2 June 2026. Shane McCarthy, AgForce General President.
What producers need is legal certainty that allows them to continue their critical work producing food and fibre.
The government is redesigning agricultural land without properly assessing the cost of the consequences of the reforms to the EPBC (Environment Protection and Biodiversity) Act.
These reforms are creating legal ambiguity around routine farming operations, property rights, land management and future investment. They don't take into account the damage to the food security of our nation, regional economies and domestic production capacity.
AgForce's taskforce of producers has been working diligently for months on making sense of the reforms. It's now apparent that everywhere producers turn - that is 50 centimetres below the ground, three metres into the air, vegetation, water, and even the air above us - is another layer of approval.
So everything from 50 centimetres down and in the air and the trees, we effectively have no control over anymore.
Which means producers take all the debt and all the risk, including drought and floods, for levels of government to tell them what they can and can't do on a daily basis.
Producers in Australia are 42% more environmentally friendly than their international peers (as shown in research revealed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil in November last year - https://media.croplife.org.au/2025/11/Web-version_Climate-smart-agriculture_an-independent-technical-review.pdf)
That's no small number.
It includes the USA, Europe, Brazil, Argentina. We don't just do better than most. We do it better than everybody else in one of the harshest environments on earth.
We're already doing it and doing it well. It's about time that people acknowledge that and help producers do what they do best - not put extra layers of bureaucracy into what they can and can't do.
So we will continue to work for recognition from government that either agriculture gets a carve out or an exemption, or they realise that these extra layers are just not workable for farmers and producers.
These environmental laws - the main environmental legislation for Australia - must recognise that agriculture is fundamentally different from a one-off development.
Producers manage dynamic landscapes and we also do it over generations. We shouldn't be regulated as though every routine management activity is a new environmental threat.
This absurd level of compliance is creating uncertainty attached to producing three meals a day for all of us.
Because remember, every family needs a farmer.
