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In response to many false claims we would like to reveal the main Network of Concerned Farmers costs and who funds these:
Main donors: Network of Concerned Farmers members fund many of our costs ourselves and donate our time.
Major donor: A recent generous donation of $10,000 from a large farmer, Pierre Abrezol of F Westphal Nominees Pty Ltd, will help significantly with costs - this donation will be put towards all future costs including legal fees. Pierre is establishing a large area in Victoria to organic farming and has serious concerns with the threat to his farms if GM canola is introduced. Thank you sincerely Pierre, your donation is greatly appreciated.
Research time: We have volunteered our time to spend many many thousands of hours of research in order to educate farmers and the public on the real issues surrounding GM crops. This referenced and now freely available research has enabled the debate in Australia to be centred on what the real issues are and to help expose misleading statements. Personally, this has amounted to more than a full time job (8-12hrs/day) for myself alone for well over 2 years, not only researching but coordinating research from others. As we are all active in the agricultural industry, this has taken considerable toll on our own personal lives and business activities. We are not and do not expect to be compensated for this.
Website: I personally update the information on our website almost daily and the cost of this is usually only in time which I am not compensated for. I have entered over 1500 articles and 100 news stories on the site and send out newsletters regularly (here). It takes considerable time to do this, particularly to prepare the research articles. I recently paid $590 myself for website updates...hopefully you appreciated changes which included the new news search engine.
Nick Haase from www.nick.net.au set up the original framework of our website funded by a donation of $3,500 from George Kailis, a good friend of mine and a farmer/businessman from WA . Some of these funds were used to set up the website, the other towards Percy Schmeisers tour. After seeing just how much information I had available on this topic, George suggested a website. As we had no bank account at this early stage, George arranged this funding via Greenpeace (he was away at the time) and Greenpeace paid and was reimbursed by our donor. (This issue of course, has been blown out of all proportion by the farm lobby groups who themselves receive significant funding by Monsanto and Bayer Cropscience for conferences.) Nick prepared the skeleton framework of the website with information George and I provided. George Kailis also directly funded 2 uni students, Jessica Scott and Alexis Anderson to come to Newdegate for a week to help file notes and isolate critical quotes to be used in preparation for the original website articles (eg. Law). Thank you to my good friend and supporter George Kailis.
Press releases: We do our own press releases and send them out ourselves at our own cost (here). We appreciate other organisations who have forwarded our press releases on to their regular contacts as it helps distribute the information we want distributed (eg. Genethics, GE-Free Victoria). Usually, press releases are only sent to a small media group and mainly involve time to send out by my own fax or email, but the latest large press release cost me $211.42 via an agency because I was in Sydney at the time. I was not reimbursed by anyone.
Travel: We fund our own travel and are sometimes reimbursed. The most expensive travel costs would be for myself to drive to Perth (over 400km) then fly from WA to the east fairly regularly. Quite often a farmer/concerned citizen will send a donation to us personally towards costs (without our asking) and this triggers approval for trips which we may have been restricted from attending without assistance. I book the cheapest flights and fund these and my accommodation, taxi fares, airport parking etc myself and funding is sometimes received to compensate for some of these costs. ABC Landline funded one of my trips and Bayer Cropscience paid for my flights for one meeting in Canberra (for which we were very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss our issues). I am very grateful to John Budge who generously donated money to cover two trips east and to a group of farmers from Fitzgerald who donated money to cover costs of one flight to north WA for a debate. My sister Vicki Wilson and Joy Chambers' family (Victorian farmers) generously helped fund a trip to Victoria to host a hypothetical style meeting. All other trips I paid for. Juliet McFarlane would face the next most expensive costs as she often attends meetings in Sydney or Canberra and two close friends have generously contributed towards some of her costs. Geoffrey Caracher attends meeting regularly in Victoria and has recently funded his own trip to WA to help out during the Newdegate Field Day. Scott Kinnear has been involved on behalf of the organics industry for many years and usually funds his own travel. Sometimes members are reimbursed by conference organisers to cover some costs, for example Pennie Scott attended a conference in Queensland and costs were paid.
