F E A T U R E D

Australians embark on Pan American Highway trek riding horses from Argentina to Alaska

What's next?

The pair hope to buy more horses to travel faster as they move north. It only took Ben Hann and Olivia Cazes a few days to start an epic journey that will take them seven years to complete — riding horses from Argentina to Alaska.

They will spend the better part of a decade transiting 14 countries along the world's longest highway — the Pan-American. It spans a distance that would take 26 hours by plane or a month of driving.

"It very much depends on what seasons we hit and where," Mr Hann, an experienced stockman and horse trainer from Darwin, said. "If we hit a winter in the northern USA or Canada … we're not going anywhere for a while."

Hitting the longest road

Arising from a conversation at a Christmas party last year, within days the friends had booked their flights to Buenos Aires, arriving on New Year's Day.
Mr. Hann and Ms. Cazes spent the first week of 2025 in the Argentinian capital before making their way south to Ushuaia, a town known as the end of the world.

They embarked on the first leg of the trek on February 2 after three weeks in Ushuaia buying horses and preparing for their journey.
"The horses are all fresh to this, so we have to go pretty slow to start with," Mr Hann said.

"[They're] getting used to the packs and doing the miles with the saddles, so we did a few short days until Tolhuin."

The pair have five horses carrying everything they need but plan on buying more horses as they go to make the journey a little quicker.

"We carry our own shoeing gear, if a horse loses a shoe, we put it back on," Mr Hann said.

"We've got to have that stuff with us.
"We have no support other than what we've got here, and the locals we meet."

Mr. Hann said they were traveling between 10 and 15 kilometres a day but hoped to increase that to 50km a day.

Taking horses across borders has already proven challenging, but Mr Hann said they had expected some delays in sorting out visas and paperwork for the animals.

"Chile won't actually let us set foot in there with a horse," he spoke.

"So, we're going to have to trailer them across Chile but then we're back in Argentina and we'll head off again."

Wild weather, warm welcome

The pair has already walked through snow while crossing the Andes and also encountered intense winds and high temperatures.

But while the weather may not have been welcoming, the locals were.

"They [the locals] are very interested in our trip, and we are very interested in their way of life," Ms Cazes, an experienced horsewoman from Quebec, Canada, said.

"It's a nice way of traveling and discovering about the people we meet."

At one point they were caught in a storm and were taken in by the police at a nearby village after they were spotted by local travellers.

"It was hailing … that was miserable," Ms Cazes said.

"They [the police] offered us food the moment we stepped foot in the station, and hay for the horses."

Mr Hann said they had been blown away by the support of the locals.

"The people have been absolutely amazing," he said.

"You can't ask for anything better than how they help us along the way."

'Uncharted territory'

UK man George Meegan broke a world record in 1983 by becoming the first person to walk the Americas and the Pan-American Highway. He walked for 2,426 days.

Mr Hann said he did not know of many other people who had completed the journey.

He has been in contact with fellow Australian Lucy Barnard, who last year became the first woman to walk the length of South America.

"There's a couple of people who have recently done it, so that gives us an idea of what we can do," Mr Hann said.

"But it's still very uncharted territory." 

What an experience to be another Aussie leading the way on a Horse we look forward to following this epic journey. Many thanks to all.

Farmers view upgrading equipment as an investment and not merely an expense. In Australia, funding for necessary equipment is difficult to obtain and is essential at the same time due to the ever-changing agricultural sector. Farmers often encounter obstacles, particularly in the case of private loans, such as high interest rates, limited lenders, and seasonal cash flow fluctuations. Despite these hurdles, various financing avenues including asset financing, cash flow and business loans, secured loans, lease financing, and hire purchase agreements are available.

Lenders look at many different factors ranging from the age of the asset to the credit score and financial history when evaluating loan applications. Lack of knowledge about the financing options is a major issue for many farmers and results in lost chances to obtain favourable rates or terms. This lack of understanding may lead to excessive borrowing or the choice of rigid repayment schedules that are out of step with the seasonality of agricultural revenue.

Farmers are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and productivity, and with the use of modern machinery, this goal can be achieved. The modern-day farmer depends on an ever-expanding range of implements and machines for his efficiency and productivity such as tractors, harvesters, spreaders, irrigation systems, etc. However, such equipment is expensive, and financing is a crucial factor to take into account when making plans.

