We have a major food shortage looming, not just in dairy foods, but poultry, pigs from the lack of feed and possibly vegetables from a lack of irrigation water.

Charities like Buy a Bale provide relief but shadow the true picture facing farmers. There are 100,000 drought affected dairy cows to feed in NSW, each needing 25kg/day (a little bale of hay) or 2500 tonnes in total or 100 semitrailer loads. Every day. Beef and sheep feeding multiples the number many times. 

Karl Marx said, “Charity keeps the status quo.” There still remains a drought after charity help, so true change is required. Prices for food must go up, yet we are months into this drought and the major supermarkets are still discounting food from drought ravaged farmers. Why is there no pressure on the supermarkets?

Maybe because the size of the supermarkets’ advertising spend and therefore power over mainstream media like channels 7, 9, 10 would make them be financially vulnerable if this advertising was pulled because of adverse coverage. Or maybe because Wesfarmers/Coles is the principal sponsor of the NSW and National Farmers Federation and without this sponsorship they too are vulnerable.

The monstrous power of our supermarkets is frightening. The milk industry has lobbied supermarkets for months to have prices lifted to reflect the ever increasing farm costs of production which are now close to $1 a litre. Farmers like myself are now quietly culling premium livestock, rather than lose everything we have worked for over a lifetime. We are all losing money.

The status quo must change and can only happen with the consumer action. The supermarket price war was started by Coles with milk. It needs to end. Now. Australian agriculture is vulnerable, flowing on to all rural communities and to all the jobs in processing farm products.

Consumers must send a message to the supermarkets that this behaviour is unacceptable. It is time to boycott Coles until it stops its discounting of fresh food from drought devastated farmers. Now is not the time for farmers to be subsidising consumers with cheap food. Australian food security is at risk. Is it now time for a royal commission into supermarkets too. 

There’s little Ann Sudmalis, the fading federal member for Gilmore, can do to surprise her constituents.  She opposed the Banking Royal Commission some two dozen times, supported cuts to penalty rates as a “gift” to workers and blamed those same workers for not being strong enough to demand higher pay. Her future is in doubt with Milton businessman Grant Schultz reportedly ready to replace her as the Liberal candidate.

So one might assume she would be seeking every possible opportunity to promote herself. But last Wednesday she could be seen in Canberra laughing and joking on national television during Question Time.

Meanwhile out of control bushfires were raging the length of her electorate, where stunned and traumatised constituents as well as emergency personnel might have welcomed some support from Gilmore’s senior politician. Instead she was elsewhere, visibly enjoying herself while her electorate burned.