Usually trips are worthwhile but sometimes they are a waste of money and valuable time. For example, I flew to Melbourne for a half hour meeting to present our case to the independent person charged with advising the Victorian Government. This cost myself over $1,000 and 3 days travel and cost about $300 and over a day for Geoffrey Carracher from Victoria. Our main issue was that the GTGC prepared coexistence principles were based around definitions that were illegal. "Non-GM" and "GM-free" legally means no GM, not the 0.9% contamination claimed as acceptable by the GM industry. We quoted the ACCC and an independent lawyers advise, but this was ignored. Despite our evidence, the committee advised the Victorian government that 0.9% contamination was accepted in Non-GM and GM-free crops when that would be a breach of the Trade Practices Act. Thankfully, the Victorian government was aware of the discrepency. The advisor did however acknowledge that prior to commercial release risks needed to be managed without impacting on the non-GM grower.
Contact: We constantly keep in touch by email and are included in many email groups both nationally and internationally.We regularly contact active members within the Network by phone and our phone bills have risen significantly since this debate. We are also regularly in touch with other oganisations for/against or involved in the GM debate in any way. Occasionally we are invited to join phone link ups with other organisations which is effective to ensure we are sharing our research on Acts, scientific reports, alternatives to GM etc. Although my own phone account is over $3,000/quarter, we fund our own phone calls and don't expect anyone else to.
Printing: When we attend meetings, we distribute printed material and we pay for these ourselves. We encourage other organisations to use our material as they feel fit as this helps our information be distributed. I pay our local telecentre to do more complex printing (eg colour overheads, business cards or pamphlets) in order to promote local industry and the last statement I received was for $532.50. We have not yet received the invoice for printing our flyers but the original quote was for around $800.
Banner: A shire in Victoria donated $1,000 and we purchased a banner to be used for presentations. (See here)
Tours: We have arranged 2 tours and full details of the many sponsors were revealed on the brochures distributed, tour speakers were not paid and costs covered expenses only. (here) Some donors (particularly farmers) were not listed as many donations were received during the tour or did not want recognition. For example, I was $600 short for flights and this was mentioned in conversation at a dinner at Hyden WA in front of a few farmers. Embarrassingly all farmers were shocked to hear I was paying to do a non-paying speaking tour to help farmers understand our issues and they all emptied their wallets to help. Those few farmers donated $680 between them without hesitation and not wanting recognition for it. Speakers arranged sponsorship from many sources to fund these tours as costs were beyond our reach. Accomodation was generously provided by many farmers during these tours.
Field Day: In September 2004 we had a stand at the Newdegate (WA) Field Day to collect surveys. (Over 14,500 people attended this field day). Geoffrey Carracher (Victoria) and myself spent 2 days collecting surveys which showed unanimous support for risk management. The booking was reimbursed by Glen Garard, a farmer from Hyden.
Advertisements:We lodged 2 full page advertisements, one in NSW and one in Victoria titled "Don't let your GM-free status be blown away" (here). While some with expertise in coordination and advertising donated in-kind support (eg. the organics industry), most funding was from farmers and paddock to plate supply chain participants faced with unmanageable problems and reduction in choices (mainly Twynhams Pastoral Company and network members and friends). Payment was made by Network members and reimbursed from donations. We would have preferred to lodge advertisements in all papers particularly media that have given the debate the most coverage, but due to the expense we allowed the main donors to decide which newspapers to advertise in.
We have been running a small advertising campaign in each state to advertise our website. Funding from Pierre Abrezol of F Westphal Nominees Pty Ltd has been used for these.
Economic Critique: Sponsored by Twynam Agricultural Group and individuals within the Network of Concerned Farmers. (here)
Survey of Victorian Farmers: The survey, was commissioned by Doug Shears from ICM Agribusiness in consultation with the Network of Concerned Farmers. (here)
Legal advice: We would like to thank the lawyers who have worked in a pro-bono fashion in order to give us legal advice and to those individual concerned farmers, supply chain participants and consumers who have paid for legal fees to date, (individual donors include George Kailis). We see legal fees as being our main cost in the future if GM commercial crops are introduced. The recommended cases would be to ensure compensation is paid to those suffering economic loss: against the GM farmers as per recommended "common law" remedies; against governments/ industry if ignoring the legal definition of "non-GM" or "GM-free" which means NO contamination when the GM industry is claiming up to 0.9% contamination is acceptable; and an expensive long term class action proposed against Monsanto and Bayer Cropscience. If required, we have significant pledges to cover some of these fees already and welcome more - hopefully these fees will not be necessary if liability is addressed adequately by governments and industry.