We recently assisted a client who was planning to purchase a high-end spreader worth $203,500 in an effort to increase productivity on his farm. It was important for him to have efficiency since 70% of his business was comprised of canola and wheat crops while the rest was sheep farming. This piece of equipment was supposed to simplify processes and increase productivity at the farm, so it was termed a game-changing spreader.

Due to the increased expenses and shifting economic circumstances and current technology, finding the right financing for farm equipment has become more important than ever. As agriculture becomes increasingly sophisticated, having a strong financial partner becomes paramount. 

Having the appropriate type of financing is critical for farmers looking to improve, expand, or make their operations more efficient. And in the current climate, the need for having the right financial partner is greater than ever.

WEEKLY AUCTION DATES – 2025

1.) 21^st March 2025 , 2.) 26^th March 2025  , 3.) 4^th April 2025

Ag Machinery

‘We’ve been dumbed down’: Australian farmers want the right to repair their own tractors again

Seventy-five years ago, the grey Fergie tractor was the backbone of Australian farming. If it stopped running, farmers like Martin Honner – who runs a 1,100ha mixed livestock and cropping farm near Junee in the New South Wales Riverina region – would roll up their sleeves, tinker away, maybe smack it with a hammer and off it would go again.

Like most farmers, Honner is a capable mechanic, and his two sons are industry-trained with agricultural machinery from major manufacturers like John Deere and CASE.

But the hammer doesn’t work anymore; today’s tractors and harvesters are expensive, GPS-enabled wizards. To replace his header, Honner would outlay over $750,000; newer models can retail for over a million. To replace his air seeder, too, would be upwards of $390,000.

In suburban Ballarat, my family is harvesting canola, trading tips on tractors – and gaining sympathy for farmers
Dellaram Vreeland

“I’m a lover of machinery that you can keep going without having to buy the biggest and latest just for the sake of advancements in technology,” Honner says.

As farms have moved into the digital age, machinery has become more sophisticated. Onboard computers are standard, and the embedded software brings a wealth of productivity in the form of guidance systems, allowing pinpoint accuracy for spraying or sowing crops.

But that software increasingly requires a subscription. John Deere, the largest farm equipment manufacturer in the world, has set a target of earning 10% of its revenue from subscriptions by 2030.

Software is also protected under copyright laws.

Prof Leanne Wiseman specialises in intellectual property law at Griffith University. She is also the chair of the Australian Repair Network and a member of the National Farmers Federation’s Right to Repair task force.

‘With new machinery, there is pressure on us not to do our own maintenance,’ says farmer Martin Honner.

Wiseman says while copyright is a legitimate way to protect the software, the digital locks used by the manufacturers mean that it cannot be accessed for repair. “Once there is an operating system, you can’t just swap a part in and out because the system won’t accept it unless you have the diagnostic software,” she says.

This leaves farmers such as Honner frustrated. Breakdowns, most likely at the critical point of harvest, mean machinery can be out of action for an indeterminable amount of time, and tinkering is not encouraged. “With new machinery, there is pressure on us not to do our own maintenance – even an oil change, and that’s not brain surgery,” Honner says. “I feel we’ve been dumbed down.”

Travel to an authorised repairer, often hundreds of kilometres away, costs time and money far beyond the initial breakdown. “A good local mechanic might charge $50 to $120 an hour, but when the dealership sends a mechanic it is in excess of $200 an hour,” Honner says.

‘It needs to be a priority’

This software conundrum also applies to cars, which led to Australia’s first right-to-repair law for mandatory data sharing in the automotive sector. It requires global manufacturers to share diagnostic data with independent mechanics, allowing them to identify faults and repair them.

“The good thing about the automotive scheme is that the [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] police it and if there is a breach they have the ability to fine the manufacturers up to $10m, so it doesn’t place the onus on the individual,” Wiseman says.

Agricultural machinery is not covered by right-to-repair legislation, which is why the modern farmer may have the latest John Deere working in the paddock and the old Fergie in the shed in case of breakdowns.

Most of the technology-reliant equipment that Australians use every day – from machines used in sectors like mining and health to household appliances and mobile phones – is not covered by right-to-repair laws. But additional issues for agriculture technology are the hefty price tags, the restrictions on on-farm maintenance, and the distance to authorised repairers.

