AGFORCE

History of AgForce

In 1997, the Cattlemen's Union of Australia (CU), the Queensland Graingrowers Association (QGGA) and the United Graziers' Association (UGA) each represented their respective members on agripolitical issues.

The three groups had a vision of bringing broadacre producers together into a single, unified association. This organisation is now known as AgForce Queensland.

The merge proposal was put to a vote of the members of all three organisations in June, 1998, with phenomenal results.

Around 94 percent of the UGA members, 92 percent of the QGGA members and 87 percent of the CU members who voted, voted in favour of the merger. The message was resounding: in times of dramatic and rapid change, of market turbulence, of urban population drift, of an ever-decreasing awareness among Australians of the importance and value of the rural sector to the economic and social fabric of the country, what was needed was a single voice. AgForce was born.  

While each of the parent organisations were based around their specific industry commodities, most of the issues and concerns they addressed at members' meetings were common: resource management, land tenure, environmental issues, international competitiveness and withdrawal of rural community services. AgForce continues to address these issues and concerns and has done so on a wider scale since the merger.

Since the overwhelming vote by members for the establishment of AgForce, this new, peak organisation for Queensland's rural producers has come a very long way. AgForce's success has been built on the noted strengths of its predecessor organisations, but it has also embraced many different philosophies in its aim to ensure the long term growth, viability, competitiveness and profitability of broadacre industries in Queensland, both in domestic and international markets.

AgForce is an inclusive organisation, striving always to bring into its membership people outside the traditional ranks of primary producer organisations: more young producers, more women, more rural community businesses and services. As such, AgForce has become an advocate for the broadacre industries of cattle, grain and sheep and wool. As well as the producers who operate across these three commodity groups, AgForce represents their families, their communities and the wider rural sector.

AgForce is in the business of “making a difference” in regional and rural Queensland.

Caption: AgForce immediate past president John Cotter (centre) with past AgForce presidents Larry Acton (left) and Peter Kenny.