points and operate businesses government inspectors can visit.

Global supply chains are much harder.

So governments have spent decades increasing regulation on the people growing the food while the harder end of the supply chain remains comparatively opaque.

The weak link isn't the farmer. It sits further along the chain with processors, manufacturers, importers and retailers.

That is where the next wave of scrutiny should be directed.

Western Australia should establish a dedicated Food Fraud Investigation Unit within DPIRD. Think of it as the modern equivalent of the old Stock Squad: investigators buying products anonymously, conducting random testing, tracing supply chains and prosecuting deliberate fraud before consumers discover it on television.

The State Government should then push for a national Australian Food Integrity and Fraud Investigation Agency, modelled on the Danish approach. If funding requires a small levy on imported food to pay for world-class laboratories and investigators, so be it.

Protecting a $100 billion agricultural industry and Australia's hard-earned reputation is worth the investment.

Australian farmers have spent generations building one of the world's most trusted food brands. They have accepted traceability systems, biosecurity requirements and quality assurance audits because they understand that reputation matters.

It is time governments showed the same determination once the truck leaves the farm gate.

21/08/2026

The Wrong $100 Billion Target by Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

Australian agriculture has finally cracked the National Farmers’ Federation’s celebrated $100 billion farm-gate target, four years ahead of schedule.

It sounds like an achievement worth celebrating — until you look beyond the headline.

Inflation has done much of the heavy lifting, agricultural productivity growth has slowed, our population is growing faster, food imports are rising and governments are simultaneously creating incentives to turn productive farmland into carbon sinks.

The real question isn't whether Australian agriculture has reached $100 billion. It is whether the policies being pursued today will leave us producing enough food for ourselves and the world in 2050.

Perhaps we should put the imported champagne back in the fridge.
When the NFF established its target in 2018, Australian farm production was worth around $60 billion. ABARES now forecasts a record $101.4 billion for 2025–26.

On paper, that looks magnificent: an increase of almost 70 per cent.
There is just one inconvenient detail.
Inflation.
A dollar today isn't worth what it was in 2018. Once inflation is allowed for, a substantial part of that magnificent $40 billion increase disappears.

This isn't to diminish Australian farmers. Quite the opposite.
Farmers have continued producing more with fewer people, bigger machinery, better genetics, improved agronomy and enormous amounts of private capital.

But even ABARES acknowledges broadacre productivity growth averaged just 0.72 per cent a year between 2000 and 2023, compared with 2.18 per cent through the 1980s and 1990s.

Back then, Australia's population was generally growing at around 1.3–1.5 per cent a year. Agricultural productivity comfortably outran population growth.

Post-COVID, that relationship has reversed. Population growth surged to around 2.5 per cent in 2023 and remains well above the recent rate of broadacre productivity growth.

We are adding mouths considerably faster than we are improving agricultural productivity.

That hardly sounds like an agricultural productivity revolution.
Which raises a more interesting question: what exactly is the NFF celebrating with the Government?

The $100 billion announcement wasn't merely an industry press release. It was issued jointly with the Albanese Government and declared the record result was “proudly backed” by the Government.

Backed by what, exactly?

Industrial relations reforms making labour more expensive and complicated?

Policies removing irrigation water from productive agriculture?

Energy and climate policies pushing up costs?

A migration system capable of delivering hundreds of thousands of additional people each year but apparently incapable of designing a dedicated agricultural visa to get workers onto farms?

Or perhaps shutting down the live sheep export industry counts as a productivity initiative.

Which brings us to another number conspicuously absent from the $100 billion celebrations.

Food imports.

Australian food businesses imported $27.6 billion worth of food in 2023–24. Food exports were $63 billion, so Australia remains comfortably a net food exporter.

But the direction of travel deserves considerably more attention.
More concerning is that, after stripping out inflation, the value of food imports has been growing at around 4.6 per cent a year — more than six times the 0.72 per cent annual growth in broadacre farm productivity since 2000.

