I started writing this column back in 1995 so it has spanned 27 years, which is a fair bit of my nearly 40-year farming career – and life, for that matter.
The 1990s were still tough farming years after the change and turmoil, not to mention low returns, of the late 1980s.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the pressure started coming off and instead of just fighting for financial survival here we started making progress with the improved returns.
I’m still given a hard time for being tight even if that is more historical than current, but I am a product of those first 15 years of my farming career, which began the day subsidies were removed.
I’ve owned only three vehicles in four decades. I thrashed a poor old second-hand Mitsubishi Lancer around the farm for the first 15 years, using it to drag a trailer around laying out fence posts with dogs in the boot and fencing gear on the back seat. It was orange with a black roof and known widely as the Pumpkin.
I was bloody annoyed when the garage wouldn’t give it a warrant of fitness due to chassis rust, as it was still going strong.
The next one was a second-hand Mazda ute, which lasted a little longer than the Pumpkin, but it too finally had a reckoning with the wrecker.
And then my first and possibly last new vehicle when I succumbed to the allure of a Ford Ranger. It has just clocked up 200,000km and might outlive me if it plays its cards right.
Every dollar was a hostage and when I had a spare one, it was put either into improving the farming business or retiring a little bit of debt. No flash toys or extravagant holidays.
Retiring debt was an imperative with interest rates on the farm mortgage in the high teens. When I went through my overdraft limit I paid a penalty rate in the high twenties, making the current interest rates that we are all trying to get used to not look so bad in comparison.
But in that first decade or so it was exceedingly difficult to retire debt with such low returns, even with a tight hold on the cheque book.
There was much change, returns were poor, we felt governments were against us and that the city folk didn’t appreciate what we were dealing with, and didn’t they understand we were still an important part of the economy and bringing in much-needed returns from our exports?
Exactly what we are saying now, except that returns are at or near record highs. Let’s not forget how fortunate we are to have these great prices and the longest run of decent prices in my time. A lot of rural debt has been paid off recently because of this.
And despite the recent quick rise in interest rates, having come off historic lows they have simply returned to long-term average rates.
I see Federated Farmers’ latest confidence survey inevitably had farmers’ confidence plummeting. It’s more a political poll than anything. Ask anyone in a wet sunless winter how they are feeling about the outlook and its hardly going to be an optimistic view of the future.
Someone should be telling those fellows at the sale yards about how bad our confidence in the future is because they have obviously missed the memo as they are paying record prices for both sheep and beef.
However, it is tough now, no doubt about it.
A lot of legislative change is about, and even if there is a change of government next year most of these changes will remain in place so don’t think that will go away.
The climate change and these extreme weather events are making farming and life bloody difficult and that isn’t going to disappear either.
And large increases in costs are eroding the high prices for our products, so we need to be smarter about how and where we spend our money – as we were in the past.
But this career is a choice, it’s not compulsory, and if it really is weighing heavily, the record land prices and flush balance sheets we have the privilege of owning make the option of exiting worth considering.
I’m contemplating the beginning of the end of my own farming career because I’m feeling these pressures as well. Nothing is forever.
There is a generation of millennials who are more up to the farming challenges and opportunities ahead than we baby boomers who did well back in the day but might have finally hit peak challenge.
