THE National Farmers' Federation (NFF) will launch the initiative, Telling our story, that will span over a few years, with the aim to reconnect the community with the agricultural industry and rural Australia.
The multi-million dollar awareness campaign will be led by the NFF, supported by agribusinesses and spread across various media platforms.
"The campaign is about raising the awareness, profile and importance of agriculture in the community," NFF chief executive Tony Mahar told delegates at the recent WA Dairy Conference in Busselton.
"It will go right across all of the issues that are the Achilles heel for agriculture, but we haven't yet had a whole industry approach on."
Mr Mahar said the NFF wanted to focus on addressing the "reasonable middle" of Australia that already had a high level of trust and confidence in the agricultural industry and supply chain.
"We can chase activists up and down all over Australia, but the chance of changing their mind is pretty slim," he said.
"We really want to focus on building on the strength and confidence that already exists in the community."
Mr Mahar said the industry needed to be on the front foot, as it was under fire from multiple angles.
"We have the issue of floods, fires and droughts and over on the east coast you would have seen a lot of concern over the deaths of fish in the Murray Darling basin, cotton farming and the allegations of water theft," Mr Mahar said.
"There's been a whole series of negative stories and negative implications for the dairy sector which seem to be coming thick and fast.
"We can't sit and wait for another activist campaign or another agenda that is driven by these groups and not respond."
Mr Mahar said the NFF tried to react reasonably and quickly to activism activity earlier in the year by Aussie Farms, which launched the Aussie Farms map in January and saw protest and trespass incidents across the country in April.
"The initiatives in the first half of the year were really concerning, so as a national body we acted swiftly to give information to farmers right across the country and across all sectors on what they could do," Mr Mahar said.
"We gave them a three-step plan of checking the Aussie Farmers map to see if your farm was on that map, try and get it removed from the map and formally file a complaint to the police.
"The NFF also pursued longer-term solutions by lodging complaints with Facebook and Google, writing to the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commissioner about trying to change the way in which this charity was recognised, writing to the New South Wales Minister for Better Regulation because it was a registered organisation in New South Wales under the Fundraising Act, writing to the Privacy Commissioner requesting Aussie Farms be investigated as well as writing to every State and Territory police commissioner."
Mr Mahar said the NFF had some wins for the agricultural industry, with Aussie Farms prescribed as an organisation under the Privacy Act and being under investigation by the Australian Information Commissioner.
The NFF have also helped instigate changes to trespass and privacy laws.
"New penalties have been introduced in Queensland, an inquiry is underway in Victoria and NSW have committed to establish an agriculture commissioner and to look at new penalties," Mr Mahar said.
"We've had support from the Prime Minister and in parliament the Attorney General is putting a bill through to the parliament - the Criminal Code Amendment Agricultural Protection bill, that provides for increased prison terms of up to five years and higher fines."
Mr Mahar said it was a step in the right direction.
"I don't think it's going to stop activists progressing their agenda, but it is a demonstration of what we can do as an industry to make some changes."
