FARMERS say agriculture had missed out on its fair share of stimulus funding in this year's Queensland Budget, saying it was needed to address critical competitiveness and productivity issues and progress growth initiatives.
Queensland Farmers' Federation chief executive officer Travis Tobin said obvious and overdue funding measures that were missing included abolishing stamp duty on agricultural insurance, backing for the holistic industry-led schools engagement program and better addressing electricity and water affordability.
"At all levels of government, our sector seems to continually suffer from a trade-off with the funding received between support and necessity spending and genuine levels of investment in some of the competitiveness and profitability challenges that we must address to drive the sector forward," he said.
Mr Tobin said the government needed to demonstrate a more strategic intent towards agriculture. The lack of long term, targeted stimulus-type spending was starting to show as the sector continued to lose value, he said.
Mr Tobin said without more targeted and deliberate action from government, agriculture would not fully capitalise on the exciting opportunities that were unquestionably there.
