“You Haven’t Been Paid Until The Money Is In The Bank”
Fiona Williamson-Aveyard is a fifth-generation sheep farmer from NSW’s central west, who says that caution is inbuilt when you live off the land. She tells us about surviving drought and the best thing she ever spent money on.
What did you learn about money from your family?
Farmers are generally conservative when it comes to money. Most of us only get paid once or twice a year, when the wool cheque or the wheat cheque comes in, so budgeting and caution is inbuilt. The most important thing I learnt from my father was, you haven’t been paid until the money is in the bank. When selling commodities there is enormous risk, so when the money hits the account it’s a good day.
How do you think about money now?
Modern farmers are less risk averse than previous generations, and for good reason – back in the ’80s they were paying 18 per cent interest! Cheaper interest rates have allowed us to borrow money in order to grow our businesses and the increases this has generated in our productivity has meant we can stay in the game.
Tell us about a bad money habit you’ve beaten or a good money habit you’ve learnt?
My “she’ll be right” attitude was sorely tested during the drought when we had very little income and a lot of expenses.
What’s the one work purchase you’d make if you had the money?
I’d build a micro-abattoir on-farm. It would mean less food miles and give us greater control over the entire process. We have a focus on nose-to-tail consumption and full utilisation of the animal. It’s our plan to build an entirely circular facility where power is solar and any waste is converted to fertiliser.
What’s the one personal purchase you’d make if you had the money?
It’s my quest in life to become a minimalist, so I can genuinely say there is nothing I need. I would hope if I had money to spare that I wouldn’t buy a thing for myself, although if I’m being perfectly honest, and if there was a lot of money, I’d buy myself quite a nice car.
Describe a difficult financial moment and how you managed that.
Ugh. The drought. I can’t explain to people who don’t rely on the weather how severely an extended dry period of three to four years impacts your finances. Our difficulty was further compounded by the royal commission into banking [December 2017-Febraury 2019] which slowed down the entire process of accessing credit. We kept an open line of communication with our bank and our creditors and muddled our way through. We got there in the end but it was arduous. Luckily it finally did rain, but it doesn’t rain dollars. You’ve still got to plant and harvest a crop or wait for stock to fatten before the money starts to flow again.
If you ran the country, what would be your budget priorities?
Farmers would absolutely be my priority. By providing the caretakers of the land with the proper incentives, it would be easier to address the two big issues that the world faces: climate change and food security.
What worries you most about your financial future?
There’s a lot of uncertainty around exports and we’ve seen the impact of that with escalating tensions with China. Australia is a massive over-producer of food and fibre so we rely heavily on exports to make a return. Conventional agricultural production is a high-input, high-production, low-margin operation. I don’t like this model for a lot of reasons and question its long-term impact on soil health and human nutrition. This is why we are developing a vertical aspect to our farming operation, a value-add operation called Outback Lamb where we make lamb pies and sausage rolls using our single origin lamb. In essence, we want to produce less lamb but get paid more for what we do produce. Value-adding and manufacturing is crucial to Australian agriculture’s future.
What’s one thing you spent a lot of money on that you don’t regret?
The property that joins us. It was a good price but the timing was bad, and we needed to borrow all of the money to get it. We weren’t keen to go deeper into debt but we did. We’ve since made great improvements to the property and it’s certainly paid for itself and increased in value.
Interview_Ute Junker
Photos_ Supplied