VFF president Emma Germano told delegates at the annual conference on July 24 and 25 that there was a need to rationalise the organisation’s operation through spending money on successful advocacy.
The VFF president says the organisation had entered into a point of decline which needed to be addressed to avert a financial and membership crisis.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Emma Germano said the VFF was at risk of entering a crisis phase if changes were not made to how the organisation operated and advocated for farmers.
“It’s about getting to a point of maturity and then getting to a point of decline and then reaching a point that if you don’t do anything in that decline period you enter in a phase of crisis,” she said.
“And arguably the VFF was in decline and what we were staring down the barrel of was potential crisis.”
Ms Germano told the VFF conference on Monday, July 24 that the organisation had maintained a stable amount of debt since 2013 but was facing loan interest bills amounting to half a million dollars in the next few years, as well as paying off $3.4 million of debt.
The VFF has relied on a mixed share portfolio for income as well as rent from Farrer House in Collins St, Melbourne, where the organisation has its headquarters on two of its floors. Part of the share portfolio has been sold to help finance the VFF.
“It was seen as the responsible thing to do to ensure that we were not investing all of our eggs into a volatile share market when we were carrying this high level of debt,” Ms Germano said.
Although Farrer House had increased in value, its rental return has diminished due to an occupancy rate of only 84 per cent and had the added expense of its upkeep.
“We can’t continue to rely purely on the investment income from our building and share portfolio.”
Ms Germano said there was a need to rationalise the organisation’s operation through spending money on successful advocacy, and that past strategies had “not necessarily” been coordinated.
“So we’ve got pretty serious about that as a board and said we have to think about the way we spend our money and the way we do that was to actually get outcomes for our farmers.”
Ms Germano said that when she first became involved in the VFF its membership and finances were in decline, but in the current financial year, which runs to September 30, the organisation was expecting a surplus.
“It’s a hard truth to hear that in regard to our operating results, we are in decline, although we’ve got a lot of substantial growth in our assets.
“We were declining at a membership rate slightly greater than the decline of numbers of farmers across Victoria, and that’s not atypical of an organisation that has existed for some time.
“But we have pulled the purse strings tight, and we are projecting a very modest surplus for this financial year where we thought we were still going to have a deficit.”
“So we’ve got a strong balance sheet, despite losses from 2013 to 2023.”
Ms Germano responded to criticism about the VFF employing half the number of staff than in 2013 by saying that the money spent on staffing had remained stable.
“There are more things about the culture of people we have in the organisation than just the number of people. It’s about how effective they work and how they collaborate.”
A comparison between budgeted and forecasted balance sheets shows a "modest" surplus for the VFF's financial year, which ends on September 30. The organisation still has a $3.4 million debt.
27°C