IMPROVING on-farm resistance to weather damage in order to maintain a viable operation was the theme of an Agribusiness Australia luncheon last month in Perth.
Specialist agribusiness insurance broker Norm Tretheway, from AgriRisk, helped put the program together, and was a main contributor to the event at the QV1 building.
Mr Tretheway was accompanied by 2018 Nuffield Scholar Dylan Hirsh and CBH Group chief audit and risk officer Rob Maurich.
Mr Tretheway said his company’s product range was focussed around transferring the risk of adverse weather from the buyer to the seller.
AgriRisk insurance coverage packages started at $200,000, which he said “covered a lot of farmers at the moment”, although “smaller, cheaper deals would come online as interest grows”.
As the only WA broker with the company Mr Tretheway was trying to educate people on the options available to them, other than multi-peril crop insurance.
“Everywhere I go people are talking about climate change – it’s mentioned by Future 500 companies now, it’s changing perceptions,” Mr Tretheway said.
He said insuring against the weather would reduce the risks in an ‘off’ season.
Mr Maurich said that CBH used its own weather data to seek coverage from the risks of weather, although it started out using the “unreliable” Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“Agriculture does not have enough data on the weather,” Mr Maurich said.
“We need more Federal government funding to improve the ABS data.”
He said CBH data showed that from 1940 the average yield in WA was 1.44 tonne per hectare.
That was with 8.4-8.5 million hectares, and dependant on the mix of livestock and cropping land.
He said the three main risks were property, liability and weather.
The variability of cropping in WA could range from 300,000 to 400,000 hectares either way each year.
Mr Hirch, who studied how other international systems managed risk, said some of the challenges for WA farmers were the prices for machinery and land, as well as the seasons and markets.
He said on his property at Latham they had used a similar weather data system on a smaller scale which helped achieve a better return on investment, reduce risk and improve profitability.
Agribusiness Australia chief executive officer Tim Burrow was the discussion monitor and kept them on time and topic.
Mr Burrow said the important networking and information sharing organisation would be holding its 30-year anniversary in November, which was possible because of increasing membership contributions and sponsorships.
“Agribusiness it critical to the industry going forward,” Mr Burrow said as he highlighted the projections that agribusiness was expected to make in the next decade,” Mr Burrow said,
“Agribusiness is a multiplier of agriculture.”
