Rural Australia

Ailsa Fox of the VFF stated this week that, livestock agents should be acting for their vendor clients (producers) and standing-up to processors on issues such as pre-sale versus post-sale weighing of cattle at markets.
However, Andy Madigan, CE of the agents national association, said that they simply did what they were told. (He didn’t say whether that was what their clients or the buyers told them).

This issue has quite a dark history as it is the agents who provided the vital support for;
1. Collecting MLA levy taxes
2. Supporting NLIS
3. Supporting LPA
4. Supporting post-weighing
5. Supporting ownership of Korumburra yards by its operator who subsequently sold the yards

If agents are going to survive in this more competitive marketplace of less yardings, direct-sales, forward contracts and tighter cost management, then they will need to firmly place themselves on the side that is buttering their bread and show where they are adding value.

What do you think? Please post a comment below.

In general, the ACCC is NOT providing consumers with protection.
Take the great beef pricing rip-off for example;
The Australian Beef Association (ABA) has stated that,
“ACCC Grocery Report Beef Section riddled with errors of fact. ACCC allows the “$4 billion consumer rip-ff …” Read more…

And The Age newspaper’s Michael West has a similar outlook when asking, “Did the investigators visit a supermarket? Read the article

This is not good enough!
Consumers know that the big oil companies have made massive profits as a result of gouging from the oil price rises (that we told are just passing-on the increased costs- What rubbish!)
Graeme Samuel needs to extract the didget, get fair dinkum and stop spouting absolute garbage – websites publishing prices? I suppose next, they’ll be telling us that publishing politicians and public servants salaries on the Web will bring those down too – Hah!

What do you think?
Please leave a comment below.