KOJONUP farmer Digby Stretch has been honoured with the 2017 Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA’s (PGA) Achievement Award.
The PGA vice president was presented the prestigious trophy at the PGA’s annual dinner and awards night in front of a crowd of 100 at Crown Perth last Wednesday night.
The third-generation farmer runs 11,000 Merinos and an 800 hectare cropping program, 50 kilometres south west of Kojonup with wife Nikki and their three children.
A lifelong member of the PGA, it was in the early 1990s that Mr Stretch became actively involved in the association.
“I’d been on the tough end of some policy issues that I was asked to come to the PGA and have a chat about by the wool committee,” Mr Stretch said.
“We had a wool industry in turmoil, we had a whole lot of regulations out there making things restrictive and hard to do business in.
“It became apparent to me reasonably early in my farming career that legislation and regulation was going to happen with or without us and I was better off getting in as a youngster and helping to shape the environment that we were going to farm in.”
It wasn’t long before Mr Stretch – then in his early 30s – joined the PGA wool committee.
Since then he has had various roles within the group, including a decade-long tenure as livestock committee chairman and his role as PGA vice president since 2014.
Mr Stretch has been involved with several key policy issues.
“The biggest things that I have been involved with would have been dismantling the reserve price scheme for wool from the sheep and livestock side of things as well as deregulating the wheat market,” Mr Stretch said.
“We (PGA) have been involved in bringing in the National Livestock Identification System, we’ve been heavily involved in the Ovine Johne’s disease position that WA took, we had a massive involvement when the live export issue popped up in 2011.
“We are so much better off for having a choice of whether we can use a GM product, or a free market for wool, Australia being a wheat export State, we’ve now got so many things that we fought for hard.
“I have met some fantastic people all across the country through all facets of the industry in the process which just helps to build everything that you do.”
PGA president Tony Seabrook congratulated Mr Stretch on the award, saying he encompassed the best of what rural WA represented.
“Digby has been a great community leader and representative of the livestock industry in WA, he is tireless in his efforts to promote the WA livestock industry,” Mr Seabrook said.
“In every regard he’s been very supportive of everything the association has asked of him and I have asked of him, and I am very proud and pleased about him standing alongside me over the past few years.”
Mr Stretch said he was humbled and surprised to have been honoured with the PGA’s Achievement Award, and hoped to continue his involvement with the association for several years to come.
“This is something that I have been completely blindsided by, there are so many people around this organisation that have done so many things that I look up to and admire,” Mr Stretch said.
“It’s an extraordinary organisation that’s kept very true to its beliefs all the way through, I reckon we’re farming in a much friendlier environment than Nikki and I started in 30 years ago.
“We haven’t finished yet, I hope to be involved for a long time to come at various levels.”