Take those trends forward — not as a forecast, but simply to illustrate where they lead — and eventually the lines converge.
Perhaps around 2060 the NFF and the Australian Food and Grocery Council can hold a joint celebration when the real value of food imports finally catches Australian farm production.

I'd book the function room early.

It may happen sooner.

At the same time as Australia is adding millions of consumers, government policy is creating incentives for productive agricultural land to be converted to carbon and plantation forestry.

The Federal Government has backed investment in Tasmania's 21,700-hectare Rushy Lagoon — one of the State's largest farming properties — through a structure involving UK investors and the Commonwealth-owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with thousands of hectares planned for plantation forestry.

Meanwhile, Woodside has spent $53 million buying four NSW sheep and cattle properties for carbon-offset projects, adding to thousands of hectares already planted for carbon projects in WA.
ABC reporting has described the corporate search for suitable farmland as resembling a “gold rush”.

None of this means forestry is bad.

Australia needs timber. Carbon sequestration has a legitimate role. Some marginal agricultural country may well be better suited to trees.

But incentives matter.

When government policy makes a hectare more valuable generating carbon credits for a multinational than producing wheat, sheep or milk, don't be surprised when investors plant trees.
And don't pretend there isn't an opportunity cost.

By 2050 Australia is likely to have around 35–36 million people — roughly eight million more mouths than today.

They will need to eat.

Where is the equivalent national ambition to lift agricultural productivity, expand irrigation, secure agricultural labour, reduce energy costs, attract capital into food production and keep productive farmland producing food?

Instead of another nominal dollar target that inflation can eventually deliver, the NFF should set a target inflation can't achieve.

Feed 100 Million by 2050.

Australia currently produces enough food to feed around 75 million people, approaching three times our own population.

With 35–36 million Australians by 2050, we should aim to retain that capacity by producing enough food for more than 100 million people.

That would be a real target.

It would require genuine productivity growth, water, labour, infrastructure, investment and productive farmland.

Inflation wouldn't get us there.

Nor should we confuse producing bulk agricultural commodities with having a secure domestic food system.

Australia remains an agricultural powerhouse, exporting grain, meat and other commodities around the world. But we are increasingly reliant on imports of some processed and manufactured foods.

We can grow it. Increasingly, the question is whether we can afford to process it here.

That is where the complacency surrounding the $100 billion celebration worries me.

More mouths. More imports. Less productive land. Sluggish agricultural productivity. Less domestic food-processing capacity.

Keep those trends running long enough and the mathematics eventually takes care of the rest.

Perhaps by 2050 Australia really will have achieved Net Zero.

Just not the one Canberra had in mind.

21/08/2026

ON WAFarmers Episode 3: Visa Throttling Threatens $10B Grain Harvest.

This week, Trevor and Mic are joined by Recruitment Specialist Ley Webster from 2WorkInOz to unpack the Federal Government’s sudden throttling of Working Holiday Maker (417) visa processing. Announced just as Western Australia’s $10 billion grain crop heads towards harvest. Check out a snip of the full episode:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fsSx8jUhxII

Subscribe to to listen to the full episode.

85% of the migrants we bring in go to Sydney and Melbourne.They do...

11/08/2026

WAFarmers welcomes you to our second podcast (First one was an exclusive for WAFarmers members only).

Listen to Trevor Whittington, CEO of WAFarmers, and Mic Fels, our Vice President, chew the fat about the Australian oil refinery history and the future of biofuel.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

In this Episode of the On WA Farmers Podcast, WA Farmers CEO Trevor...

11/08/2026

Farmers....Why are your census answers important to Agriculture?

Comprehensive and detailed Census information helps build accurate data to classify occupations and industries. This information can be used as evidence to support advocacy.

