FOUR years after Australia's wheat marketing monopoly was abolished amid shame and scandal, the nation's grain growers remain divided on its demise.
The split is generational, with farmers aged over 50 frequently lamenting the loss of the security and certainty of the Australian Wheat Board's "single desk" trading, while younger farmers are revelling in the opportunities offered by the complex financial trading options that have come with deregulation.
Western Australia's Mike Shields, 39, has no doubts about which system he prefers.
Cropping a massive 27,000ha property named Glenvar at Wongan Hills, three hours' drive northeast of Perth, Mr Shields is a fourth-generation grain grower and a sophisticated marketeer. He has no wish for a return of the AWB trading monopoly.
Instead, daily decisions made at his office computer about whether to sell his wheat in advance through the futures markets or forward cash contracts, or into general shared pricing pools, are as much a part of his business as ploughing a paddock or driving a tractor.
..."Farming has changed since the end of the AWB - it's harder because you have to concentrate more on what's happening in the grain markets," Mr Shields said yesterday as two massive harvesters munched their way through a vast wheatfield.
"You do have to put more time into the business side of things, but it helps to take away some of the risks and the variability of relying on the rain to come at the right times."
However, not far from Mr Shields's farmgate, leading grain grower Kim Simpson still yearns for the return of the AWB.
Despite the national wheat marketing monopoly being disbanded in 2007 after an international scandal over kickbacks paid by its gun-toting farmer-directors to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the grains president of the WA Farmers Federation says he would welcome its return.
"I'd love to have the AWB back, but without the screw-ups," said Mr Simpson, 56, sitting in a header harvesting wheat on his farm at Ballidu.
"We really had a good thing going for years - they did our hedging, marketing, exporting and pricing, and that left us farmers free to just concentrate on growing the very best crops we could."
But Mr Simpson's hankering for the glory days of the wheat board monopoly, when it had sole rights to sell Australia's $6 billion a year wheat crop on the global markets, does not resonate one iota with Norm Jenzen.
Mr Jenzen, 40, is a progressive WA grain grower from North Cunderdin, east of Northam, who delights in the merits of trading wheat independently.
He started privately selling grains such as barley, canola and lupins 15 years ago, long before the wheat board was abolished, and enjoys the sense that after delivering harvested grain to nearby depots he can tweak and optimise his returns by choices made later on his computer.
"It's a new language and a new era now - but I'm only 40 and I've grown up with it," Mr Jenzen explains.
"It's challenging but rewarding - the secret, given the unknown of the weather, is to be a little conservative and under-hedged, because we all know some grower who has lost $1 million trading futures in the past few years."
The split is generational, with farmers aged over 50 frequently lamenting the loss of the security and certainty of the Australian Wheat Board's "single desk" trading, while younger farmers are revelling in the opportunities offered by the complex financial trading options that have come with deregulation.
Western Australia's Mike Shields, 39, has no doubts about which system he prefers.
Cropping a massive 27,000ha property named Glenvar at Wongan Hills, three hours' drive northeast of Perth, Mr Shields is a fourth-generation grain grower and a sophisticated marketeer. He has no wish for a return of the AWB trading monopoly.
Instead, daily decisions made at his office computer about whether to sell his wheat in advance through the futures markets or forward cash contracts, or into general shared pricing pools, are as much a part of his business as ploughing a paddock or driving a tractor.
..."Farming has changed since the end of the AWB - it's harder because you have to concentrate more on what's happening in the grain markets," Mr Shields said yesterday as two massive harvesters munched their way through a vast wheatfield.
"You do have to put more time into the business side of things, but it helps to take away some of the risks and the variability of relying on the rain to come at the right times."
However, not far from Mr Shields's farmgate, leading grain grower Kim Simpson still yearns for the return of the AWB.
Despite the national wheat marketing monopoly being disbanded in 2007 after an international scandal over kickbacks paid by its gun-toting farmer-directors to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the grains president of the WA Farmers Federation says he would welcome its return.
"I'd love to have the AWB back, but without the screw-ups," said Mr Simpson, 56, sitting in a header harvesting wheat on his farm at Ballidu.
"We really had a good thing going for years - they did our hedging, marketing, exporting and pricing, and that left us farmers free to just concentrate on growing the very best crops we could."
But Mr Simpson's hankering for the glory days of the wheat board monopoly, when it had sole rights to sell Australia's $6 billion a year wheat crop on the global markets, does not resonate one iota with Norm Jenzen.
Mr Jenzen, 40, is a progressive WA grain grower from North Cunderdin, east of Northam, who delights in the merits of trading wheat independently.
He started privately selling grains such as barley, canola and lupins 15 years ago, long before the wheat board was abolished, and enjoys the sense that after delivering harvested grain to nearby depots he can tweak and optimise his returns by choices made later on his computer.
"It's a new language and a new era now - but I'm only 40 and I've grown up with it," Mr Jenzen explains.
"It's challenging but rewarding - the secret, given the unknown of the weather, is to be a little conservative and under-hedged, because we all know some grower who has lost $1 million trading futures in the past few years."
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