James Jackson has taken a swipe at his federal counterparts in his final speech as NSW Farmers president telling them to: "do some stuff that matters".
Using an image of dinosaurs to bring home his message, Mr Jackson said the National Farmers Federation (NFF) should stop with the endless existential crisis.
"Do some stuff that matters ... diesel rebate, defence, live ex, competition policy, biosecurity, trade, labour, do it all even the stuff that is hard and resonates more in Walgett than Woollahra," Mr Jackson said.
"The NFF has engaged Australian Farm Institute to do some work on the future of advocacy ... the work described the current situation with a dinosaur slide.
"Well it was suppose to be provocative (the dinosaur image), mission accomplished, consider me provoked.
"It's not a terrible thing to talk about structure ... maybe it is a bit ordinary to keep banging on about it for 20 years.
"However, the subtext of this piece of work is what we must listen to.
"There is a real appetite for thought leadership down there ... I've always said thought leadership is autocracy or fascism rebranded."
Meanwhile, at the start of his speech Mr Jackson said he had thought "long and hard" about how he would start his speech.
He mentioned it would be tempting to frame the speech with a 'poor bugger me context' especially considering what primary producers had to deal with in the past four years with droughts, plagues, pandemics, floods and fires.
"Agriculture has been in the news largely because we put it there," Mr Jackson said.
"Just because there has been lockdowns and disruption ag still needs a strong voice and you have been heard.
"In some ways the disruption to agriculture has presented an opportunity to highlight our policy agenda.
"Fires mean we have an audience for public land management reform and our good neighbour agenda. The pandemic highlights biosecurity principles that are critical for our livelihoods."
He said NSW Farmers had been a voice for agriculture on a number of issues including live export, Koala SEPPS, biosecurity, mouse plagues and grain supply chains.
"Media activity is important, telling our story to a disconnected urban audience including Macquarie Street but also making our members aware we are there involved in the debates, we are fighting the good fight.
"I haven't been that impressed by peaks or NFF telling me to shut up on something, if it's an issue for our members we will talk about it and we will have a view on how to fix it.
"Silence is not really an option, you'd better have a cracking case for that
"Our strategic plan demands we are the pre-eminent voice of Agriculture in NSW."
In response to Mr Jackson's comments, NFF president Fiona Simson said there were no policies to make NSW Farmers a subbranch of NFF.
"We make no apologies for putting forward the hard discussions around the future of advocacy," Ms Simson said.
"NSW Farmers is a proud member of NFF so it's in our interest to make sure each of our members can be as strong as they can be.
We are in a changing landscape and there are enormous opportunities and challenges ahead of us, our objective is also to unite and put forward policy that support industry."
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NSW Farmers CEO Pete Arkle said the AFI project on the Future of Ag Advocacy included some detailed market research late last year reinforcing what "farmers" were seeking from their representative organisations like NSW Farmers.
Mr Arkle said 25 per cent believed the main purpose of ag advocacy organisations was to promote the industry's needs to political representatives.
"I'm sure William Suttor, faced with the imminent threat of sheds being shut by the Shearer's Union in 1890 and NSW's main exports being stuck on the docks, must have reflected deeply on the pros and cons of unification," Mr Arkle said.
"Setting up the first Pastoral Union of NSW over 130 years ago can't have been easy, but the leaders of the day ultimately saw the benefits of standing together in the face of shared adversity. Their legacy lives on to this day in this organisation - NSW Farmers!
"So, the question comes, would it matter if we decided that our first object of uniting and representing pastoral and agricultural producers in NSW and the ACT was all too hard?
"Both our candidates for president (Xavier Martin and Mitchell Clapham), and indeed our current president made strong cases in last week's The Land that the reasons for NSW Farmers existing, and the need for a strong and united farm advocacy association in NSW are stronger than ever - this is a view that I share."
