Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

I’m continually amazed how many people can fly to Bali yet couldn’t point to it on a map. Ask them to name the countries that sit north of Indonesia and you’ll usually get a blank look. Yet geography still matters. In fact, it quietly dictates how the global economy works.

Beneath the agreeable language embedded in regenerative agriculture — soil health and sustainable ecosystems — sits a more consequential proposition: that modern, input-intensive agriculture has overshot its optimal point and that government policy should now encourage a structural shift toward lower-input systems. That is not a trivial adjustment. It is a claim about the production frontier of Australian agriculture. Claims of that magnitude ... warrant far more rigorous empirical scrutiny than they have so far received.

As the WA sheep industry watches in disbelief the rollout of the federal government’s transition package — where $139 million seems to be evaporating before our eyes — one thing is becoming painfully clear. The design of the funding means the vast majority of sheep producers impacted by the end of live exports won’t see a cent.

Since coming to power, the Federal Labor Government has presided over a sharp contraction in Western Australia’s sheep flock. Industry figures show numbers falling from roughly 12 million head in 2022 to around 8 million today — a drop of about one-third in just four years ... Just as the State Agriculture Minister was proudly announcing $20 million in grants to help farmers and processors adjust, Beaufort River Meats quietly announced it was moving into care and maintenance due to ongoing sheep shortages.

This is yet another instalment in my running theme: the State rail debacle. A saga of privatisation, monopoly infrastructure, and governments that appear to have misplaced both the keys and the contract. Twenty-five years after Western Australia leased out its freight rail network, one basic question still has no straight answer: what does the Brookfield/Arc lease actually require?

Jackie Jarvis was appointed Minister for Agriculture and Food in December 2022. She picked up responsibility for Fisheries in March 2025, giving her three budgets and one election to get her head around the DPIRD budget papers ... Once again, I’ve gone back to the state budget to point out a glaring problem: the rhetoric simply does not match the money.

“WAFarmers are reaping what they sow,” Ben Wyatt declared recently, reflecting on the looming Maddox case and claims by WAFarmers that the current laws are being selectively targeted by the department ... There is a curious habit among former ministers once they leave office: they rediscover principle. Mr Wyatt’s recent commentary on Aboriginal cultural heritage laws is a textbook example.

For most of the modern era, the story of food was scarcity. More people meant more demand, higher prices, and ever-expanding markets for farmers. That part of human history has now come to an end. For the first time, global population growth is slowing sharply at the same time as global food production continues to rise.

We now have a bumper crop, a tax windfall for government, and broad agreement across agriculture, transport and local government that the system is stretched. The buy-back was presented as a serious response to a real capacity, efficiency and safety problem. The only question left is whether the government is prepared to act.

This week, the comparison shifts to machinery and markets — how, in both decades a century apart, a revolution in farm equipment collided head-on with falling commodity prices and soaring machinery costs. The rhyme is almost eerie: technological leaps meeting financial cliffs.