Twenty years ago I set up an organisation to support young people in agriculture to drive real change. The purpose was to help shift how the sector spoke about itself, outward looking rather than inward, solutions focused rather than grievance driven. The idea was that if agriculture wanted influence, it needed start earning it.
Which is why reading much of the agricultural press today feels like déjà vu, the same arguments, the same framing, the same sense that nothing has shifted.. You look at it and can’t help asking, what’s changed?
The issues themselves are familiar enough. Land prices. Succession. Policy settings. Conservation. Capital. Pressure from all sides. None of this is invented. But the way these issues are framed has barely moved. Every challenge still seems to arrive as something being done to farmers, and every response carries the same undertone, why is this happening to us?
Take the current outrage in western NSW about government buying land for conservation. There are legitimate questions here, about scale, about community impact, about how policy is designed. But the story quickly slides into something narrower and less persuasive. Agriculture, once again, positions itself as uniquely wronged.
What’s missing is context. Farmers in my own area were priced out of land decades ago, long before conservation buybacks entered the conversation, when people from Sydney decided it was a perfect place to live. One farmer today can be offered $28 million for 100 acres. That didn’t happen because of national parks. It happened because land has become an asset class, a lifestyle choice, a store of wealth.
And it isn’t only agriculture living with that reality. Young people across Australia are still living with their parents because they can’t afford housing. Teachers, nurses, tradespeople, hospitality workers. The next generation problem is not sector specific, it’s structural. When agriculture presents it as exceptional, it doesn’t sound principled, it sounds disconnected.
There’s also a curious selectivity in where the anger lands. Conservation purchases attract outrage, while amenity buyers, speculative capital, consolidation within agriculture itself, and intergenerational wealth don’t attract the same level of scrutiny. That kind of focus doesn’t read as advocacy for young farmers. It reads as discomfort with who the buyer is.
The irony is that agriculture has a stronger argument than it realises. Conservation and production are not opposites. Smarter conservation, co management, stewardship payments, leaseback arrangements, and policies that value people staying on country are all possible. But those conversations require agriculture to show up as a partner in public good, not a sector demanding exemption.
Support isn’t lost because the problem isn’t real. It’s lost because the tone suggests the world should pause, rearrange itself, and feel sorry.
Twenty years ago the challenge was to move agriculture out of that posture. The stakes are higher now. The room is more crowded. And pity parties, no matter how justified they feel, are a poor way to build a coalition.
#agriculture #ruralaustralia #youngfarmers #landaffordability #conservationpolicy #regionalcommunities #farmingfuture #publicinterest #intergenerationalchange