Europe and the UK’s right-to-repair laws cover consumer goods, while in the United States, Colorado law allows repairs to agricultural equipment and wheelchairs. Canada also recently passed laws to facilitate the right to repair.

In Australia, the Productivity Commission says $97m a year in extra GDP would be available if the right to repair was legislated for agriculture alone.

“That was calculated through crop quality losses and price downgrades you get from having to wait for an authorised technician,” Sean Cole says. Cole is the advocacy and rural affairs manager at Grain Growers and a member of the NFF’s Right to Repair task force.

Grain Growers and other industry bodies are pursuing the right to repair agricultural machinery which includes access to repair manuals and tools, especially diagnostic equipment, and access to third-party repairers.

In November, Australian federal and state treasurers signed a 10-year intergovernmental agreement on national competition policy, which the federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said was “an important first step towards delivering broader ‘right to repair’ reforms – driving down repair costs, increasing business opportunities and reducing wastage by removing barriers to competition for repairs, especially in agriculture and farming”.

Negotiations between the NFF’s right-to-repair taskforce and the Tractor and Machinery Association in 2024 failed to reach a voluntary agreement, so the farming lobby is pushing for legislation to make data sharing mandatory. It could entail amendments to the Australian Competition Consumer Act, an amendment to the automotive legislation, or standalone legislation for agricultural machinery.

Grain Growers says it is open to discussing all options and welcomes Chalmers’ comments but is keen to see the details. “It needs to be a priority, as it is a huge way we can unlock additional GDP, especially in the regions,” Cole says.

Without the right to repair legislation, Wiseman warns, the current problems could escalate. “Without a timeframe for regulatory intervention, we will not see open and fair competition in the agricultural machinery service and repair market,” she says.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wonder if you would consider supporting the Guardian’s work as we prepare for a pivotal, uncertain year ahead.

The course of world history has taken a sharp and disturbing turn in 2024. Liberalism is under threat from populist authoritarianism. Americans have voted to install a president with no respect for democratic norms, or the facts that once formed the guardrails of public debate.

That decision means an alliance critical to Australia’s national and economic security is now a series of unpredictable transactions, with a partner no longer committed to multilateralism, nor efforts to curb global heating, the greatest threat we face. We just don’t know where this will lead.

In this uncertain time, fair, fact-based journalism is more important than ever – to record and understand events, to scrutinise the powerful, to give context, and to counter rampant misinformation and falsehoods.

As we enter an Australian election year, we are deeply conscious of the responsibility to accurately and impartially report on what is really at stake. 

The Guardian is in a unique position to do this. We are not subject to the influence of a billionaire owner, nor do we exist to enrich shareholders. We are here to serve and listen to you, our readers, and we rely on your support to power our work.

Your support keeps us independent, beholden to no outside influence, and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.

Thanx Guardian

Here are the main highlights for some of Australia’s key commodities this month. 

• Wheat and barley: Global wheat prices have fluctuated due to weather and geopolitical events. Cold spells, increased US wheat area and potential peace talks in Ukraine contributed to a bearish trend, ultimately leading to a decline in CBOT prices. In the meantime, Australian prices improved as the harvest season has concluded.

• Canola: The vegetable oil market recalculates supply and demand balances as global policy changes and tariffs lead to price corrections. The North America soybean and canola cropping area for 2025/26 is expected to influence the market, which is already worrisome given geopolitics.

• Dairy: Firmer commodity market returns are starting to flow to the farmgate, with recent increases in farmgate prices in southern Australia. There is growing optimism that more farmgate price increases are ahead in 2025.

• Beef: Cattle prices continue to hold steady, with some upside for heavy and finished cattle, off the back of stronger US import prices. Meanwhile, good seasonal conditions support steady restocker cattle prices, but high cattle inventories will limit the upside.

• Sheepmeat: Trade and heavy export lambs continue to perform well as US import prices rise heading into a peak demand period at Easter. Store stock prices are holding, but unless there is a significant improvement in southern seasonal conditions, we do not expect much upside for these categories.

• Cotton: ICE #2 Cotton futures declined 3.9% MOM as funds maintained their enormous net-short position. Although anticipated lower US production should help tighten the global supply and demand balance sheet, the market currently appears oversupplied.

• Wool: The Eastern Market Indicator and the Western Market Indicator are both trading at similar levels to one month ago. The big question going forward is the extent to which Chinese import demand will be impacted by US tariffs on China.