By taking a little extra time to describe your agricultural work accurately, you can help build the evidence to ensure people working in this important Western Australia industry get support with:

• Workforce shortages
• Skilled migration
• Training
• Education
• Regional services
• Future workforce planning

The table below provides a guide for responses using Dairy Farming as the example. Feel free to apply these answers to your farming business.

The key message is simple: be as specific as possible.

04/08/2026

The focus is on GRDC levies. Let us know what you think in the comments!!!

Why is GRDC Helping Our Competitors Grow More Grain? by Trevor Whittington

There was one sentence buried in the latest edition of Farming Ahead (July 2026, p.36) that should make every Australian grain grower stop and think.

Announcing GRDC's new Nitrogen Mission, Managing Director Nigel Hart said the program would deliver "breakthrough nitrogen solutions for agriculture in Australia and worldwide."

Worldwide. That is an interesting choice of words.

I was under the impression the Grains Research and Development Corporation existed to make Australian grain growers more profitable and more competitive.

Not American corn growers.

Not Canadian wheat farmers.

Not Russian grain exporters.

Not Argentine cropping businesses.

Australian grain growers are compelled by law to contribute around one per cent of the value of every crop they produce to GRDC. That money is not voluntary. Growers are not asked whether they would rather invest it in lime, drainage, machinery, succession or paying down debt.

Government has decided compulsory research delivers a better return than allowing growers to invest that money themselves.

Fair enough.

But surely the deal was always that Australian growers would be the beneficiaries.

Not the entire world.

Nobody disputes nitrogen deserves attention. Fertiliser is one of the biggest costs on Australian grain farms, and recent price shocks have reminded everyone how exposed we are to global supply chains.

If researchers can find cheaper ways to produce nitrogen, fix atmospheric nitrogen through genetics or dramatically improve nitrogen-use efficiency, Australian growers could benefit enormously.

The question is who else benefits.

Research cannot be quarantined like a road, railway or grain terminal. Every paper GRDC publishes becomes part of the international knowledge base. Universities read it. Researchers read it. Grower organisations read it. Competing grain industries read it.
Why wouldn't they?

If Australian growers fund a breakthrough that allows crops to produce more grain with less nitrogen, Russian farmers will not politely ignore it because they did not pay for it.
They will adopt it.

So will American, Argentine and Canadian growers.
Every extra tonne they produce eventually competes with Australian grain somewhere in the world.

Which raises a simple question.

How much of growers' money is creating a competitive advantage for Australian agriculture, and how much is creating a public good for global agriculture?

How much money does GRDC need and who is it benefiting? That debate surfaced recently at the WAFarmers conference in Albany. Respected Western Australian agronomist and grain grower Paul McKenzie challenged Nigel Hart over GRDC's growing reserves and whether levy payers should finally have a proper say over how much money the organisation actually needs.

He asked the question how much in reserves does GRDC really need. He got no answer.

At what point is enough enough?

If GRDC genuinely believes it needs one billion dollars in reserves, explain why. Tell levy payers what the minimum reserve should be and justify it. If the organisation does not need one billion dollars, don't spend it simply because it exists—or worse, spend it helping flood the world with more grain or making countries like Pakistan and Egypt more self-sufficient. Give it back to the growers who paid it.

Once that minimum reserve has been established, should GRDC continue collecting the same levy regardless of how much cash is already sitting in the bank?

Or does the organisation simply feel compelled to keep spending because the money keeps rolling in—even when some of that research may ultimately help countries Australia competes against?
It is time to have that debate.

More importantly, it is time growers got a vote.

Wool growers already do. Every three years they vote on whether their levy should be 0, 1, 1.5 or 2 per cent.

There is no reason the GRDC Board could not recommend a similar process to the Minister and ask growers to decide. That is leadership. Instead, the Board seems content to retreat into the bunker, citing "the separation of responsibilities" whenever the question is raised.

If wool growers can be trusted to decide how much of their own money should be invested in research and marketing, why can't grain growers?

After all, it is not GRDC's money.

It is the growers' money.

