Farmers manage enormous uncertainty: volatile markets, rising input costs, labour shortages and climate variability. We’re living through droughts, floods, extreme heat and unpredictable seasons.
Our own farm struggled through two years of drought leading up to 2020, followed by some of the wettest years on record. For the first time, we didn’t plant a cotton crop over the summer of 2023.
Hugh Killen from Impact Ag Australia said it best.
“The capacity to absorb shocks is often described as a defining strength of the sector. But there is a point at which resilience stops being a strength and becomes a warning. Because what we call resilience is, in many cases, simply exposure carried quietly on farm balance sheets. Assumed and accepted, rather than addressed.”
The fuel and fertiliser price spikes and supply shortages we’ve experienced this year are exactly the kind of warning Hugh describes. They matter because they affect food security, which can quickly become a national security issue. So how do we ensure these risks and vulnerabilities aren’t being amplified by the system itself?
