The East Gippsland Shire Council’s Agriculture Sector Advisory Committee (ASAC)
has held a crucial high-level summit to confront the severe economic and environmental pressures suffocating the region’s farming sector.
Meeting last month, the advisory group — which serves as a direct pipeline between frontline primary producers and the council chambers — put forward a unified call for aggressive, evidence-based advocacy, stronger cross-agency coordination, and urgent industry collaboration to protect East Gippsland’s most valuable export industry.
Mayor Cr Jodie Ashworth said the ongoing volatility within the agricultural market made the committee’s advisory role more vital than ever.
“This committee plays a vital role in ensuring the voices of farmers are heard and that the challenges facing the sector are brought to the table,” Cr Ashworth said.
“We are committed to backing that work through strong advocacy and coordination, and ASAC provides an important link between council and one of East Gippsland’s
most significant industries.”
The escalating destruction caused by wild and invasive pest animals emerged as a dominant talking point. The discussion followed council’s recent release of its Pest Animal Management Advocacy Paper.
Representatives from Agriculture Victoria and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) briefed the committee on current state control practices, legal limitations, and multi-agency boundaries.
However, committee members hit back with blunt feedback, detailing how surging pest populations are actively devastating farm productivity, destroying crops and severely eroding the mental wellbeing of isolated landholders. ASAC members demanded a swift move away from fragmented management, calling for a coordinated, cross-tenure eradication approach that holds public land managers to the same standards as private farmers.
The meeting also turned its focus toward the economic shockwaves of agricultural
land-use changes, specifically analysing council’s upcoming plantation position paper. Committee members voiced widespread community anxiety over the unregulated expansion of timber plantations onto prime food-producing soils.
The committee warned that robust independent economic analysis is urgently required to map out exactly how swapping traditional farming for forestry will cannibalise regional employment, distort local land values and impact the future of the local food supply.
Broader economic headwinds were also tabled, with farmers reporting that soaring diesel and fuel prices are single-handedly destroying farm profitability. Given the massive geographic distances required to move livestock and grain across East Gippsland, the committee emphasised the need to build a localised, data-driven case file to lobby state and federal governments over climbing input costs.
To guide council’s immediate policy direction, ASAC formulated a strict list of strategic priorities:
– Pest control overhaul: Facilitate immediate coordination channels to lock public agencies and private landholders into unified pest eradication campaigns.
– Timber plantation safeguards: Progress the municipal plantation position paper using broad, unvarnished feedback from traditional agricultural operators.
– Economic impact mapping: Assess the long-term economic toll that corporate land-use changes are having on regional towns and rural employment.
– Fuel cost advocacy: Gather concrete, localised invoice data from working farms to build a powerful case against skyrocketing fuel input costs.
– Industry diversification: Actively monitor and support emerging regional trial projects, including the localised Game Meat Hub Pilot.
– Transparency: Commit to sharing the finalised outcomes of the highly anticipated municipal Livestock Exchange review with the wider farming community the moment it is handed down.
ASAC, which brings together a diverse cross-section of working farmers, independent industry bodies, and state government decision-makers, will continue its meeting schedule throughout the year to monitor the execution of these strategic objectives.
