Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

As the Cheshire Cat reminded Alice, the road you take depends on where you want to get to. The problem is not that strategic plans are useless. The problem is that too many modern plans confuse aspiration with strategy.

I subscribe to Greg Ibendahl's Agricultural Economics Substack. Greg is with the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University and regularly produces practical, data-driven analyses of broadacre farming from an American perspective. His latest article ... shows we are not alone facing rising input which can turn what appeared to be a profitable wheat crop into a financial disaster. It also serves as a timely reminder that while American farmers face many of the same seasonal and economic pressures as Australian growers...

Farmers for Climate Action has produced a report ‘Energy Sovereignty for Regional Australia: Protecting Farmers, Powering the Future’ arguing that Australia's transition away from diesel should be accelerated through electrification, subsidies, infrastructure investment and changes to fuel tax arrangements ... When did advocacy become less about persuading people to voluntarily embrace change and more about finding another group to pay for it?

On writing this, urea had slipped back below $1,000 a tonne and oil had fallen under US$90 a barrel. The headlines had moved on, the politicians were congratulating themselves, and the market was once again telling us that everything was under control. Problem solved. Move along. Nothing to see here. Except that is exactly what people said after the last fertiliser shock, and the one before that, and the one before that.

Nearly two years after the live export ban became law, farmers have been making decisions while the transition industry is still planning the transition. That simple fact tells you almost everything you need to know about the live sheep transition.

One of the more interesting developments in modern journalism is that reporters increasingly seem to know the answer before they begin asking the questions ... The problem with Ros Thomas's recent Weekend Australian feature on paraquat and Parkinson's disease is that by the time you reach the end, you are left with the feeling that the destination was already known before the journey began.

I’ve just returned from a two-day National Farmers’ Federation members meeting in Canberra and the mood is dark. It is increasingly clear this Government has little affection for the productive capitalist class and is hunting for revenue, regulation and control from wherever it can extract it.

If you ever wondered why so few of our political class appear genuinely effective, the answer can largely be explained by three principles that govern human organisations everywhere: the Pareto Principle (1890s), Price’s Law (1960) and the Peter Principle (1969).

This federal Budget reveals something far more significant than another round of tax fights over capital gains, family trusts and negative gearing. It reveals who modern Labor now governs for. 

Last week I wrote that Budget Number Ten would tell us everything we needed to know ... it’s worse than expected. For all the Government’s talk about farm resilience, diversification and food security, when it came time to fund the department that actually underpins those things, the treasure chest was empty.