Having watched @BarnabyJoyceLNP today I wanted to talk about farmers. We come in all shapes and sizes and our diversity of production is as diverse as we are. Some are blessed with fertile dark soils and good rain, which is changing with the #ClimateCrisis, (that the...
2/ #LNP ignores). We have nearly 50 years of records on the farm thanks to my late FIL and husband. They have written a diary every day, noted weather, the daily work, rainfall, crop yield, right down to a new fence or the purchase of livestock. They noted the calves that...
3/ were born, in the good years that meant lots of twin lambs, the dry years and drought. The team of shearers, rouseabouts and woolclassers that came in for weeks each year and then how many bales went off to the sales and the price they were bought for. They also noted the...
4/ bad times, but some of them, like the look on their faces when three men walked in to the house after they'd shot 500 sheep in an afternoon and pushed them in to a pit because of drought aren't recorded, but they are remembered. Seared on brains that know too well these...
5/ times will come again. Not for us, we are in central Victoria, above the high rainfall of the Macedon Ranges and on red clay soil. We no longer run livestock, our income is based on cropping, agistment after cropping and a rural fencing business. Every year we roll the...
6/ dice on crops like wheat, barley, oats, canola and hay for the dairy farmers north of us. All year we meet the repayments on machinery, the machinery is serviced, diesel is put in the tractors, we have to use chemical, time, labour and (most importantly) we watch mother...
7/ nature for her promise of rain as to whether we sow in to dry ground or wet - too much and the paddocks are too wet to get big machinery on. And believe me some machinery is very big! Our widest is about 50 feet, folding in to itself to get through gates and unfolding like...
8/ a new butterfly's wings. Just about all of our enormous cost is up front and from then on it's a game of wait and see until the headers, field bins and trucks play their part to ensure a harvest. So, today, as I looked at that faux #farmer Joyce speaking jibberish...
9/ in Newcastle and wondered who was checking his ewes lambing or his cows calving or who is home working up his paddocks for the new season I could do nothing but boil with anger. He's no more a farmer than the person reading this in an apartment in Double Bay. The Nationals...
10/ don't support farmers, their support is for mining companies who want to crack the surface of the earth with fracking, or damage the surface permanently with mining, or suck the minerals from underneath the ground to ship them across the world to only then import them back...
11/ in another form! All these things add to our #ClimateCrisis and it's obvious the #LNP don't care. They don't care about farmers, they don't care about our country, they don't care about their own children, let alone their grandchildren. And they definitely don't care about...
12/ how they and us will leave the world. We are already surrounded by war, famine, atrocities we can't imagine. Now think about the future when farmers become even more marginal. When broad acres of land no longer support mobs of sheep and cattle, when crops are no longer...
13/ grown except in hot houses close to large urban cities. Imagine a world when people fight in the streets to secure enough food for their families. When animal species decrease in number weekly, let alone in decades. Imagine when people no longer want children because their...
14/ life is deemed so insecure. Our family farm records clearly demonstrate this future is already happening. Several seasons ago we put in canola. Canola is one of the most expensive crops to put in at about $700 per acre before you even have it out of the ground!We didn't get..
15/ that last inch of late spring rain, the crop failed and we took a lost of about $75,000.00. We've been lucky since with good seasons since and today took possession of a new tractor. Tomorrow we'll break ground for the 2022 crop season. We'll roll the dice and punt on...
16/ mother nature being kind. But,how can we ask that of her when so much we are all doing is so very unkind?Please when you vote on 21 May consider the future and not just the now, she's depending on every single one of us to make our world better for the good of humanity. End.
17/ thank you everyone for reading! My phone has literally blown up which was very unexpected and I'm having trouble responding to everyone, but I do appreciate your kind words 🥰 cheers, Pip. End.
I've also had it pointed out that I tagged the wrong Barnaby profile. So here you go @Barnaby_Joyce get a look at how Australia sees you!!
Wrong profile tagged, @Barnaby_Joyce!!!
This is the littlest farmer aged 3 and asleep on the tractor cabin floor. Her Mumma is driving this one and 'the farmer' is on another tractor in another paddock... #thatsfarming 
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