The current rainfall and flooding impact on farm businesses, regional towns and Brisbane city is a stark reminder of how important it is for farmers to better understand, develop and adopt risk management strategies as much as practically possible. As farm business owners we need to manage uncertainty of flood events and drought, spread risk and maintain continuity of product supply as best we can.
The Queensland Farmers' Federation continues to encourage industry to embed preparation and resilience skills into daily farm production processes. Planning ahead is critical for disaster recovery and will ensure Queensland's farmers can focus on doing what they do best - producing world class food, fibre and foliage.
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As farmers we need to live with the vulnerabilities of land, water and topography. To mitigate our risks, we must continue to adopt industry best management practices, continue sound stewardship of the land and use the tools that are available to us as farmers now to help manage risk. We need to continue to learn from our past experiences to improve current recovery efforts and build on-farm and community emergency practices.
While this sounds in many ways like an insurmountable task, it could be as simple as having an updated written business resilience plan that includes a list of key contacts, business purpose and identified priority risks.
The current flood event continues to highlight the key role crop insurance can play in helping farmers mitigate and manage their own risk. QFF continues to advocate to commercialise a viable parametric index crop insurance product to fill those coverage gaps and better equip farmers for the vulnerabilities of drought, rain and flood.
Cost is another barrier to greater take-up of agricultural insurance and QFF continues to push for the abolition of stamp duty from crop insurance specifically. The Victorian and NSW governments removed stamp duty on agricultural insurance products in 2017, to make it more affordable for their farmers. Queensland's farming community would welcome similar moves by the Queensland government to assist and encourage farmers to more effectively be able to manage their risk.
