so I wanted I told you I said take copious notes and we'll have you on the show and just talk about what is it like to go through that experience and let's start you what was the drive time for you from home to get to Bethpage State Park

oh man well I mean first of all this was like This was one of my lore trips, right? I came into golf so much later than a lot of you guys that I played with, too.

I didn't start playing until my late 20s.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

When I first started paying attention to it, the first golf tournament I really paid attention to was the U.S. Open with Tiger and Rocco.

and 2008 so it's like that's tory pines yeah and then they talk all about the dawn patrol and everybody there and then 2009 they go to beth page so it's like east coast version of that and camp out and go play it and you know i think that was lucas glover that won that one um but so right away like as i started to really care about and want to play golf i was like man the u.s open to this day i still love it falls on father's day my birthday lines up with it a lot of times so Between that, this venue was always something I wanted to go and get to.

the bakery tickets,

This has been an issue for years and it's getting worse.

Yeah, as there's more closure of truck washes around with the closure of sale yards, like I said earlier, it's been identified through two pieces of work, research work that's been done and been funded by the compensation funds, which is producer money, to look at where those gaps in the system are.

So it's been identified around the fringes of Melbourne and also our regional sale yards and truck wash facilities have are becoming under more pressure and there's an opportunity there for an upgrade of those facilities and we've seen in New South Wales there was a grant program from the New South Wales government and federal government that actually helped upgrade some of those facilities and we'd like to see that across Victoria as well.

looking for? What kind of commitment?

The numbers that have come out of the latest truck wash report are looking at about $8 million for a grant system to upgrade regional truck washes right around the state and actually put in some effluent dumps.

So we've started capturing effluent off our livestock on the trucks themselves, but we haven't put the infrastructure in to be able to get rid of this effluent.

So we're finding that, you know, we're having operators, unfortunately, pulling up on the side of the road or in truck stops and emptying their tanks.

And, you know, that's not good for the environment and it's not good for our biosecurity either.

It's getting harder to predict under climate change, and while there's nothing Scott can do to change the forecast, it would help if the predictions were more accurate.

I'm yet to see any huge improvement in weather modeling at the moment, and if there was some quantum science way of being able to do that, that would be fantastic.

I've got seven weather apps on my phone that I [laughs] that I look at.

Seven? You've got seven apps? [laughs]

Yeah, for sure.

I look through them all and try and find the one that's gonna give me the weather forecast that I really want.

[laughs]

So that sounds like a pretty big blind spot.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of growers out there now that take direct contracts out with processors or have relationships with processors and also our agents that have really good relationships obviously with the processors.

And I sell majority of my stock over the hooks as well.

And I can weigh stock on farm and estimate their yield and understand what I'm going to get for those livestock pretty close when they go through that processing system.

So, you know, this might just give us as farmers an opportunity for those who haven't got those direct relationships with processors or want to know what the market's doing out there at any one time to see a bigger picture of what's happening.

But is it sort of a lot more secretive when it comes to the over-the-hooks pricing?

A little bit more so, I think.

You know, the agents seem to have a pretty good understanding of of what's happening over the hooks, especially with the processors that they're partnered with.

He's also vice president of the VFF

now.

Yeah, so this is a national transaction levy, which is slightly different to our state-based levy.

And out of this national levy, there's $5, and of that $5, $0.13 goes to Animal Health Australia, $0.29 goes to National Residue Testing, $3.66 to marketing and 92 cents to research and development.

Is the VFF Livestock Group going to make a submission to this review?

Yeah, the VFF will, the livestock group, definitely be making a submission in there and I would encourage any farmers and especially our members who would like to have some input into this, whether it be through the VFF as part of our submission or whether they need assistance to put their own submission in to get in contact with us and we're more than happy to help them with their submission.

But definitely we want to ensure that we're going to continue to get some really good outcomes for farmers out of the MLA.

And, you know, also the support for Animal Health Australia and the national residue testing, which are really important pieces out of this to ensure the security of our industry.