Victorian Farmers Federation: Annual report shows hit to membership

The Victorian Farmers Federation has recorded a significant drop in membership during the last two years. See all the details.

Victorian farmers are battling to be heard as their peak farm lobby cuts staff and sells off assets to survive. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

The Victorian Farmers Federation has lost 1011 members in just two years amid ongoing tensions between its board and dairy, grains and livestock commodity groups.

The latest annual 2022-23 VFF annual report, lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission this month, states it had “3835 current ordinary members” on September 30 this year, compared to 4846 on the same date in 2021.

Over the same period membership income, in the form of farmer subscriptions, levies and industrial relations services and handbook sales, has dropped $526,000 to $3.12 million.

Victorian Farmers Federation independently audited annual report extracts: 2021 versus 2023

The VFF board responded to the loss of income by selling off the Grains Group’s $9.4 million deed poll earlier this year, to curb the federation’s year-on-year borrowings from $8.1m to $3.58m and lift its banked cash from $502,360 to $2.4m.

Another $1m of deed poll dividends and gains were used to prop up the VFF’s 2022-23 operating income.

The asset sale allowed the board to drag the VFF out of a $927,757 deficit in 2021-22 to $404,495 operating surplus in 2022-23.

Cuts to staff within the VFF’s dairy, grains and livestock groups, as well as to members of its policy team, were also evidenced in the financials, which showed employee costs fell from $3.863m in 2021-22 to $2.95m in 2022-23 – a $913,00 saving. Yet at the same time a line item called “outsourced services” jumped from $131,596 in 2021-22 to $345,285.

The annual report also showed elected representatives’ fees and stipends were cut from $518,758 in 2021-22 to $425,610, but conference costs rose over the same period from $12,931 to $116,086.

The VFF has also been steadily cutting back its affiliation fees to national peak commodity groups, from $828,467 in 2019-20 to $657,700 in 2022-23.

The VFF owes the Australian Dairy Farmers peak body at least $344,000 in unpaid subscriptions, but has refused to pay, arguing Victorian dairy farmers were not getting value for money.

ADF president Ben Bennett met the VFF board last week to try and resolve the issue, which he said was still being negotiated.

Meanwhile, VFF grain grower members lost their Federal Court bid last week to call an extraordinary general meeting to allow members to vote on ousting Victorian Farmers Federation president Emma Germano and vice-president Danyel Cucinotta.

The court ruled against the growers, led by former VFF Grains Group presidents Andrew Weidemann, Brett Hosking and Ashley Fraser, who had gathered the signatures of 225 farmers calling for an EGM.

The decision comes despite the VFF Constitution requiring just 100 members to call an EGM.

However in a major rewrite of the constitution the board has proposed changing the 100 member threshold to 5 per cent of members, along with a raft of other reforms that centralise its control over commodity groups, branches and presidents.

In a statement, the VFF said it welcomed “the Federal Court of Australia’s overwhelming vote of confidence in the VFF’s governance processes following the recent ruling to side with the organisation”.
“After months of distractions and considerable resource allocations that have diverted attention away from the real matters concerning the vast majority of Victorian famers, we now hope to be able to solely focus on standing up for farmers on the issues that matter most,” it said.