The professional farmer

The Australian farmer faces important and interconnected management challenges on both the economic and ecological fronts. To confront these challenges effectively, farmers would be well advised to constitute themselves as a professional body along the lines of the Bar Association. Making farming a professional activity in this sense would provide a number of important benefits and advantages. It would facilitate the provision and delivery of the needed educational resources for economic and ecological land management. and help farmers avoid the pressures of heavy-handed government centralism. At the same time, such professionalism would encourage more efficient use of sector resources by minimising the need for direct political lobbying and intra-farm group competition for membership. As a professional body, farmers could hope for increased public standing and the economic clout that would come from having control over the supply of skilled land managers.