Preparing for disasters should involve landholders

This week the Department of Agriculture held a National Drought Forum in Rockhampton, and the federal government held Australia's first National Disaster Preparedness Summit in Canberra.

But while the drought forum saw farming groups brought together with government, charities and community groups, agriculture was absent from the disaster summit.

It was great to see government bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including the supermarkets, to talk about disaster preparedness, particularly with a hot, dry summer ahead, but they missed a golden opportunity to invite the people who manage 80 per cent of the landscape.

We don't believe any of Australia's state farming organisations were invited to share their knowledge about natural disasters, despite the fact our communities are the ones most often impacted, be they the floods of the past couple of years, or droughts, or major bushfires.

Farmers have a lot of hats at the back door - I've got my RFS uniform up on the hook - and we're regularly the first ones to respond to an emergency. More than any other industry we are closely connected to the landscape and the people who live in it, and I would have thought it would make a lot of sense to have farmers at the table to ground truth some of the issues that come up at this summit.

A big thing in natural disasters is making sure people are fed and clothed, and that's the business farmers are in - but government needs to remember you don't get food in supermarkets without farmers, a point the summit organisers missed.

We've seen the food supply chain break down in recent years, and we need those in positions of power to listen to farmers about what practical impacts we're seeing in our regions to make sure those problems are solved, instead of just listening to the theoreticians in Canberra.