According to WAU's theory, consumers are a kind of milking cow that government should force to pay over the market price for the benefit of producers.

Q: Who feeds you Peter?

A: I have as a former "dairy worker" and "Primary Producer" for 25 years!

Guess what?

Not any more, I worked in another field while exiting the country work!

People with your viewpoints can start growing their own vegies, run livestock and start milking cows in -3 degree temps!!

Most producers are fed up with the fact that consumers never bothered supporting them during their hours of need/changes years ago, brought about by government and greedy companies.

WAU

You are only entitled to what people are willing to pay you for your product. If you want more than that, and the consumers don't want to pay it, I don't think you have a right to urge government to set up an arrangement the effect of which is to force consumers to pay more just so that you can have a better life. The purpose of production is consumption, not the other way around. By the way, I am a farmer, and make my living from selling products at the market price.

"People with your viewpoints can start growing their own vegies, run livestock and start milking cows in -3 degree temps!!"

Well that's right, isn't it? And if people don't want to do that, they can pay more for their food, can't they, and that is as it should be. But that's not an argument in favour of government regulation to favour producers at the expense of consumers.

"Most producers are fed up with the fact that consumers never bothered supporting them during their hours of need/changes years ago, brought about by government and greedy companies."

Well you know what? Consumers aren't there to make things comfortable for producers. If the producers can't offer them a product at a price the consumers are willing to pay, that is and should be the end of the matter.

And if it's true that "greedy companies" can charge what they want, then why didn't you do that? What makes you think they are any less subject to the market discipline of profit and loss than you are?

Best of luck with your outlook and farming business Peter, your views above certainly do not reflect mine.

Your above views are not what were reflected in mine.

For the record, I took my statistics on Australia's food production, consumption, imports and exports from the commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry's Australian Food Statistics (http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/publications/afs/) published annually since 2000. They in turn source their national-level food balance sheet statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (http://faostat.fao.org/). These statistics show Australia exporting consistently around 60% by weight of food produced, summed across 12 major groups of commodities: Cereals, Starchy roots, Sweeteners, Pulses, Vegetables, Fruit, Meat, Eggs, Fish & Seafood, Dairy, Vegetable Oils, Animal fats. There are big differences amongst these commodities. We export 60-70% of wheat production but only 10-20% of fruit and vegies. We have large surpluses of production over consumption for meat, sugar, dairy, cereals and pulses, but produce less than we consume of seafood and vegetable oils. In the most recent report covering 2005-7 for the first time it is reported that we consume more vegetables than we produce - due to steady production and rising demand.

So the national statistics show a fairly robust food situation, as reported in summary by ABARES last Wednesday (http://www.abares.gov.au/publications_remote_content/recent-20?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHAlM0ElMkYlMkYxNDMuMTg4LjE3LjIwJTJGYW5yZGwlMkZEQUZGU2VydmljZSUyRmRpc3BsYXkucGhwJTNGZmlkJTNEcGVfYWJhcmVzOTkwMTA1MzhfMTFhLnhtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D).

Nevertheless I plead guilty as charged to the offence of believing that governments should make policy about many things, including the food system, and I think there are ways to intervene that do not amount to blunt price control. Also important to remember that "free markets" are not apolitical, or devoid of power relations. It is those with greater market power - large food traders, processors and retailers - who have more influence on outcomes. Consumers have power too of course - but only in proportion to their wealth. In assessing "food security" I'm interested in outcomes at the household level as well as at the national level, and at the household level things look less robust - but that's another story.

Peter Hume. You asked WAU "And if it's true that "greedy companies" can charge what they want, then why didn't you do that?"

It doesn't work that way Peter. There was a time when milk was highly unregulated in that any tin-pot 'farmer' could run a few cows, milk them in unsanitary conditions, put the milk into vats and leave them in the sun for a local dairy company collector to pick up and deliver to the community. People got sick, many of them children for reasons I won't go into here.

Then came more regulation, pasteurisation, etc and many small dairy companies/distributors went out of business. Unfortunately, many of those small companies (who employed locals) were bought up by increasingly bigger companies including Internationals.

Today we have all milk supply controlled by a few multi-Nationals and they dictate the price the farmer gets for his milk. If the farmer baulks at the stingy price per litre, too bad. The multi-National simply by-passes his property until the farmer toes the line or folds up. This scenario is being played out every day while Coles and Woolworths reduce the price of their plain label milk to $1 a litre. How long do you really think we'll be paying a dollar a litre for milk? What happens when the local farmers toss in the towel and all our milk is imported? $3 a litre? $4 a litre?

Cont.....

Same with the potato industry. Giant multi-National companies control potato production exactly the same way. McCains have slowly stripped potato farmers of a workable income to the point where they have no income buffer zone to cover a bad year. If they can't deliver to McCains, then McCains will go crying to the Government so they can import tons of potatoes, thereby squeezing the remaining spud cockies out of business while we're left to eat over-priced imported produce. Indeed, there have been suggestion that this strategy is a carefully manipulated plan by said multi-National to flood the Australian market with their own produce thereby greatly increasing the capital for shareholders.

There's not a win in sight for Aussie farmers and the average Jo Blow doesn't have the gumption of foresight to see that the above scenarios are actually doing great harm to consumers by way of lower standards and higher prices.

With all due respect Peter, you really need to do some homework on this very issue.