THE humble lamb shank personifies the real paddock to plate story.
Paddock to plate has been a catch-cry for decades in terms of highlighting the need for a cost-efficient supply chain and quality assurance from farm to customer.
It all makes perfect sense until you bring price into the equation.
At the farmgate you can pay between $2 and $3 for the tasty morsel we used to throw to the dogs.
Go to a field day and front up at The Lamb Van and a shank, gravy and chips will set you back between $12 and $14.
But go to a Perth restaurant and the mighty shank takes on a new persona, plonked on a pile of mashed potato with a price tag of $35.
You could come up with your own examples, particularly after choking on a 200 gram fillet steak that cost $49 in a Perth restaurant.
So who's making the cream?
If you start at the restaurant and work your way back to the farmgate, you'll find most of the cream is going back to all levels of governments.
The restaurant owner will tell you his top chef is costing him a fortune, you can't get good staff unless you pay them well, rent is blowing him out of the water and he's being hanged by power bills, payroll tax, shire rates, workers' comp payments and general insurance.
Then there's his wife, but that's another story.
It's a typical yarn, with variations, that flows from the restaurant to the wholesaler, to the processor, to the farmer.
Which is where Corrigin farmers Damien and Garrick Connolly and their wives Jaymi and Nicole, enter the picture.
The third generation farmers are enthusiastic owners of the town's butcher shop, Windmill Meats, which they bought, with an abattoir, in 2009.
Three years later, while they all collectively say it has been a challenge, the business is becoming profitable, with a paddock-to-plate price formula, for the mainly lamb meat, based on WAMMCO prices.
"You see what food chains and restaurants charge for your product and you do wonder who's creaming the system," Garrick Connolly said.
"Then you see the price wars that go on and the pressure that puts on farmgate prices.
"It's not sustainable yet there's a city perception it is sustainable and we're all making huge profits out here."
Life is tough, particularly after a near drought in 2010, but the Connollys remain confident about the future.
The worry is what the future will look like.
"I don't have any answers but I have a lot of frustration, as a farmer and a small business owner, at how agriculture is hamstrung by governments with no focus on the importance of food or on the producers of food," Mr Connolly said.
"There should be more transparency in the food supply chain to identify how a fairer price margin can be implemented and more flexibility to allow farmers and small businesses in farm communities to roll with the punches.
"Longer term loans with lower fixed interest rates would be a major help in improving the health and sustainability of communities along with more targeted incentives to attract small businesses to country towns.
"Farmers and small businesses are on the same footing in country communities, serving each other and maintaining a population.
"And that, after all, should be music to governments knowing they've got healthy income streams."
