THE GRAINS industry has done a lot of the heavy lifting to help drive Australia's economy, so it's important the upcoming Federal budget includes smart investments that support the sector.
That was the sentiment expressed by GrainGrowers Limited chief executive Dave McKeon while discussing the group's recent 2022-2023 pre-budget submission to the Federal government.
The key areas of focus in the submission include funding for regional roads, incentivising Australia's domestic manufacturing industry, as well as providing further investment in carbon projects.
Mr McKeon said Australian farmers had been doing their part, in what had been a very tumultuous global period, and so it was important the sector receive its "fair share" of investment in the budget, due on March 29.
"As our farms continue to modernise and grow bigger and better crops, we aren't seeing the level of investment required in our critical underlying infrastructure," Mr McKeon said.
"In some areas there is new investment and major improvements required, but there are a whole lot of regions right across the country where we just aren't keeping up with basic road maintenance.
"Due to a lot of unseasonal weather across the country, we've had a lot of challenges with infrastructure, so increasing the investment on roads is a big part of this Federal budget submission."
Another key feature of the report is enhancing the sector's ability to access global markets, including the elimination of commercially managed or non-tariff barriers for the grains industry.
"A lot of global barriers exist that are impeding Australian growers to get the best price and access the best markets for their products, and that really does take a big investment from the government, and then working in partnership with industry to resolve those issues," Mr McKeon said.
"We have markets where we have opened up some access, but we don't have trade flowing in yet.
"Our Indonesian feed grain market is a key one, where there still are some technical barriers to getting product in place in the market."
Due to the high cost base for doing business in Australia, Mr McKeon said there was also a need for investment to help incentivise commercial opportunities in the sector's manufacturing industry.
"We have seen over the past few years that there have been challenges with our global supply chains, so we need the right investment to boost and stimulate the commercial market for domestic manufacturing of farm inputs and all other elements around agriculture - whether that's farm machinery or even processing of grain post farmgate," Mr McKeon said.
Carbon farming investments also feature heavily in the submission, with GrainGrowers putting forward ideas to help accelerate the ability for farmers to get involved in the carbon farming space.
"That includes options such as getting the Regional Investment Corporation to look at low interest loans to help farmers with undertaking emission reduction activities to drive some of those changes that also have a public benefit," Mr McKeon said.
"We see a great opportunity ahead but we haven't yet got that practical participation by farmers in the market."
GrainGrowers is inviting growers across the country to have their say on issues impacting their farm in the 2022 Annual Policy Survey.
The results of the survey will be shared with political candidates and parties and direct GrainGrowers' advocacy efforts over the year ahead.
The survey covers a range of topics including biosecurity and pests to RD&E and climate change.
About 700 growers participated in last year's survey, which revealed key issues across the industry nationally were farm inputs, farm labour and the rising cost of machinery, including repairs.
However Mr McKeon said feedback from Western Australian growers last year was a bit different in that labour was the number one issue by far, while it only featured in the top three issues in the other States.
"It will be interesting to see how things have changed over the past 12 months and that will feed straight into our Federal election strategies," Mr McKeon said.
"We'll be using that information and data to make sure we have informed debates going into the Federal election and for any new government as well."
- For more information or to participate in the 2022 Annual Policy Survey go to graingrowers.com.au
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