Project: 100 Farmers

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I am a member of a family run intergenerational agribusiness located on the Western Downs in Queensland…
We are of the opinion that prevention is better than cure, and welcoming learning strategies to emulate and be guided by in terms of physical, mental, and emotional health has been of great concern. There is a distinctive lack of visible role models advocating for health within the agribusiness industry which will have the obvious potential to negatively impact the forward momentum of the industry…
The program Toby and his team run, came to our attention 20 years ago when out family first attended the health clinic in Brisbane. Technology and accessibility have improved dramatically in the time and the reach of the program will be an advantage to MLA if it partners with FHPC. We believe that the program is of great benefit and could certainly be a great fit for many others within our industry.

Godfrey Morgan“Myall Grove”, Condamine

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You will be familiar with some of the success Dr Toby Ford has provided in his team’s quest to improve the standard of rural health in remote and regional agricultural communities. It has long been my opinion that the early work his team provided for CPC when I was its CEO and founder, was unique.
…it would be vital that we attempt to understand how the productivity and the performance of the industries leaders could be better harnessed to address the vexing problems of attracting future talent, keeping family intergenerational engagement and above all improving production in time through more resilient leadership. The 2030 plan to double red meat production needs well people to drive the process.
As a mark of our support for this work, our own Warriner Foundation has been supporting the Farmers Health Promotion Collaborative for some time. We hope to see this excellent initiative with MLA draw out and capture influencers who are often in smaller family-owned enterprises that can miss out on advancing their skills and leading others. I also hope this lead by MLA, will stimulate some of the bigger commercial enterprises to step up and match the MLA’s support of the family-owned meat and livestock agribusinesses…

Ken WarrinerFormer Chairman and CEO of Consolidated Pastoral Co

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…There are many traditional role models all around us advocating for dogged and stoic existences. Sadly, each generation is failing to transfer a flexible approach to adapting to the changing conditions in which we operate our agribusiness. Passing information down to offspring is not the issue, it is having the flexibility to accept advice and act on it upstream that we see is important.
…we have set out to be role models, but we feel there are insufficient, good visible role models across the industry advocating for the same and so it seems the younger generation is losing the battle quickly, often leaving because they have not found a role model for being well that they can follow and emulate.
My husband Stirling and I are very aware of the need and importance of taking care of ourselves. We have attended Ford Health, originally through Consolidated Pastoral Co., and have continued to visit for biennial assessments since leaving CPC in 2012. We consider these visits to be an invaluable part of our health care routine.
I am very encouraged by this initiative to set up a study under the MLA research grants. I also feel the opportunity for men and women to share equally in the program is very important…

Phillipa Fearon“Ivanhoe” ,Tambo Queensland

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…It is our belief at Hewitt Cattle that a well workforce is a high-performing workforce. We have worked with Toby and his team for over 15 years to support our managers and their families in learning more about how to sustain and improve their health and wellbeing. We often find that our culture and approach in this is a leading attraction for prospective and existing employees to join and remaining with our company and it has become an important pillar of our portfolio of on-the-job training and education.
…As a major industry stakeholder, MLA is well-positioned to lead this research and promote its findings because it is our current and future workforce who will actually be required to action the successful implementation of the other five pillars. Making an investment in finding influencers and progressively upskilling them to become leaders within our industry is unique and would demonstrate true thought leadership.
…Hewitt Cattle strongly encourages MLA to actively lead by example and sponsor this industry-first study of influencers and how they can be galvanized to improve health standards and practices in our industry, and therefore future industry production through improving the sustainability of our workforce and their families…

Mick HewittChief Executive Officer and Managing Director at Hewitt Cattle Australia

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We are aware of the work Dr Toby Ford and his organisation do for urban and rural businesses like ours but would like to see the actively reach the smaller camouflaged family-owned businesses of our industry where succession can be affected by members of the family being unhealthy. We are also very aware that within the broader network of producers we support, increasingly health and in particular mental ill-health has been problematic. Public health and private agencies have attempted to tackle things from the treatment and management end. About $86,000 per adult per year in Australia is spent on chronic diseases, like heart attacks, cancers, depression, whilst $86 per adult is directed to prevention. The fact the more isolated a person lives reduces his or her lifespan in a first world country like Australia is a tragedy. So on hearing Farmers Health Promotion Collaborative is researching how to find influencers and support them to learn new skills they can in turn pass to others we were naturally interested as this is the type of research that addresses people in the 2030 targets we have set for our industry is tackling bush health at the prevention end in a novel way we have not seen before.

Anthony LeeCEO Australian Country Choice

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There are many traditional role models all around us advocating for dogged and stoic existences. Sadly, each generation is failing to transfer a flexible approach to adapting to the changing conditions in which we operate our agribusiness. Passing information down to offspring is not the issue, it is having the flexibility to accept advice and act on their advice that we see is important to advancing agribusiness.
Health, wellbeing, and resilience as a platform of the shared value we have found helps us to communicate to our sons that they must think more about looking after themselves if they are to have a better quality of life than we may have been granted.
With this in mind we have set out to be role models but we feel there are insufficient good visible role models across industry advocating for the same and so the younger generation is losing the battle very quickly often leaving because they see few role models for being well that they can follow and emulate.
My wife and I have for many years felt it has been important to take care of ourselves and we have attended Ford Health as part of our own family effort to transfer wellbeing to our sons and see them take good care of themselves and their new families.

Scott Gina Harrington“Brinard Station”, Julia Creek