As the Sydney Royal Easter Show begins to draw to a close for another year, it’s evident through our continued engagement with farming families over the past two weeks, how much the continuing drought has affected the mentalities and livelihoods of these individuals.
Katie from Northern Victoria, who was showing heifers at the show this year, said that her family “made the decision to move to southwest Victoria in December last year” because of exorbitant water prices. She was emotional when explaining about the financial hardship that the “terrible milk prices” have caused her family.
Brooke chatting with Katie in the Cattle Pavilion
Melissa, an alpaca farmer from Menai in Sydney’s southwest, said that her farm “had to reduce the numbers of stock, sell about half of the animals off just to try and be able to feed what we had left with our breeding stock”.
The Royal Agricultural Society has seen a drop in the number of livestock competing in the agricultural sector of the animal judging competitions. Despite this, these competitions provide a sense of community.
Katie said the unity that an event like this provides, enables like-minded agricultural families to “all hang out and try to remember the positives of the industry”.
Dana and Brooke headed out to ‘pay it forward’ and give back to these farmers who provide for so many of us on a daily basis. They did this, one cheese toastie at a time. #cheeseforchange #payitforward
Check out the video posted on our Show Radio Facebook Page:
