Farmers look on the bright side

A high profile farmer believes South West dairy farmers are more confident about the future than those in other parts of Australia.

Dairy Australia’s June 2016 Situation and Outlook report, which included data gathered in February and March, showed a decline in dairy farmers feeling positive about the future of the industry from 74 per cent last year to 67 per cent in 2016.

However, WA bucked the trend with a rise from 67 per cent in 2015 to 70 per cent this year.

Capel farmer and former WAFarmers dairy section president Mike Norton said the different outlook was due to a number of factors.

“We saw two years ago when (Italian dairy giant) Parmalat came in, they were quite aggressive as they offered bonuses for increases in productivity,” he said.

“There’s been a seismic shift in production but I also think the length of contracts is a major difference between WA and the east coast. In Victoria there are usually one-year contracts with processors but in WA the contracts are from three to five years.”

The report highlighted that climate was the biggest challenge for WA dairy farmers, ahead of input costs, labour and milk prices.

Mr Norton said he believed because the data was collected in February and March, there were fears that autumn would be tough.

“Back then people were worried about autumn because we had a bad hay season but we had a turn around with autumn being wetter than expected,” he said.

“I’d say milk prices have become the biggest concern especially with Brownes not extending the contracts of some dairy farmers.”