Five generations of farming comes to end after one bad grain deal
April 3, 2016 5:00am
A CENTURY and five generations of farming has come to an abrupt halt with Anthony Fuge. He can’t quite explain the emotions that come with losing the family farm in Forbes.
“The kids will walk away from farming,” Mr Fuge said.
The bank has confiscated his stock and sold his 13,800ha farm.
And it’s not only drought and floods with which modern-day farmers like Mr Fuge, 50, have to deal with.
Banks are just as tough. Commodity prices are cheaper now than they were 30 years ago, and costs keep spiralling upward. If one thing goes wrong, the dominoes can fall.
In Mr Fuge’s case, one bad grain deal tipped the finely-tuned business over the edge, leaving the family $130,000 out of pocket. “It pushed us into default and we didn’t have the money to fight the case,” Mr Fuge said.
But the business was still good. Cropping was, for once, going well post-drought and sheep prices were on the up. The Fuges expected the bank to help them ride it out.
For 18 months the family tried to negotiate with the bank to rewrite the loans, and sought finance elsewhere, but all to no avail. “They just shut the gate on us. I wanted to rewrite the loans, but they just put us in receivership,” Mr Fuge said.
Like many farmers who put the chops on our plates and grain in our bread, he held down a second job to make ends meet.
The Fuges still thought they were in negotiations last month when the bank foreclosed. Last month, Mr Fuge noticed a drone flying around on his property. The following night they got notice that stock agents acting on behalf of the receivers were coming to load Mr Fuge’s flock of 2100 sheep. Eight sheep died while loading in 35-degree temperatures.
That incident is currently being investigated by the RSPCA.
The farm was sold for half of what it was worth on the open market.
“It was just a bloody joke. They are cruel and they just don’t care,” Mr Fuge said.
His parents Elva and Rex Fuge only just hung on during the Keating years in the 1980s when interest rates went up to 22.5 per cent.
“We very nearly lost everything, we dodged a bullet that time, but they got us fair and square this time,” Elva Fuge, 78, said.
Rex Fuge, 84, who began farming with his father at age 13 during World War II, said he was devastated to see the family tradition come to this end.
Sydney lawyer Peter King said this case is not unusual. He has called for a Royal Commission into banking behaviour towards farmers since the global financial crisis in 2009.
According to the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, more than 10,000 farmers have either left the land or consolidated with other farms since 2010.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said he had great empathy with farmers and that bank debt was one of the great stressors.
A spokesman for the Commonwealth Bank said they had entered into a farm debt mediation process and an agreement was made which, they allege, the Fuge family did not follow through with.
“Commonwealth Bank always seeks to engage customers early to discuss options and to work through any financial difficulties that may arise in meeting their obligations,” he said. “We have been working closely and cooperatively with this customer for an extended period of time including reaching an agreement through independent mediation to repay outstanding obligations.”