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This article was originally
published in The Australian and New Zealand Olive Grower and
Processor (July 2006).
The
Australian Olive Federation
Simon Field
The
Australian olive industry as it matures depends on the product being
sold profitably in a financial sense, just as society depends on
knowledge and experience to create an environment that profits humanity
in the sense of well-being.
To grow and
reach full potential we need a framework to guide us, just as society
has rules to maintain stability. Likewise the growing olive industry
needs rules to guide its development, and someone has to make these
rules and implement them. The question is who?
In Australian
agriculture we have been very dependent on government to make the rules
at all levels and in some commodities, single marketing channels to
dispose of our products. We have also depended on government
institutions to provide the research support for the industry, and
generally on extension services to ‘transfer technology’.
Many of our agricultural
industries are stuck in the morass of failed market
support schemes, such as the floor price for the wool industry, and
single desk marketing with ‘incentives’ for the wheat industry. These
aberrations are symptomatic of an industry being forced by government,
in turn forced by globalisation, to de-institutionalise agricultural
marketing and eliminate direct industry support.
It is
paradoxical that while trying to make agriculture more independent,
government still wants to have one point of reference for each commodity
and gains considerable leverage by providing strategic ‘partnership’
grants to developing commodities (a subsidy by any other name). To
achieve this end the Victorian Government was the catalyst for the
establishment of the Victorian Olive Council so that there was one
representative body in that State with which they can communicate. The
Federal Government has also pledged a substantial sum of money to
support the cash-strapped Australian Olive Association.
In this
situation there is a tendency to turn towards government rather than
membership for funding. The result of this is that the fund provider
becomes the client rather than the membership which is the industry. It
is easier to convince one entity to provide money, than it is to
convince many members – but it is not necessarily better for the
industry in the long run.
Times are
changing, where research carried out by government-funded institutions
provided the knowledge that was distributed by government extension
services, we can now access information and communicate directly
worldwide through the internet. Where industry bodies were the conduit
for access to markets, we can now access markets worldwide, again
through the internet.
It is in
this rapidly changing political and economic environment that the
Australian olive industry is growing up. The question that we must
answer and act on is what sort of framework do we want to mature in and
how do we construct it?
We have the
luxury of being able to develop with the hindsight of what has or hasn’t
worked for agriculturally-based industries in the past.
The Australian
Olive Federation (2)
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