ACCC must investigate Wilmar stalemate

12 OCTOBER 2016: I have called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to urgently investigate the stalemate between North Queensland cane farmers and Singaporean sugar miller Wilmar this morning. Wilmar has railroaded farmers into signing supply agreements that are detrimental to the farmers and to the sugar industry. In failing to negotiate an agreement with sugar marketer, QSL, Wilmar has blocked out the competition that Queensland laws introduced last year were meant to guarantee.While other millers have worked with farmers to come to mutually beneficial arrangements under the new laws, Wilmar have sought to circumvent the law and maintain their monopoly. Farmers have told me the new supply agreements being offered by Wilmar are extraordinarily long, complicated, and detrimental to the farmers and that of the more than 300 farmers represented by grower collectives in the Burdekin, only a handful have signed supply agreements.I have consult with the relevant ministers and written to the Chairman of the ACCC, Mr Rob Sims, requesting an urgent investigation into the negotiations stalemate as farmers are now planting a crop they have no guarantee of being able to sell because they don’t have a supply agreement. That is an incredibly risky undertaking because Wilmar has a monopoly on milling in the Burdekin and farmers will be forced to either accept what Wilmar offers or leave their crops to rot in the field. Wilmar has known that as the deadline drew closer, their negotiating power would grow stronger and their delays and failure to enter good faith negotiations have put farmers in an untenable position. Farmers in the Burdekin are in danger of becoming nothing more than serfs, forced to accept whatever their foreign master deems fit to dole out to them. Railroading farmers into this kind of position is anti-competitive and unconscionable behaviour and precisely the reason why the ACCC was established.