Developing any fruit farm or permanent crop through cash cropping of vegetables is full of problems[ see blog Pioneering in 20th cent Australia]. Despite many years of effort, events outside of my control seemed to intervene . Weather, poor prices, excessive charges such as transport and plain dishonesty would raise their ugly heads. Unlike broad acre farming such as wheat and other cereal crops, or sheep raising where controlled prices and marketing structures are in place through Government agencies or co-operatives, vegetables were a free for all.
Often, after loading twenty tons of potatoes out in the paddock onto a truck without assistance, I would collapse from exhaustion. Generally this sort of activity would take place in the middle of the night in order to allow the truck driver sufficient time to drive the six hundred odd miles to the Sydney Markets. Even today many years later, my body still sufferers from the damage. The major cash crop we grew were potatoes [ in those days they were sold in 112lb bags] as our soils were sandy loam, when dug and washed, they looked like white billiard balls on the supermarket shelf and as such commanded top prices.
In order for you to understand how the market works, I shall detail the normal procedure. Firstly , I would phone my agent to ask the going price that day and then decide whether to consign a shipment. How ever, no matter what the price quoted or the actual price paid, I always received a lesser amount. The reason of course, I could not be there to check the auction prices and had to rely on the agent being honest. No paper work was required by law, the only requirement being that a consignment had to be paid for within five days of sale. Often I would find out that a load had sold at $12 per bag, but I would receive payment of $10. One year, when I had consigned several loads, but received no payment after many requests to the agent, I phoned the legal office of the Agriculture Department to lodge a complaint. The legal office is supposed to safe guard the interest of distant growers unable to attend. However, in this instant the officer informed me that because the agent had suggest a possible price, the crop did not qualify as a consigned in the legal terms of the act any more, the agent was now acting in a commercial way and therefor was not obliged to pay within the time limit. This agent would sell several growers crops, not pay, then declare himself bankrupt, after transferring the money elsewhere. In this way he became a multi-millionaire, he had carried out the exercises four times.I was advised to seek my own legal advice and sue the agent,which I could not afford to do, such is the concern of supposed Government bureaucrats looking after your interest. I often wondered how many boxes of whisky he received each Christmas. What was even more unbelievable, the same agent repeated the trick several times, but could always get his licence to sell back!
Then of course there was the Mafia control in the marketing and packaging of vegetables in NSW. Griffith was notorious for much funny business and organised crime. While I lived there a well known political figure standing on a platform to clean up the town disappeared in the middle of a election campaign and apart from a little blood on the pavement was never seen again. Local wisdom used to claim bodies were feed to the pigs! In the end, I decided to replace vegetable growing with a small piggery, not for the above mentioned reasons I might add, but simply because I could deliver the them to the auction myself, receive the correct price with little trouble as the auction was only a two hour drive or so down the road. I shall tell you more about the amusing entertainment of pig farming in another blog. They love their toys and are very fond of music, but more of that another time!
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