Love is…travelling 1000kms to help your son’s business

FROM Rockhampton to Adelaide Kevin and Marie Ford spent days travelling across the country to inspect hay during the early days of their son's feed business.

TRUE FOUNDATIONS: By naming the new Feed Central quality testing facility after his parents, Marie and Kevin Ford (above), managing director Tim Ford has ensured workers know where the pioneering company was started.

FROM Rockhampton to Adelaide, Kevin and Marie Ford spent days travelling across the land to inspect hay during the early days of Feed Central.

It wasn't a paid job but it was a labour of love.

They did the work voluntarily to help their son, Tim, as he was establishing the national hay marketing business but it didn't really seem like work.

"We were enjoying ourselves," Kevin said. "I'd retired from a job as a groundsman at one of the schools in Toowoomba and I was doing something close to my heart.

"I was rural again. Marie and I are both country people; we still are even though we're living in town now."

Kevin, 81 and Marie, 74, were honoured last week for their volunteer help in establishing Feed Central, which is naming its new quality assurance centre in their honour.

Queensland Agriculture Minister Dr John McVeigh and Cr Geoff McDonald from Toowoomba Regional Council performed the official opening of the centre and Feed Central's new feed testing service.

The new facilities in Toowoomba provide the only place in Australia where growers can get visual assessment and grading of their hay and grain, plus feed testing services within a 24-hour turnaround.

The new services will help farmers to improve their farm feeding efficiency.

The Fords have a long connection to the land.

Originally sheep and wheat farmers in northern Victoria, they moved in 1986 to Queensland and ran sheep and cropping farms near Roma.

They later retired to Toowoomba but their love of the land, agriculture and Australia's wide open spaces never deserted them. The chance to help Tim and reconnect with the rural lifestyle led the Fords to travel far and wide.

"It was a bit of an adventure," Kevin said.

"We both love travelling Australia and still do…the countryside, the animals, seeing good stock, good crops. "Being off the land we had quite a rapport with most of the people we visited."

Over the years Kevin had developed an intimate knowledge of farming and hay making, much of which he passed on to Tim.

"We'd always made pasture hay and considered it a necessity to conserve fodder," he said.

"My father had a man from Denmark working for him and he told Dad that in Denmark they'd make spare grass into hay. So they started making hay, cutting it with a scythe.

"I always had that interest in hay and, when Tim started Feed Central, we channelled that interest into helping him get established."

The on-site inspection of hay was a big part of the business in those early days. "We did a lot of travelling," Kevin said.

"We'd travel almost from Rockhampton to Adelaide inspecting hay."

He would visually inspect the hay and gather samples to post back to the laboratory in Toowoomba for analysis.

Kevin said the process involved visual inspection, weighing random bales, taking up to 20 samples and doing core samples that were sent to Toowoomba for analysis.

"I felt that I understood hay. You get a fair idea by looking at it. Mostly a good looking stack of hay was where the better quality hay was," he said.

Technologies have improved in the past 15 years, including Feed Central's new Australian-first 24-hour turnaround feed testing service.

Back when Kevin and Marie started helping there was no GPS but that didn't stop them.

"We'd describe the hay as being so far from somewhere," Kevin said.

"It was harder to give an accurate distance as far as cartage was concerned. When they got the GPS, the quoting became very accurate."

The hours were long but enjoyable.

"We loved the driving," Kevin said. "We saw a lot of excellent country that you don't see on the highway. The main highways are made on good road-building country, not good farming country."

Even today they like to visit friends in northern Victoria.

"It never becomes boring," Kevin said. "We look for a different way to go, even if it means a day or two extra to get there."

Kevin and Marie approached the naming of the centre with typical country humility but admit they were touched by the gesture.

"We'll get a buzz out of it. It's quite an honour," Kevin said.

Along with their volunteer work, Feed Central managing director Tim Ford inherited a love of agriculture and rural people from his parents and wanted to repay that influence with a lasting gesture in their honour.

Mr Ford said he wanted to ensure future generations appreciated the family sacrifices that went into making a successful business. Feed Central started in an internet café in Margaret St, Toowoomba, before moving to Mr Ford's home and eventually a rented office and now a more substantial headquarters on the outskirts of Toowoomba.

"Mum and Dad got involved from the start and supported us by working for no financial return to do visual on-farm inspections of hay," Mr Ford said.

"Without that visual description of hay, you cannot trade hay over the telephone let alone over the internet like we do today," he added.

Mr Ford said it was important that his staff and children knew the history of the company and were reminded of the family sacrifice that came with establishing and running a business.

"There are a lot of values in relation to family, hard work, discipline and dedication that you want to build a business on," he said.

"Mum and Dad are both great people people and Dad has an intimate knowledge of all the major agricultural regions from one end of the country to the other; the climactic variations between the north and south, the seasonal differences and the timing of harvests.

"I've inherited a lot of that, plus a love of the bush, love of the land, rural people and agriculture."

Feed Central operates across Australia and has 20 staff and 20 contractors.

It markets more than 100,000 tonnes of quality- assured hay a year, with offices and replica Feed Testing services in Toowoomba in Queensland and Shepparton in Victoria.

"We've got quality systems, quality assurance services and experts available, but at the same time we don't want to forget the story of the family side of it and the deep connection to rural Australia and the hard work and dedication that got us started," Mr Ford said.