It’s exasperating to find southern producers who have posted online comments\u00a0supporting the blanket ban on live exports because a) I haven’t come across a single one whose comments demonstrate any\u00a0understanding of\u00a0agriculture outside their own specific region and b) they’ve played right into the hands of animal rights extremists – apparently oblivious to the fact that THEIR livelihood will also be on the extermination list.\u00a0\u00a0 Naively, they believe this recent ‘ban live export campaign’ is simply about preventing cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs (something relatively easy to fix), whereas in fact it’s about a long term plan to abolish all of Australia’s livestock industries.<\/p>\n
Kathy Yannarakis is a classic example.\u00a0 A blogger on ‘Farm Hub’ and self-described ‘small to medium enterprise owner – with at any given time several hundred head of Angus cattle’, Kathy has been very widely quoted by people clearly rubbing their hands with glee to find a cattle producer who supports the ban.\u00a0 After all, in their eyes, if someone within the beef\u00a0industry is for the ban, then they are an expert whose opinion carries a lot of weight, right?\u00a0 Well that thought may have some merit if they were in the industry.\u00a0 Fact is, however, that someone like Kathy Yannarakis is clearly NOT in the same business, in the sense that she lives in a relatively closely settled area – with a much lower cost of living, plentiful government services nearby, relatively low business costs and consumer markets nearby.\u00a0 And, her whole herd is not even one third the size of the average mob mustered on a large northern cattle station, plus it is an easily fattened breed highly suited to the average pasture conditions in Victoria.\u00a0 Kathy also has another line of work – communications work for\u00a0Rural Finance – which doesn’t seem to be mentioned on the Farm Hub website (not that I could see, anyway).\u00a0 It may be the family farm however the impression given is that it’s more hobby farm probably around the size of a cattle station horse paddock,\u00a0than something that can support a family year in year out.\u00a0 These physical differences mean comparisons aren’t relevant.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately Kathy’s ill-informed comments\u00a0have been\u00a0incredibly widely quoted, from Crikey to animal rights organisation websites to media outlets.\u00a0\u00a0Anyone intent on winning a long term battle knows that ‘divide and conquer’ can’t be beaten as\u00a0a strategy.\u00a0 In the meantime, Kathy\u00a0 Yannarakis throws rocks from the sidelines at the MLA, politicians, ABC’s Landline programme and a number of others who have rural producer’s best interests at heart.\u00a0 Her comments are divisive and incredibly unhelpful – in no way do they help to fix the problem.<\/p>\n
Having lived south, north and all points in between, city and country\u00a0(from south of Melbourne to north of Cairns), I understand the huge differences between agriculture in different parts of Australia.\u00a0 Not just the obvious factors such as different crops and climate – but the different headaches, varying income levels and expenses – and\u00a0most importantly of all, significant cultural differences (no it’s not just the different types of footy played).\u00a0 \u00a0Unfortunately some rural producers are unaware of these variations between areas, and what is actually a vast gulf between southern\u00a0and northern rural producers.<\/p>\n
I do hope Kathy and others of a similar ilk take the trouble to educate themselves a little more about northern agriculture, and the devastating effect on the cattle, land and people due to the populist blanket ban on live exports, before commenting further.\u00a0 Either that or\u00a0they would be\u00a0\u00a0well advised to stick to what\u00a0they know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s exasperating to find southern producers who have posted online comments\u00a0supporting the blanket ban on live exports because a) I haven’t come across a single one whose comments demonstrate any\u00a0understanding of\u00a0agriculture outside their own specific region and b) they’ve played right into the hands of animal rights extremists – apparently oblivious to the fact that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7,8,11],"tags":[158,176,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}