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Bianca Tarrant, a New South Wales farmer and butcher, shared with Today how tariffs have influenced Australian producers.
“Our business focuses on the domestic market, aiming to keep high-quality Australian produce within the country, so the Trump tariffs haven’t significantly impacted us,” Tarrant explained.
However, she added, “These tariffs do have a substantial ripple effect when it comes to the buying and selling of livestock in Australia.”
“Farming is a long-term commitment,” she continued. “It’s not a quick job to produce food, whether it’s beef, pork, lamb, or vegetables.”
“The process requires a lot of time—months, even years of planning,” Tarrant concluded.
Tarrant said “knee-jerk reactions” in overseas markets made it difficult for farmers to plan ahead.
“It brings a lot of uncertainty to what we do every day,’ she said.
“Although you wouldn’t think that buying your meat from the supermarket is impacted by what’s going on overseas, it really does impact us and has a long flow-on effect of the decisions that we’re able to make as farmers.
“I think we’ve seen a lot of pressure come through almost two years when we had the supermarket price gouging situation going on.
“Farmers started to feel a lot of pressure since then, the farm gate pricing is already quite tight.
“As a farmer, you are really dictated by other markets, you don’t get to set your price or know what you’re going to be paid for your produce.
“The long-term impacts of this, it does squeeze farm gate pricing even further.Â
“Farmers are some of the very few business people that are on such thin margins.”
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