Dear son,
This is a hard letter to
write. You see, this is the letter where
I admit that I was wrong. I am going to spend the next 18 years telling
you that I know what I am doing. I am
going to say that you should listen to my advice. Yet here you are, barely 4 months old, and I
am telling you that I was wrong.
I was wrong to become a farmer.
Lots of wise friends told me not
to do it, I even went against what my father believed I should do. Your granddad is a former farmer you see, but
I thought I knew better. I thought they
were telling me not to do it because of the work involved, the hours. I thought they were advising me against the
cycle of taking all of your time and money each year and putting it on the
roulette wheel of price and weather, and praying that both come up together. Not
me! I thought I could handle the work,
the hours I could deal with, and maybe a new business model would take me out
of the pure commodity game that is just a race to the bottom. I figured that it would be satisfying to
raise animals and grow things in a way that I could be proud to show the world,
that at the end of the day I would feel tired but rewarded.
But none of my sage advisers told
me the fundamental truth: as a farmer, you are a government worker, and an
unpaid one at that. If they had, perhaps
I would have avoided this mistake.
It starts out easily enough, a registration
form here, another one there. After all,
to get your business up and running you must make sure you have all your
paperwork ducks in a row. But it soon
spirals out of control, and in no time at all you are spending hours over a
form trying to understand what this new government department wants from you,
while your farm chores sit undone outside the window. I have seen them all, son, from the
reasonable forms relating to firearms to the ones asking me to show evidence of
our working dog’s training program. I
had no idea the Australia Taxation Office employed dog training experts, but
you learn something new every day when you work for the government.
In the last year alone I have
dealt with bureaucrats from no less than 8 government departments at local,
State and Federal level. I have spent
countless hours filling out forms, trying to do things online to make them
easier (it doesn’t), and responding to the inane requests.
“Show that you have a reasonable
expectation of profit.”
“Please provide your business plan,
last 3 years’ tax returns and financial statements.”
“How is your livestock business
different from a hobby farm?”
Lucky your dear Dad is a former
accountant and he can field this sort of thing, but I feel sorry for all of the
kids the politicians try to encourage into agriculture, walking them right into
the clammy claws of the bureaucracy. The
poor kids haven’t got a hope in hell, but I guess it makes for a good soundbite
on the TV.
Farming isn’t easy, and some days
feel harder than others. Burying an
animal that died because of something you did (or didn’t do) feels like the
worst feeling in the world, but there are days where you can feel genuine pride
at what you have grown and achieved. Acting
as a steward of the land is one of life’s noblest callings. Unfortunately those good days are fewer and
fewer as your volunteer job looking after the bureaucrats takes over your
working life. And at the end of the
year, if you were lucky enough to snatch enough time on the farm to make a
profit, your taxes will pay their salaries.
Now don’t take this letter to mean
that I regret my decision to become a farmer.
The only time you should regret a decision, even a wrong one, is if when
you can’t learn anything from it. And
too often that just means you aren’t looking hard enough. No, I don’t regret it, it is my choice and I’ll
be damned if I will let the bureaucratic monolith make me abandon it.
But I will leave you with this bit
of advice my son: when you grow up, don’t do what I did and ignore your dear
old Dad. Don’t become a farmer. Go get a job with the Australian Taxation
Office. Yes you will lose your soul,
spending your remaining days filling out endless reams of paperwork. But at least you will be getting paid for it.