• Consumer Foods: Coles had a stronger December 2024 quarter versus its major competitor in terms of same-store sales growth. Monthly food inflation ticked higher in February, driven by some higher fresh produce prices.

• Farm inputs: Urea and phosphate prices remain elevated as supply issues persist. According to our affordability index, nitrogen and phosphate prices have reached unaffordable levels in many countries, which should help curb global demand.

• Interest rate and FX: In February, the RBA finally delivered an interest rate cut, and the Australian dollar finished just a touch lower than it started. RaboResearch forecasts two more 0.25ppt cuts from the RBA this year and more weakness ahead for the currency.

• Oil and freight: Geopolitical risks are the only remaining upside risk for energy prices, and containerised freight rates are falling again. RaboResearch projects Brent crude oil will average USD 70/bbl in 2025.
  
  Let’s see what happens as we move forward in 2025.

Please email us with a picture of yourself or a family member in front of your TOWN-SIGN to [email protected]

Olympia Yarger’s farming day starts at sunrise. By eight in the morning, she has already collected the eggs. Next, she feeds the animals and checks the climate control system. Then she cleans. “There’s a lot of cleaning to do,” she says. “Just like with any other animal. It’s an all-day affair but a really rewarding job.”

Yarger is an insect farmer. Growing up as a city girl, Yarger always enjoyed being around animals. She loved to ride horses and spent many of her weekends on her friends’ farms. But when she transferred to an all-girls Catholic school in Year 11, Yarger had her first reality check.

“They were horrified that I wanted to go into agriculture,” she recalls. “They told me that St Clare’s girls didn’t become farmers.”

A woman farmer wasn’t a thing. But Yarger was determined to follow her passion.

Like Yarger, many women in agriculture have started to reject traditional stereotypes and claim their space in the industry. Motivated by social and environmental justice, women farmers are thriving, showing the country that transforming farming into a more sustainable practice is possible and lucrative.

Women in agriculture: by the numbers

Women have always been critical contributors to agriculture and food production across the world. According to the UN, almost a third of women’s employment globally is in agriculture, including forestry and fishing – and this statistic may exclude self-employed and unpaid family workers.

While the percentage of women farmers in upper-middle and high-income countries is less than 10%, agriculture remains the most critical employment sector for women in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Yet, women farmers have significantly less access to, and ownership of, land compared to men. Women account for only 12.8% of agricultural landholders globally, and often, the enormity of their efforts is unrecognised.

Women account for only 12.8% of agricultural landholders globally. 

In Australia, women’s role in agriculture has been recognised and ignored in equal measure throughout history. Census data show that women made up 32% of Australia’s agricultural workforce in 2016. Today, they produce at least 48% of real farm income in Australia. Yet gender-specific obstacles, such as financing, lack of access to land, education and training, equal treatment, and lack of representation in the industry bodies, put female farmers at a significant disadvantage before they even sow a seed.

“Women have always had a crucial role in farming enterprising, but weren’t recognised as farmers,” says Dr. Lucie Newsome, a lecturer in political economy and employment relations at the University of New England, NSW. “They were seen as silent, non-contributing partners.”

Newsome says decades of intensive productivism politics have pushed women to the fringes of this industry.

Australia’s political regime and an export-oriented economy have led to what’s known as competitive productivism – the pressure to expand businesses into large, export-focused enterprises. The impetus to increase production while crunching market prices has pushed farmers to use large-scale production schemes and use more external inputs such as chemicals, pesticides, and fertilisers. “The rural debt is skyrocketing, and producers are under pressure to get big or get out,” says Newsome.

“Women have always had a crucial role in farming enterprising, but weren’t recognised as farmers.”

Dr Lucie Newsome, University of New England

This philosophy has led many people to exit agriculture, particularly younger generations. Small and medium-sized farms have disappeared, contributing to the demise of rural communities. Ten ecological communities have been listed as endangered or critically endangered due to farming development and practices in the past decade.

Between 1981 and 2001, the number of farms declined by 1.3% every year, and the average farm size increased by 23%. In the past 40 years, the percentage of farms with revenues greater than $1 million rose from 3% to 16%, with the top 10% of Australian farms producing 90% of the production.

