MATT Linnegar's life and career has straddled the so-called 'city-country' divide and says the agriculture sector needs to rethink its efforts to bridge the gap.
He draws on this experience when he says agriculture needs a whole of industry approach to build familiarity with the city.
"People talk about the city-country divide. Frankly, that is bollocks," Mr Linnagar said last Thursday night, when he spoke at the Farm Writers Association's Agribuzz talk at the flash downtown digs of Colliers International.
Pictured are Rob Cairns, Syngente, Nick Cranna and Alex Thamm, Colliers International. Click on this image to see more photos in our online gallery.
"Do you seriously think there are people here in the city saying 'I don't like people in the country, and what they do?' They are not," the ex-National Farmers Federation (NFF) leader told the crowd of young and old ag professionals.
"By and large urban Australians have a soft spot for rural people and agriculture, but there is a lack of familiarity with what they do.
"We need to understand what drives people in urban areas to get our message across."
Mr Linnegar grew up in Sydney's suburban heartland, in North Ryde, but somewhat unusually he knew, "right from the age of 10", that he wanted to work in agriculture.
He studied agricultural science at high school and went to university to complete a degree in agricultural science.
Mr Linnegar then worked for Rice Growers Association and Murrumbidgee Irrigation before taking the reigns at the NFF.
He soon found himself at the centre of the storm when the then Labor government issued a temporary ban on the export of live cattle in 2011.
By mid-2014, he'd put his feet under the chief executive's desk at the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation.
But Mr Linnegar said the live export incident demonstrated the need to grow goodwill for farmers in the wider community, but warned that individual campaigns from lobbyists would not work.
"Today's live ex ban could be tomorrow's caged eggs, could be the next day's chemicals," he said.
Agriculture needs to "get in in advance" of such concerns so there "is something to fall back on".
Mr Linnegar said agriculture could learn to improve its lobbying from its opponents on the issue of live exports.
"If you want a lesson on how to force change, Animals Australia did a very good job," he said.
"They took a very long-term, strategic approach."
"The cattle industry, when they learnt footage from overseas abattoirs would be released, thought they had been through some similar things previously, and said while it might make a splash it would blow over."
Mr Linnegar said without a concerted effort from industry to engage with the city, "we risk falling further out of mind" and losing community goodwill.
"We haven't been able to throw the resources behind those really important issues with the campaigns that are required.
"It requires a whole of industry approach. It is a not a job for National Australia Bank, or NFF or any individual group.
"We need to build a reservoir of goodwill in the community to such an extent that the next time something like (anti live export campaigns) happens, you are not dropping into a pool of emptiness."