Harvest job in Australia

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
The scale of environmental destruction by bush clearance is quite extraordinary in Australia. I have seen it in quite a few places over there.
The very biggest I saw was just North of Perth where they were building a whole new suburb, amongst it was an animal sanctuary with koalas and kangaroos which were almost certainly displaced when the bush was cleared. Absolutely staggering as that was the only place any locals were ever going to see them, all as a result of their new house and new shopping centre. Not for me to be judgemental from the other side of the world but it did feel quite wrong and immoral.
The other place I saw it was QLD, the government had announced there was to be no more clearance after a certain date, iately.
Lots of passion about these things, Roy shows a lot in his posts but at the end of the day he too is farming cleared land, as I am too of course.
that happened around here just before the hedgerow removal ban came in, one farmer not too far away , knocked down virtually all his internal hedges on 200 acre or so farm .
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
yes i did a bit of that , and having a bonfire at the end of the day, can just remember nice ,distinctive the smell of the smoke.
i never saw chaining though , i think it was still going on, further up North.
I burnt my eye brows off burning the wood in the hole from one tree we had taken out! 🤦‍♂️

Was using petrol to start it and when I lit it it blew back in my face.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
Exactly the same in nz!!
The current govt doesn’t understand/believe in seasonal labour/jobs

I see they are going to let in more folk for the fruit picking/wine season, so it should help a bit.
I'm not convinced full time jobs like dairy farming should get much help though, they really need to compete with other employers to hold on to staff. There's quite a few upped their game now, pay ok and have a nice modern house etc. These employers hold on to staff and get the benefits that come with it.
Others still seem to want a slave for a season and then move on to the next victim.
Ag contracting is interesting because many of the jobs could be full time but are treated as seasonal to try and get overseas staff. It does seem to be changing a bit though, jobs that used to be advertised as temps are now full time.
The UK is the same though, many big arable units got rid of full timers and now complain they can't get good seasonal staff.
 

JD-Kid

Member
I see they are going to let in more folk for the fruit picking/wine season, so it should help a bit.
I'm not convinced full time jobs like dairy farming should get much help though, they really need to compete with other employers to hold on to staff. There's quite a few upped their game now, pay ok and have a nice modern house etc. These employers hold on to staff and get the benefits that come with it.
Others still seem to want a slave for a season and then move on to the next victim.
Ag contracting is interesting because many of the jobs could be full time but are treated as seasonal to try and get overseas staff. It does seem to be changing a bit though, jobs that used to be advertised as temps are now full time.
The UK is the same though, many big arable units got rid of full timers and now complain they can't get good seasonal staff.
thats the thing good guys get and keep staff. I know one dairy farmer. realy looking after his staff they could get better money with another boss but. stay with the boss they are with ..
more ad's are saying. full time as guys know they have to keep staff and trying to get work for them all year round if just doing silage hard tho
 

Gerbert

Member
Location
Dutch biblebelt
On forest clearing, why does it happen? Is the ground especially expensive in the area where it happens? I would imagine it cannot be done if groundprices are low in the area. Or is it for firebreaks or something?
Yes I know nothing about it.
 
I quite like to see Sky News Australia’s take on things, what do you guys make of them and YouTube banning them for a week?
I don’t think we have been told what was reported on the banned show.
As Craig Kelly was being interviewed I suspect it was something like the treatment of bat flu with ivomec and zinc as is done in some countries.
It’s odd that treatments used in other countries are not alowed to be talked about.
Our media freedom will be in trouble once media is banned on reporting things, which may be found to be correct in the future.
It’s like Facebook which was banning posts on bat flu coming from the Wuhan Lab, as they claimed that was impossible. Now that it the most likely scenario.
We need freedom of media, and the bans by utube and Facebook remove freedoms.
 

Ben B

Member
Mixed Farmer
I see they are going to let in more folk for the fruit picking/wine season, so it should help a bit.
I'm not convinced full time jobs like dairy farming should get much help though, they really need to compete with other employers to hold on to staff. There's quite a few upped their game now, pay ok and have a nice modern house etc. These employers hold on to staff and get the benefits that come with it.
Others still seem to want a slave for a season and then move on to the next victim.
Ag contracting is interesting because many of the jobs could be full time but are treated as seasonal to try and get overseas staff. It does seem to be changing a bit though, jobs that used to be advertised as temps are now full time.
The UK is the same though, many big arable units got rid of full timers and now complain they can't get good seasonal staff.
As you said the good operators who pay staff well and treat them good keep full-time staff. But there are so many operators who treat them like S##T. The word gets out about how they treat and they cant get locals. Then they do the same thing to the backpackers, it just gives the industry a bad name then no one wants to milk cows. I'm not going to say its glamorous but if you work for the right operator you can be paid good money!
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
thats the thing good guys get and keep staff. I know one dairy farmer. realy looking after his staff they could get better money with another boss but. stay with the boss they are with ..
more ad's are saying. full time as guys know they have to keep staff and trying to get work for them all year round if just doing silage hard tho

Its been my knock on NZ dairying since I got here, I just can't get my head around the, do one season and move somewhere else on gypsy day mentality.
I don't know how you can get the best out of things if you or your staff - and sometimes cows - are only there for a season.
It does seem to be changing though, more farms are trying to keep staff together and owners keeping managers/share milkers/ contract milkers for longer.
 
I see they are going to let in more folk for the fruit picking/wine season, so it should help a bit.
I'm not convinced full time jobs like dairy farming should get much help though, they really need to compete with other employers to hold on to staff. There's quite a few upped their game now, pay ok and have a nice modern house etc. These employers hold on to staff and get the benefits that come with it.
Others still seem to want a slave for a season and then move on to the next victim.
Ag contracting is interesting because many of the jobs could be full time but are treated as seasonal to try and get overseas staff. It does seem to be changing a bit though, jobs that used to be advertised as temps are now full time.
The UK is the same though, many big arable units got rid of full timers and now complain they can't get good seasonal staff.

i have relied on some seasonal labour for the last 10 years. Work starts in September and is done by some time in March. When we had an easy supply of labour that came back from the uk every year. I’d like to think we payed and still do pay decent money.
several times I’ve tried to make a couple of positions full time. Climate change has shortened the winter season so it is becoming easier to make it full time.

our business model is changing. Nothing ever stays the same.
as for the dairy guys. I think they have to adapt too. The problem is that going cold turkey is hard for everyone.
most of the farms around here have reasonable accommodation I think that the farm sizes are too big. Smaller units with a more family feel are the way to go.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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