Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

I’ve never had much patience for farming fashions dressed up as science, and none has made more noise than “regenerative agriculture.” ... At last week's Regenerative Food Systems Conference ... I found myself alternating between rolling my eyes and listening intently. That, in a nutshell, is how most practical farmers view regen: some solid agronomy smothered in ideology.

The Grains Research and Development Corporation thought it could settle the question of whether its budget was “right-sized.” Instead, it has lit a fire under growers. After a run of big harvests and strong prices, levy income has ballooned and reserves now sit at $688.4 million—up more than $100 million in a single year.

Australia has not just a skills shortage but a worker shortage of any skill when it comes to finding people in the bush who actually want to work. Out there in the real world there is no longer a shortage of mechanics or tractor drivers — it’s the whole backbone of the trades. Builders, sparkies, plumbers: the people who keep farms, houses and small towns from grinding to a halt. 

After more than a century of Federation and countless social experiments, you'd think Australia would have learned from the mother country how not to wreck an economy or an immigration system. Yet here we are in 2025, shackled to laws and institutions that guarantee only one thing: the slow, grinding slide down the global economic ladder.

Every time someone brings up the Southern Oscillation Index or the Indian Ocean Dipole, I nod along and drift off. But a recent conversation with an old boarding school mate gave me hope that maybe it’s not as complex as I originally thought and maybe some of the amateur Wheatbelt weather forecasters might have more than half a clue about what's going on out there.

While politicians and activists agonise over the merits of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, a far more insidious war rages on — not between nations, but between species. It’s the war we barely talk about, yet one we’re losing badly: the war against invasive pests. From farmland to forest, the frontlines are everywhere, and the casualties aren’t measured in headlines but in trees, crops, ecosystems — and billions of taxpayer dollars.

Long?suffering readers know I like to poke around in the world of agricultural science particularly anything to do with carbon farming and climate change, so — without drawing on the untapped wisdom of my son Thomas — I’m going to argue, once again, that soil carbon farming in the WA Wheatbelt belongs firmly in the fantasy section of the library, not the science shelves.

Land clearing was effectively banned back in 1983—but apparently no one told the Shire of Northam. Their newly released draft Tree Retention Policy (LPP27) reads as if state and federal restrictions don’t exist. It’s packed with all the right buzzwords—biodiversity, canopy cover, climate resilience—but beneath the green gloss is a bureaucratic trap.

Estimates is meant to be the opposition’s one decent swing at the government’s budget—the rare chance to force ministers to justify the billions in taxpayer cash they merrily shovel around like chook feed. Instead, it’s turned into the legislative equivalent of asking a sulky teenager to explain where last week’s allowance went ... when ministers start throwing up emotional smokescreens instead of facts, it’s usually a sign they’ve got something to hide.

Come 2025, after a couple of wars, a new US president, a cost of living crisis, power blackouts and the hard economics finally catching up to lofty promises, the world seems to have quietly lost interest in the net zero game ... Just this week, the Red Meat Advisory Council formally dumped its 2030 carbon neutral target, swiftly followed by Meat & Livestock Australia.