INSIGHT FROM A FOUNDING VOICE OF THE GRAINS INDUSTRY

Grain Producers Australia Chief Executive Officer Duncan Bremner caught up over coffee this week with Ian Waring, who led the Australian Wheatgrowers' Federation (AWF) during one of the most testing periods in the industry's history. 

The AWF, registered federally in 1930, was the national voice of Australian wheat growers for half a century.

Its hardest test came in 1969, when a record harvest met collapsing export markets.

Silos overflowed and the Australian Wheat Board could not sustain advance payments to growers. 

The answer – delivery quotas – was proposed by the AWF itself, agreed by Commonwealth and state ministers, and legislated state by state.

It was deeply unpopular in the paddock, and it kept the stabilisation scheme alive. 

The AWF was also an early driver of the push for a single Australian agricultural voice. 

On 20 July 1979 it merged with seven other producer bodies to form the National Farmers' Federation, with grains guaranteed its own commodity council – later the Grains Council of Australia (GCA).

When GCA wound up in 2010, Grain Producers Australia was formed to carry the grower mandate forward, with a board directly accountable to producers.

"Ian's generation built the structures the rest of us have inherited," Duncan said. 

"The tensions they managed – west versus east, commodity autonomy inside a peak body, who pays for representation – are the same ones we manage today. 

“It was a privilege to learn how they achieved it first-hand." 

The AWF's records are held at the ANU Noel Butlin Archives Centre in Canberra.