Many growers would be quite capable of deciding whether the next dollar would earn a better return through GRDC or back on their own farm.

There is another uncomfortable question.

How much productivity are we leaving on the table because growers have not adopted the knowledge we already have, or cant afford to because GRDC is taking a quarter of their profit?

Travel around Australia and you will still find a majority of grain farms that have not adequately addressed soil acidity. Compaction remains a problem. Controlled traffic farming is far from universal. Many growers have never properly mapped their soils or invested in variable-rate fertiliser systems.

The reality is that many growers are still not doing the basics particularly well.

If we have not fully adopted the research we have already paid for, why are we so eager to fund the next scientific frontier?
Would growers receive a greater return from another breakthrough?

Or by cutting the levy in half and letting growers invest more in practices we already know work?

Before launching another $50 million Nitrogen Mission, perhaps GRDC should first ask whether enough of the breakthroughs already funded have actually found their way onto Australian farms.
GRDC has delivered enormous value over many decades.
Much of its research is directed at Australian farming conditions. Frost. Water-use efficiency. Summer weeds. Sandy soils. Herbicide resistance. Stubble management.

Australian growers have benefited from that investment.

But Australian farmers are not the only ones dealing with frost, herbicide resistance, sandy soils or stubble.

Get on a plane and travel through the world's grain-producing regions. Farmers everywhere are wrestling with many of the same problems. Many have also benefited from GRDC research.

There is an important distinction between accepting that overseas competitors will inevitably benefit from Australian research and deliberately setting out to solve problems for world agriculture.
Compulsory levies should create a competitive advantage for the people compelled to pay them.

Imagine a compulsory levy on Australia's renewable energy companies to fund research that ends up mainly benefiting Chinese solar manufacturers or European wind turbine companies.

Imagine a levy on Australian technology businesses to develop the next breakthrough in artificial intelligence, only to watch Silicon Valley commercialise it and make billions.

Australians would rightly ask why they were being forced to strengthen their competitors.

Yet grain growers are expected to accept exactly that principle.
According to Farming Ahead, the mission is to develop breakthrough nitrogen solutions "for agriculture in Australia and worldwide."

If that is genuinely the objective, growers deserve an honest conversation.

How much of their compulsory levy is creating uniquely Australian competitive advantages?

How much is producing knowledge that competing grain industries will quickly adopt?

This is probably not the sort of economic report GRDC will commission, even though it is the one many levy payers would probably most like to read.

Instead, it commissioned ACIL Allen's Right-sizing GRDC RD&E Investment report, which concluded the answer to GRDC's growing reserves was, not surprisingly to spend it rather than give it back.
With reserves approaching one billion dollars, the debate is no longer just about the size of GRDC's reserves. It is about the purpose of compulsory grain levies. Should Australian growers be compelled to fund research that may ultimately strengthen the very countries they compete against?

That is the debate growers should now be having. The real question is no longer whether GRDC can afford its mission. It is whether GRDC has lost its way.

03/08/2026

The Sustainability Trap by Trevor Whittington, CEO of WAFarmers

Last week I wrote about how GRDC's new Nitrogen Mission risks helping Russian, Canadian, American and Argentine farmers grow more grain using research funded by compulsory levies paid by Australian growers.

This week I want to look at another GRDC project.

It is one far more likely to warm the hearts of consultants who make a living from the farming sector, and those who get excited by words like sustainability, climate change and social licence, than it is to earn Australian growers another dollar a tonne for the grain they sell.

On 28 July, WAFarmers Grains President Mark Fowler and I received a letter from GRDC Managing Director Nigel Hart enclosing two reports prepared under GRDC's $55 million Sustainability Initiative.

The first, Investment Opportunity Analysis: Sustainability by the Balmoral Group, proposes new investment opportunities, which is code for 31 new ways to spend your GRDC levy money on projects linked to proving what the market has already concluded that Australia produces clean green grain.

