CORRECTED VERSION RURAL AND REGIONAL COMMITTEE Inquiry into the capacity of the farming sector to attract and retain young farmers and respond to an ageing workforce Timboon — 18 October 2011 Members Mr D. Drum Mr I. Trezise Mr G. Howard Mr P. Weller Mr A. Katos Chair: Mr P. Weller Deputy Chair: Mr G. Howard Staff Executive Officer: Ms L. Topic Research Officer: Mr P. O’Brien Witness Mr M. Nevill, dairy farmer, Mepunga. Necessary corrections to be notified to executive officer of committee 18 October 2011 Rural and Regional Committee 54 The CHAIR — Welcome to this public hearing in the Rural and Regional Committee’s inquiry into the capacity of the farming sector to attract and retain young farmers and respond to an ageing workforce. I hereby advise that all evidence taken at this hearing is protected by parliamentary privilege as provided under relevant Australian law. I also advise that any comments made outside the hearing may not be afforded such privilege. For the benefit of Hansard, could you give your name and address please? Mr NEVILL — My name is Mark Nevill, Great Ocean Road, Nullawarre or Mepunga. The CHAIR — Would you like questions as we go at the end of your presentation? Mr NEVILL — Yes, I would like an informal discussion really. That is the way I think we get most out of these sorts of forums, where we can just roll on. The CHAIR — Could you just go through what attracted you to farming? Mr NEVILL — I have not got an answer for that; all I can tell you is that for as long as I remember I was going to be a dairy farmer. I do not know why. We are not from a dairy background but we were brought up in a small town. The CHAIR — What was your background? Mr NEVILL — I wanted to do dairying and I went — — Mr HOWARD — Your family background. Mr NEVILL — My father was in agriculture. He was brought up on a farm and he went into agricultural contracting. By the time I was three or four he was out of that and into the Department of Agriculture, as it was then, bleeding cows for brucellosis. He worked for Kraft as a field officer and ended up in the petroleum game for probably 15 or 20 years. That was as I was growing up. Mr TREZISE — So you were not brought up on a farm then, mate? Mr NEVILL — No, 7 acres out of town. Anyway, I have not got a good reason why I want to be a farmer. All I can tell you is that it has been there since day one and so I was pretty focused on all that. The CHAIR — Where did you start, and where are you now in the industry? Mr NEVILL — As parents would do, I suppose, just trying to source what is the best thing, ‘How are we going to get this fellow into dairy?’, and all the dairy farmers I spoke to said, ‘Get him a trade. You have to have a trade to fall back on.’ That is the no. 1 problem. That is the mentality because agriculture is not good enough. That is the message you take home from that information. So we take that all on board and enough people tell you that you really should get a trade so you go and get a trade. I am a plumber by trade. On the day I finished my apprenticeship I got into a dairy traineeship and it was all organised before I finished. So we went into that, did four years there, a dairy trainee on a reputable dairy farm run by a well-known, successful fellow. I guess with my career path I had two options for employment there. A lot of it is to do with the experience that you gain and the sort of mentor that you have and I chose the right path, I suppose you could argue, and that has helped me — it helps everyone, doesn’t it — if you have someone who can teach you the right way. Mr TREZISE — I might have missed this point but what are the two paths you had? Mr NEVILL — I had another employer who would not have taken me as far, I believe, with my training and learning the correct methods, if I can put it that way. So that was lucky, if I can call it luck. It was my decision the way that I went. So I did that. I was a trainee for four years and then moved on to a small sharefarm, 17 per cent, and bought some cows and part of that was a motorbike. How many cows was it? I cannot remember. It might have been 40 or something like that. A very small amount. The second hurdle is that accessing money for young people is really tough. Now it is a heaps easier for people to get money. But it is the first step that is really difficult because you have nothing behind you. You just had to 18 October 2011 Rural and Regional Committee 55 save as much money as you could and then come to the bank and say, ‘Righto, we want to buy this and have cows and a motorbike and then we want to go sharefarming here’. You could do projected budgets of the farm that I was going to. So that was difficult. But we got it. Mr HOWARD — As a bank loan? Mr NEVILL — As a bank loan, yes. Looking back now, you start thinking, ‘Why couldn’t I get 40 cows and a motorbike?’. Mr TREZISE — How long ago was that, Mark? Mr NEVILL — I think I was about 21 or 22 when I finished my plumbing apprenticeship, then four years in the traineeship and then two years on the sharefarm — — The CHAIR — So you were maybe 28? Mr NEVILL — Yes, something like that. But I knew we had to get bigger. Everyone you spoke to in the industry said, ‘Get big or get out’, and we wanted to be big enough to employ people so everyone could have time off and have a lifestyle and change this view that if you are a dairy farmer, you do not get time off; you are 24/7. That was our goal. So we sharefarmed there and I grew from 40 cows to 90 cows or whatever it was. Then we started looking around for a rotary dairy because we could not milk any more where we were. We were hamstrung at growing our cow numbers. We were milking 430 or something; it was 8 hours a day in the dairy. It was full on. So I took the numbers as far as he would let me take them there and then we had to look for something bigger and we did. Then I got tangled up with a girl and it all went downhill from there. No, it didn’t — I didn’t say that. It was pressure. Her parents are dairy farmers and we were looking for a rotary dairy and so they said, ‘We’re building one’. We ummed and ahhed and they offered us a job there. We ummed and ahhed because a lot of family things go pear-shaped and you put a lot at risk and you do not want to ruin relationships over chasing a career. They offered that to us like the old days by saying, ‘You come in and work for me and we’ll see how we go. We’ll pay you.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not interested. We have to go on a share. We have to improve my 17 per cent share to a 50 per cent share’. We were ready to do that. So we said, ‘We want 50-50 or we’re not coming because if it goes pear-shaped, at least I have improved my position and I can walk out with X amount of cows and move on’. Anyway, we came to that arrangement and we were there. Then we bought land, an out-paddock. So we bought all the cows on a lease purchase arrangement when we went there. This is where it sort of gets a bit, ‘You had family help’. But it is getting someone to take a risk. So we did it commercially — we paid interest on these cattle and all of that — but it was getting someone to take the risk and banks would not take the risk. So we did have family help in the fact that they structured a loan at commercial rates and then took the risk on us so we could buy more cows. We bought 300. I think we had 430 cows when we went there and we just kept breeding our numbers up, and we are up to about 650-odd now. In the meantime we bought out-paddocks and a place adjoining. Then we got to a point where the bank would lend us enough money to buy our own property so then succession planning comes into it and how that was all going to unfold. I guess it was old school, ‘It’ll be right. You’ll get the farm’. I was not going to sit around and have that either. It is a hard thing to say that, ‘We don’t trust that it is going to happen’. There was a little bit of drive in me to do it myself rather than get it handed to me. So we said, ‘We’re ready’, and in the end they said, ‘Okay, we’ll do something’.