RE: NSW Farmers’ is a broad church of issues and members (NDL Letters, Jim King Friday July 31).
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Our membership base ranges from broadacre, livestock, wool and grain producers, to more specialised producers in the horticulture, dairy, egg, poultry, pork, oyster and goat industries.
This makes us uniquely placed to be able to speak on behalf of the vast majority of farmers in NSW, now and into the future.
Our policy is strong and developed from the bottom up by our grassroots members.
In that respect we are many things to many different people, but overall, we are the strong and unwavering farmer voice in this state.
One thing we are not, as asserted by Mr King, is hypocritical.
I would encourage Mr King to take a good look at the work NSW Farmers’ has done across the field on a whole myriad of issues when it comes to the impacts of extractive industries on agricultural land.
Our policy position is clear.
In summary we support a framework that identifies and protects our most productive agricultural resources.
That means being strategic about where we mine and where we farm.
In a nutshell it comes down to appropriateness and the Shenhua Watermark project is clearly not an appropriate project.
Yes, we had Santos and AGL as sponsors at our conference, amongst many other sponsors.
We also had representatives from Lock the Gate presenting to the conference audience and grassroots members bringing strong policy motions on the protection of agricultural land and water to the conference floor for debate.
To imply that the presence of two sponsors, amongst many, at our conference, has any bearing at all on our lobbying efforts is to misunderstand the way our policy is developed.
In that regard, I encourage Mr King to become involved and engage with us.
Our membership numbers are not declining, but we’d love to add him to our ranks.
Let’s work together for the ongoing viability of the agriculture industry across the state.
Derek Schoen
President
NSW Farmers’