The second, Australian Grains Industry Supply Chain Harmonisation Review by AgTrace Australia, outlines how sustainability, traceability and compliance information could be collected, standardised and shared across the grain supply chain through interoperable digital systems. Which in the language of the paddock means tracking and tracing everything you do on farm and by putting it up in the cloud it will make it easier for others to monitor.

The covering letter explained that sustainability expectations are changing, customers are asking more questions and future value will come from improving information exchange and developing trusted sustainability credentials. Which is GRDC speak for we are solving a problem which is, we have too much money and are running out of things to spend it on.

I read both reports. Then I read them again.

I read a lot of reports, and after a while you develop a feel for them. You can tell when the authors think a workshop means sitting around a boardroom table with a whiteboard and a facilitator rather than working on the tools. The language becomes an exercise in sounding sophisticated rather than solving real problems.

My favourite piece of management jargon comes from the Balmoral Report:

"The synthesis of evidence and gap analysis identifies priority gaps in skills, knowledge, data, tools and operational capability across the grains value chain from growers through to supply-chain participants and enabling institutions."

If growers are prepared to let GRDC spend tens of millions of compulsory levy dollars pursuing the report's 31 proposed projects—including recommendations such as "Build new First Nations strategic partnerships and collaborative projects for advancing ESG in the grains industry"—without first demanding a rigorous, independent cost-benefit analysis demonstrating a commercial return to grain growers, then they are mad.

How will it make grain achieve another $1 a tonne? Will market access improve? Which countries and buyers are demanding what information? Will premiums increase? Or will growers simply face another layer of compliance and rent seekers piling in to clip the ticket?

Buried in the Balmoral report is a remarkable admission. It acknowledges there is a "paucity of evidence" linking ESG practices to financial benefits or improved market returns, concluding that more grain-specific evidence is needed before growers can be expected to embrace the concept.

That is more than a footnote—it is the central issue. If the evidence of commercial benefit is still lacking, why is GRDC wanting project ideas of how to invest tens of millions of growers' levy dollars in expanding ESG reporting systems?

Interestingly, the report itself grudgingly acknowledges that growers' biggest concern is the additional data collection and compliance burden associated with ESG reporting. It also admits there is a lack of grain-specific evidence linking these requirements to financial returns.

Before asking farmers to collect one more piece of data, the industry owes them clear evidence that someone is prepared to pay for it.

Farmers already spend countless hours complying with government regulations, filling out paperwork and keeping records. Why would they voluntarily take on another layer of reporting simply because GRDC and its consultants claim that markets and the community are demanding it, when there is very little hard evidence that widespread grain buyers are willing to pay a premium for it?

If the commercial case cannot be made, then the compliance case should not be made either.

So, after last week's little world tour looking at who benefits from GRDCs Australian nitrogen research, I decided to take another virtue trip around the globe.

This time I wanted to know whether our major competitors were all racing to put sustainability passports on every tonne of grain.

They are not.

Canada is known as the country of woke but their farmers have not embraced sustainability, neither have the Americans. Both countries have opposed building compliance systems first and asking questions later. Quite the opposite to what’s happening in Australia where we seem to have allowed GRDC, NFF and the like to race down the sustainability pathway without some critical analysis.

Both countries are improving digital track and trace systems but that’s a long way from what the sustainability elites are planning for our grain growers.

Russia is even less burdened by Western sustainability fashion.
It became the world's largest wheat exporter not by cloaking itself in paperwork proving it is a great global citizen, nor by ensuring the header driver was trained in diversity and equity before being sent to the Ukrainian front. The global market continue buying Russian wheat because it meets basic specs and it is competitively priced.

Argentina tells a similar story.

Where European customers require additional information to prove their soy wasn’t grown on newly cleared forest, or was not GM, farmers and exporters provide it. Where customers simply want wheat, they sell wheat not wheat plus carbon certificates.

The global grain market is interested in protein, moisture, weight, cleanliness, reliability, minimum residues, freight and price, not how engaged farmers are with the local indigenous or paddock carbon counts.

