All for the cause

Through the years, the Rankins Springs farmer developed a reputation as a colourful campaigner and hard-liner for the retention of wheat's single desk, a system he says worked well since its inception in 1947.

Jock's grandfather Archie Munro came to Rankins Springs in 1927 when he purchased land from a soldier settler, before handing it on to Jock's father Donald.

The family were committed wheat growers, but when Jock became involved, the potential disruption of an orderly wheat marketing system was cause for concern.

"The first thing I was concerned about was when the AWB [Australian Wheat Board] was semi-listed on the stock exchange, where it was half privatised, and a piece of legislation was attached to a corporate entity. Even though there were safeguards in the system, I was still very concerned it was going to make an attack on the single desk easier," he said.

There was a provision in the new company's constitution that it had an obligation to maximise returns to growers, and while that was a key element in the new corporate structure, Jock still had reservations.

"I was definitely against having the semi-listed arrangement, I would have much preferred a co-operative model," Jock said.

He said the 'single desk', as the only point of sale for Australian-grown wheat, had grown out of the Depression years of the 1930s, when grain traders played growers off against each other, keeping prices low.

The single desk was designed to assist growers in maintaining a level of profitable production and to ensure food security amid the global economic crisis.

"And at the end of the war, the growers thought it was such a good idea, they pushed for a single desk arrangement and that was brought in by the Chifley [Labor] government in 1947 (under the Australian Wheat Stabilisation Plan)," Jock said.

The 1948 Australian Quarterly Magazine explained the process as "net proceeds received by the board for wheat of a particular season are pooled. The pool is then divided among the wheat growers on the basis of the number of bushels delivered by each grower. A proper allowance for differences in quality of wheat is duly made. The board's price is paid in advances and the board is not bound to make the final advance in respect of any pool until it has disposed of all wheat delivered to it for the pool in question".

It also provided a guaranteed price which equalled the unit cost of wheat production, plus the Wheat Industry Stabilisation Fund was created to allow the board to provide an export guarantee.

Jock felt Michael Byrnes captured the nuances of the system in his book, Australia and the Asia Game (2006), when he said it was a "winning export system [which] was disarmingly simple, yet complex in the political heat it generated. Australian wheat farmers might look like country bumpkins to city slickers, but there was nothing unsophisticated about the wheat monopoly".

Jock also recalled the catch cry at the desk's introduction as being that it gave growers "the confidence to plant".

However, by 1989, the push would come from the trade, domestic flour processors and bread manufacturers, along with sectors of the grower community, for deregulation.

"I think in some ways it probably wasn't such a bad thing, it was something that was inevitable but something growers could still handle because they still had the stability of the export market," Jock admitted.

The export single desk would continue on relatively unchanged until 2005 - when a bombshell report from the United Nations unleashed one of Australia's greatest political scandals.

The UN's Volcker Inquiry into alleged corruption of the Oil-for-Food Program raised claims AWB had paid as much as $300 million in side payments for delivery of grain inside Iraq using a trucking company that was also a front for the Iraq government.

The inquiry's findings included the claim AWB's payments were the "single biggest source of illicit funds collected by the (Hussein) regime through kickbacks".

This led to an independent inquiry, requested by then UN secretary general Kofi Annan and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the findings from which signalled the death knell for AWB's export single desk, which officially dissolved in June 2008.

This left growers to sell their wheat on the open market, which Jock saw as a return to the pre-war situation.

"Not only have we lost returns from the value of the wheat itself, we also lost money in the logistics chain because we no longer have the pool to leverage the service providers," he said.

Jock also lamented the loss of particular functions AWB provided growers, especially with regard to new wheat varieties.

"It was called 'crop shaping', where AWB would work out where the market was going and push us in that direction," he said.

"We had incredible wheat quality, the best in the world and we had after market service because the AWB was interested in long-term arrangements where overseas flour processors were interested in continuity of supply."

Until the moment Jock departed NSW Farmers in December 2015, he was a forthright advocate for the commercial rights of the small farmer. So how and why did he get involved with the politics of NSW agriculture, and the wheat industry in particular?

"I had an interest in it, perhaps from when I was at ag college," Jock said.

"We had a good local branch of the UFWA [United Farmers and Woolgrowers Association] and I thought it was something that people needed to do - our industry needed strong representation and I still believe that."

Jock didn't spend time away from the farm, nor campaign for the wheat industry for personal gain.

"I saw my involvement as being for the betterment of the industry and the local communities," he said, and as such, he still maintains an active interest in politics as a member of the The Nationals.