CWFS AgMarketing meetings 2 & 3 November 2017
Condobolin
Another meeting of the Condobolin CWFS AgMarketing Project was held on Thursday, 2 November with rural women coming together to catch up and discuss the upcoming harvest over an informal lunch at the Railway Hotel, Condobolin. This meeting provided a great opportunity for the group to see how the year has panned out for each other as well as commiserate about the disappointing weather conditions over the last five months. Unfortunately, much grain was moisture stressed and frost damaged and resulted in low yields; which after a wonderful start to the season was extremely frustrating. Wheat and canola crops were the mainstays with some legumes such as chickpeas planted as break crops. One of the women discussed her cotton enterprise which she runs with her husband and this is always a point of interest with the group as cotton prices remaining reliably strong. Developing relationships within the groups is a major outcome of this project and the combined knowledge of these women is quite remarkable and a wonderful resource to be shared.
Forbes
As the harvest period kicked off, so did our Forbes group of the CWFS AgMarketing Project which held its inaugural meeting on Friday, 3 November at the Forbes Services Club with participants from the local Central West region. Warren Lander from AWB was our presenter for the morning and did a sterling job in his role as our marketing guru. Warren presented information on many aspects of grain marketing; from building relationships with industry stakeholders and marketers to knowing your cost of production. Warren gave an overview of AWB and its many activities as well as talked about the movement of grain in global terms and looking at the other countries competing with Australia for a share of our important Asian market. The morning was very interactive with many questions being raised for Warren’s advice and expertise. These included whether to store grain or sell it; how to check you have the best price on the day; knowing your profit goal; considering your cash needs and how to identify your cost of production and what you will need to make to not only cover this, but make a profit! It was a great morning and Warren kindly stayed well past his appointed time to chat to the group and encourage them to be confident in making marketing decisions. We look forward to the next meeting of this group and thank Warren and AWB very much for making the morning such a success.