Trevor Whittington, WAFarmers CEO, WAFarmers newsletter, 20 June 2022
The new Leader of the Federal National Party and Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Hon David Littleproud met with WAFarmers President, John Hassell and Livestock Council President, Geoff Pearson on Tuesday 14th June in the WAFarmers office.
During lengthy conversations WAFarmers was provided with a comprehensive overview the changes that the former Minister for Agriculture had put in place to make RDCs like MLA , GRDC and AWI more accountable to growers.
One such way includes funding the new Drought Hubs program, which in WA is managed by the Grower Group Alliance (GGA).
The Drought Hubs innovation focused and designed to pick up some of the extension work that the RDCs have not produced in addition to filling the gaps created by a lack of investment of resources by DPIRD into paddock research.
The other area of discussion was the huge amount of effort and funding invested by the federal government into biosecurity aimed to keep out pests and diseases like lumpy skin (LSD) and foot and mouth (FMD).
However, from what we heard in the meeting, it is concerning that the state governments including WA have failed to follow suit on increasing biosecurity funding to the required level to match the increase in the federal funding.
WAFarmers will have some more to say about this in the near future given the biosecurity risks currenlty on our doorstep.