The productivist regime especially disfavours female farmers because women have more difficulties accessing the land. Traditionally, family farms are passed on to a son, while women only inherit in 10% of cases. Besides, most women have fewer opportunities to accumulate enough capital to buy farming land, which means that they have less chance to compete with large producers.

Do women farm differently? 

To put another spoke in women’s wheel is the patriarchal mentality still dominant in the agriculture industry.

Yarger says that “everybody struggles with costs”, but that being a woman with an alternative business idea comes with its own set of challenges.

“When I looked at insect farming, it was challenging to prove that the idea I had was a good one,” she says. “But the biggest barrier that I’ve faced as a woman was that I had to really work at getting people to believe that I could get this thing to work.”

Many years later, and with a successful farming enterprise behind her, Yarger says that barrier hasn’t disappeared. “What women face are subliminal undercurrents. It doesn’t matter how much effort we put in, there’s an unconscious bias about whether we’re credible or capable. It’s an intangible thing, but it’s frustrating.”

“Women have similar experiences in all fields,” says Newsome. “But in agriculture, there are clear binaries. Women are carers, nurturers, and mothers. Men are producers, dominant and primary farmers.”

In the course of her studies, Newsome has discovered that women have learned to turn those traits into their strengths. Their nurturing and caring approach to agriculture translates into a farming philosophy that moves away from conventional practices.

“It doesn’t matter how much effort we put in, there’s an unconscious bias about whether we’re credible or capable.”

Olympia Yarger

According to Newsome’s research, women farmers were more likely to engage in sustainable and alternative agriculture practices because these reflect their values. Many of the women that Newsome has surveyed said they try to work in harmony with nature rather than attempting to dominate it, disrupting the traditional, masculine vision of what farming means.

Sustainable agriculture also has lower financial barriers to entry and yields higher-value products that make smaller farms more viable. Women farmers have reduced production costs by replacing machinery and energy consumption with manual labour, which also gave them a sense of empowerment. They’ve avoided the use of fertilisers and pesticides, following the natural cycles of the land instead.

Women have focused on producing high-quality, niche products rather than large-scale production. They’ve found ingenious ways to market their products by building trustworthy relationships with their customers, and continuously adapting to changing trends and demand. They’ve shown farm transparency and accountability through social media posts, photos, and videos at the markets, avoiding the expense of organic certifications.

“I was really surprised to find that women were farming in different ways,” says Newsome. “And those ways were around environmental sustainability and connection to community.”

The (farming) future is female

The environmental destruction caused by the agricultural sector often drives women into farming, particularly those who were not born into this business. The sector is at the same time one of the leading causes of the climate crisis and one of the industries most affected by it.

Government data show that the woody vegetation clearing rate in New South Wales, for example, has doubled in the past decade, and agriculture is responsible for more than half the destruction. Farmed land covers 58% of the country and accounts for 59% of water extraction.

And yet decades of drought across the country, exacerbated by increasing global temperatures, have brought many farmers to the brink.

In the past few years, Australia has seen an increase in demand for alternative, sustainable food. But the big agricultural businesses and major supermarket chains have failed to respond to this demand.

Women have been able to carve a slice of this market with creative, innovative ways to grow crops and farm animals, reducing their farms’ footprint on the environment.

According to Newsome’s research, women farmers were more likely to engage in sustainable and alternative agriculture practices because these reflect their values.

In her 12,000 square-metre warehouse in Hume, on Canberra’s south-eastern fringe, Yarger has created a circular process where food and agricultural waste is converted into high protein livestock feed.

Black soldier flies and mealworm beetle larvae live in growing rooms for 12 days, where they consume waste that Yarger collects from neighbouring businesses. Later, they are moved to the processing room, sifted from the frass (waste byproduct), and washed with water in a large sieve to remove the remaining waste. 

Most larvae are then euthanised with carbon dioxide, dehydrated, and sold as livestock feed. Yarger’s farm produces 1 tonne of livestock feed per week, during which it consumes as much as 40 tonnes of food waste.

Some larvae are left to grow for a few more days until they become pupae. These are moved to the aviaries, large rooms where the flies mate and produce eggs. And the cycle begins again.

“We waste one-third of all the food that we produce, and that creates a lot of methane,” says Yarger. “This is a way to make more with what we have already. It’s exciting. The climate crisis for me is the motivator for being a better farmer.”

Thank you, Cosmos.

“Samantha Watkins Photography”

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