Greenpeace connection?: Many rumours have been circulating regarding our supposed links with Greenpeace and it appeared to stem from Agrifood Awareness who have been known to state that I am personally funded by Greenpeace at meetings with influential farm lobby groups in an attempt to supposedly discredit our debate with farmers. After a threat of legal action, this appeared to stop but not before many took Paula Fitzgerald's word as fact rather than fiction. Interestingly farmers are the main contributors to the GRDC funding of Agrifood Awareness that amounts to $100,000/year to supposedly supply "factual" advise regarding GM crops.
As individuals, some of us had been networking, speaking publically, lobbying parliament, preparing submissions, submitting website articles to a number of sites and writing letters to the editors well before Greenpeace had started their campaign on GM crops in Australia. Juliet McFarlane has been involved with the Gene Technology Community Consultative Committee since its inception. Scott Kinnear has been campaigning on behalf of the organics industry for many years. I was contacted by John Hepburn on his first day of work as the first Australian Greenpeace anti-GM campaigner after he had heard me on Radio National. I proceeded to treat him with the caution expected when a farmer hears from Greenpeace but have since been very impressed at the amount of work Greenpeace put in to ensure their research is accurate and thorough. Greenpeace is a very powerful lobbying group and farmers are very appreciative of the huge effort they have gone to in order to give the farmer side of the debate (not just the consumer angle) to those they lobby . We access our information from various sources and we do trade research and information to stop duplication of efforts. Greenpeace do their thing and the Network does ours and we are appreciative that our research is being used by all groups, some more skilled at lobbying than we are. As openly revealed in the brochures circulated at the time, Greenpeace was one of the many sponsors for our tours. Even if approached, it is unlikely that Greenpeace would approve funding the Network for our activities when we sometimes have opposing views (eg. we support well contained performance trials and Greenpeace does not). On a lighter note, my husband is not concerned if Greenpeace does decide to pay some costs because it will mean he will not have to, but the NCF prefer to remain independent of Greenpeace.
Our bond with others in this debate is best summed up by Dr Mae Won Ho:
"There is no "anti-GM brigade". There are ordinary citizens angry at the lies they've been told, and the undemocratic way in which GM crops are foisted on them."At no time has the Network of Concerned Farmers been influenced or intend to be influenced in deviating from our role to provide protection to farmers by our source of funding.
At no time has funding covered more than costs and we have not undertaken a concerted effort to raise funding.
A sincere thank you to those that have contributed to funding our costs or have helped in any way. If you would like to be individually recognised for your donation, please contact me and I will list specific individual or company details and exact amounts donated. If you wish to help, please access "help fund our costs" on the top of the main page. Thank you.
Membership:
We are what we say we are, a network of concerned farmers. We represent farmers with concerns and polls show the majority of farmers have concerns. We are an alliance of farmers that have a common interest in sharing information, explaining what our concerns are and taking action to address the problems identified. We have taken the effort to sift out which concerns are valid and which are not and if there is a resolvable solution in the debate.
We have no aim to compete with other farm organisations as many of us are members of these other farm organisations. For example, I am the vice president of WAFarmers Federation Grains Council and do not want a conflict of interest and hence have almost identical policies. We are very aware that there is insufficient time or resources within these organisations to deal with this complex isolated issue to the depth required.
As there is little to be gained out of starting yet another formal farm lobby group, we do not set fees to join and do not chase membership. Our group is based on being an alliance of farmers that share research and a few of these farmers are prepared to stand up as spokespeople against well paid proponents of the technology to debate the real issues on behalf of concerned farmers.
We named ourselves the Network of Concerned Farmers in June 2002 to give a united, more organised voice. We are not professionally trained lobbyists, we are farmers that research and share our information. We are farmers that would prefer to debate the facts rather than allow this critical issue to be pushed aside by allowing those with vested interests to discredit our efforts with personal attacks in order to prevent the problems being resolved fairly. We have been effective because we have exposed misleading statements that have been unfairly influential.
We are prepared to invest time, effort and money in the short term in order to prevent long term economic loss. We are prepared to put up with personal criticism in order to do so as we are aware that it takes time and persistence to counter a well funded and often misleading pro-GM promotion campaign.
We do have a vested interest, it is in protecting the long term sustainability of our own industry. We have no other motive!
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