YOU rarely see many farmers in tights on a high wire with a long balancing pole trying to get from one side of a canyon to the other, but today you require those same highly honed skills to navigate the elusive chasm called profit.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
This requires deft management to maximise sale prices at the same time as minimising input costs, with the degree of difficulty increasing each year.
Although we balk at the mention of competition, as it conjures images of farmers being done over, it is competition between providers that usually ensures the lowest prices as suppliers compete for business.
Private industry has proven to be able to deliver goods and services much cheaper than governments, which have traditionally been hopelessly inefficient and in recent years thankfully have sold various business arms to private operators to make sure consumers get the lowest prices.
Farmers generally support Coalition governments, but are a bit puzzled when they see governments trying to stay involved in services where they know, if their delivery remains in government hands, they will end up paying more.
Meanwhile, history has shown governments, through countless examples, have simply stuffed it up.
Regional NSW has some of the most expensive electricity prices in the State and the cost of upgrading the poles and wires by government departments has been one of the major reasons for significant price rises throughout the past few years.
The idea of privatising the poles and wires in the NSW electricity market should have happened years ago, similar to Victoria, which now enjoys much cheaper electricity.
According to an Ernst and Young report, between 1996 and 2013 the network charges rose 122 per cent in NSW and fell 18pc in Victoria.
The retention of Essential Energy will ensure farmers have to keep paying through the neck for electricity.
Rural areas must be guaranteed service and like other essential services, governments should impose a customer service obligation on those who want to play in the bigger markets to ensure rural areas get a good service at the right price.
This is the model used in the telecommunication industry when Telstra was privatised and would mean we are guaranteed of the service, but are not propping up a lazy, inefficient, but more importantly, expensive bureaucracy.
The balancing act of trying to achieve profit on a farm is a very difficult quest, but is made near impossible when governments want to hang on one end of our balancing pole tipping us into the chasm where profits are but a distant memory.