Which raises the question.

What exactly does sustainability mean?

Every time I hear the word it seems to mean something different.
Sometimes it means carbon. Sometimes biodiversity. Sometimes traceability. Sometimes governance. Sometimes social licence.

Sometimes it simply means another form to complete so somebody else can produce another report.

Strangely, it almost never seems to mean whether the farm business itself is financially sustainable.
None of this is to suggest traceability, quality assurance and environmental impact information has no value. Clearly it does in some markets.

A flour mill sourcing noodle wheat from a defined region may pay for full provenance.

A brewer may want verified low-emissions barley to keep their woke craft beer drinkers happy.

Where a customer wants additional information and is prepared to pay for it, a simple system is all that is needed to provide it.

But more than 90 per cent of Australia's grain is still sold into the bulk commodity market where we compete primarily on price, quality and reliability, and no one in China, Indonesia, Saudi, Vietnam etc is interested in the question of the equity and diversity of the farm workforce.

Consider the typical flour mill in Korea or Thailand buying a cargo of Australian wheat. Does it really care whether the farm had a biodiversity plan, measured its soil carbon every year, completed a natural capital assessment, documented its governance framework, prepared a climate adaptation strategy or reported on workforce wellbeing?

Or does it mainly want grain that meets the contracted protein, moisture, test weight, is free of contaminants, arrives on time and is competitively priced? There is a world of difference between information that genuinely helps a customer buy grain and information collected primarily to satisfy bureaucrats, consultants and corporate ESG reporting requirements.

The reports themselves struggled to produce compelling commercial examples.

One case study particularly caught my attention.
It examined a sustainability framework involving just 12 growers producing around 25,000 tonnes of grain.
Without a price premium the benefit-cost ratio was only 0.8.

In other words, the project cost more than the dollar bonus on offer for providing the sustainability information.

That raises an important question. If the bulk of our grain is still being mixed in the stack and blended into bulk export cargoes, who ultimately benefits from collecting all this additional data farm by farm?

The risk is that the more data we generate the more interest we attract into what farmers do and how they do it.
Then, over time, what begins as a voluntary market opportunity becomes an industry expectation.

Then a finance requirement.

Then a government regulatory requirement.

European farmers know exactly how quickly voluntary sustainability initiatives can evolve into mandatory compliance obligations.
Australian growers would be wise to learn from that experience.
Before spending multi-million dollars on pushing the button on any of the proposed 31 sustainability projects, GRDC should commission an independent economic study asking one simple question.

What is the real cost and what is the real benefit to Australian grain growers?

We need more than a handful of weak case studies and repeated warnings that Australian growers will somehow be left behind if they don't go down this path.

Most of our major export markets are food insecure. They buy Australian grain because it is clean, safe, reliable and competitively priced. Europe is not our primary grain, we don’t need to follow them.

We have already seen how easy it is to commission reports that tell organisations exactly what they hoped to hear. The ACIL Allen review into GRDC's reserves concluded that the solution to having hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus funds was, unsurprisingly, to spend them rather than return them to the growers who paid the levy.

No universal farm-level ESG system should proceed without clear evidence of a genuine market-access threat, a quantified return to growers, and a rigorous comparison with what our major competitors are actually requiring. If the commercial case cannot be made, growers' compulsory levies should not be paying for it.

The GRDC Board now has some serious thinking to do before they sign off on pouring any of their billion dollars in reserves into what these reports are proposing.

They need to commission an independent economic review that asks the questions these reports largely avoid.
What are the full costs to growers?
What are the risks?
What are the measurable benefits?
Which overseas customers are actually demanding this information, and what premium are they prepared to pay for it?
How do the reporting requirements compare with those faced by our competitors in Russia, Canada, the United States, Ukraine and Argentina?

A board with too much money is at risk of spending it just to look sustainable rather than keeping Australian grain growers sustainable.