The fourth-generation farmer Mick Robertson has not seen dairy cows at Ravenscroft, the family farm in Tanjil South, eastern Victoria, since 1974. “Not since I was a kid,” he says, although there is still an old dairy on the property. “It had machines that have long been superseded,” he says.
Originally 600 acres (243 hectares), the now-subdivided farm is now owned by his mother, Gwen, 98, with sections tended by Robertson and his sister Marg, and some leased to a neighbouring cousin who grazes beef. With six siblings, the family has the benefit of off-farm incomes and prospects for succession. “I’m hoping one of my nephews or my niece will buy the farm,” Robertson says. Now retired from his teaching career, Robertson is all-in on shepherding the multigenerational transition from working dairy farm to a combination of forestry, tourism, cut flower crops and rewilding some areas.
The shift began well before the dairy sector faced deregulation, price wars, instability and other ongoing crises. “Our family was protected by far-sighted parents,” Robertston says.
Squeezed by rapacious market systems that compel them to price down and scale up (average herd sizes have more than tripled from 93 to 342 cows since 1980, according to Dairy Australia), dairy farmers endure long hours, chronic stress and high rates of mental illness.
And although Australian dairy production remains relatively inexpensive by world standards, farmers have felt the pressure of increasingly rising operating costs, according to a recent report by Rabobank.
Succession has become a problem, as kids who grow up on dairy farms are increasingly wary of taking on the burden. “Dairy farmers identified climatic conditions, higher input costs, workforce constraints and a lower farmgate milk price this season as four challenges impacting their farm business,” Dairy Australia says in a statement to Guardian Australia. Global heating, fickle domestic milk consumption, volatile export volumes and lower farmgate prices are reducing profitability certainty for smaller farmers, who also face the challenges of modern regulations and growing animal welfare and environmental concerns.
Consequently, many traditional dairy farmers are selling up: Dairy Australia estimates that since 1980, farm numbers have plummeted from 21,989 to 3,889. “Whilst farm numbers have declined since the 1990s, Australia’s milk production has increased,” Dairy Australia says. An increasing number of those remaining are larger intensive or “housed” systems – with large covered feedlots replacing pasture grazing – which now produce 20% of Australia’s milk. “Housed” systems are, according to those who have made the switch, a more reliable way to produce more, higher-value milk, though the RSPCA has raised concerns about the welfare impacts of cows not having access to pasture.
Farmers leaving the industry
Other farmers, such as the Robertsons, are making transitions of a different sort. A Curtin University study funded by charity Farm Transitions Australia and published in January in Nature surveyed 147 dairy farmers, finding more than half were open to transitioning to horticulture or other ventures. These farmers expressed a “low level of satisfaction with dairy farming” and “willingness to receive support”, the lead researcher, Clive Phillips, wrote in The Conversation.
Conversely, Dairy Australia’s 2024 National Dairy Farmer Survey found “dairy farmer confidence was stable amidst strong profitability” with two-thirds of farmers “positive about the industry’s future, and 83% of respondents positive about the future of their own business”. Fewer than 10% were considering winding down, “the lowest number since 2012”.
With an entrenched ethos of self-reliance, traditional farmers who seek financial and strategic support to transition out of dairy can be hesitant to promote it. “There’s just so much shame,” says Krystal Camilleri, the CEO of Farm Transitions Australia, which offers free business and planning resources, project management, grant writing and mental health resources for farmers leaving the industry.
The charity is launching a comprehensive resource hub next year. Camilleri says support for business transition “should be something the government is prioritising”. She adds that the recent collapse of King Island Dairy and its domino impacts on Bass Strait residents showed that without that support, “whole communities suffer”.
“Most of the farmers we are dealing with would not be open to being interviewed,” Camilleri says. “This is people’s livelihood, they’re emotionally connected to the land, their industry, their identities. We need to be sensitive around the whole culture.” She cites one New South Wales farmer who used the charity’s rehoming service to send his entire herd to cow sanctuaries, but is keeping it discreet “as he is concerned about backlash from the industry”.
Robertson freely discloses the help he’s received. He received assistance from the Victorian government’s EcoTender program to replant the river frontage with native vegetation and enlisted Birds on Farms, a BirdLife Australia resource, to manage biodiversity. “The numbers have increased very significantly,” he says. “I did a count [in January] and logged finch, goshawk, sacred kingfisher, thornbills and fairywrens. And yellow-faced honeyeaters, scrubwrens, golden and rufous whistlers, kookaburras, and boobook owls.”
He has also planted about 3,500 trees – spotted gum, ironbark, silvertop ash, bunya pines, sequoias and English oaks – while Marg planted cut flower crops: Thryptomene, banksias, leucadendrons, leptospermums, waxflowers and Verticordia plumosa.
“I’ve planted on the less productive hills,” Robertson says. “Doing the agroforestry there diversifies the income stream as well as providing good shelter for [potential] calving. The intention is it will eventually be thinned for grazing.”
He is also rewilding sections of the farm, and says Ravenscroft may also be eligible for carbon and biodiversity credits but “I have never cashed any in”.
Regeneration has “made the land even more beautiful, and more valuable in monetary terms”, Robertson says. “I’ve also created a big wetland, or enhanced a wetland. I’m trying to change the hydrology of the farm and keeping as much water on the property as I can.”
Platypuses and “plenty of wombats” appeal to tourists. “I’ve put in a tiny house which I let out,” Robertson says. “Most of the reviews comment on the location and the wildlife. If the tiny house was in a grazed paddock I think the comments would change pretty emphatically. People are interested in accessing spaces where they can sit and watch wildlife and let their dogs run.”
Camilleri says tourism is a “great option for some farms … but viable options depend on individual situations”.
“We’ve got a climate crisis, an industry crisis and a mental health crisis,” Camilleri says. “The statistics on dairy are dire, farmers are at breaking point, and if we don’t support them, that’s another looming crisis.”
