Participants including Longreach grazier Boyd Curran, who described himself as a new societal class, “destocked beef producer”, and Super Butcher Susan McDonald, questioned the ability of agricultural interests to get government to care enough about the issue up for discussion – finding the capital to inject life back into businesses reeling from years of no or low income.

“Government support is minimal for what is occurring – it’s an unmitigated disaster,” Mr Curran said. “We need to present a sustainable business model. We need intermediaries and brokers, and we need to help the people that are distressed. It’s the role of politicians to enable us.”

Structures such as cooperatives, intermediaries to act as go-betweens, and the removal of regulations strangling opportunity, were some of the ideas explored by the group of around 70 taking part in the summit, the initiative of Longreach grazier James Walker.

The political manoeuvres relating to the makeup and purpose of the state government’s Rural Debt Taskforce, and a federal government obstinately using numbers on paper to deny assistance to sections of Queensland’s drought-affected south west, were challenges thrown up for the event designed to help people wanting to invest in Australian agribusiness to marry up with cash-poor grazing enterprises.

Ms McDonald said that with a collective 187 years in the cattle industry in her family business, the business of beef production was clearly cyclical and she would like to see a discussion about sustainability.

“We need to invest in electricity, in technology, in water, and government is the one who can provide that, but until we have a professional single voice, we will just have interesting discussions.”

Hughenden’s Kara Knudsen told the summit that opportunities were bypassing rural businesses every day because of the state of technological infrastructure. 

“Why would you want to invest in a business that can’t operate in this century,” she asked.

A number of structures were discussed to plug mum and dad enterprises into the corporate world, including cooperatives.

Laguna Bay Pastoral’s Tim McGavin said they would help give scale but there was the issue of who made decisions.

“There is a lot of appetite in finance for agriculture. You have to start with the mindset of what the investor wants,” he said.

According to James McLean from Allied Beef, the west has a cash flow problem rather than a debt problem.

“You’ve got to come up with a structure that delivers continuity of cash flow, rather than influencing your business,” he said.

Don Chandler pointed out that many of the people affected in real life wouldn’t feel confident at initiating the types of conversations needed to bring these outcomes about.

Holding Redlich’s Brian Healey agreed, saying there was a role for advisors and an “educative process to be undertaken”.

“Getting investor-ready is a question of scale,” he said. “People have to spend a significant pot of cash and time to make themselves ready to seek capital.”

Suncorp Bank’s agribusiness spokesman Troy Constance attended the summit and said he had heard a lot about viability but felt there was still a question about how to professionalise the family farm.

“We see a gap,” he said.

Stamp duty and capital gains were also seen as blocking further investment.

The problem-solvers in the room included university lecturers, graziers, accountants, lawyers, politicians, corporate investors, retailers and philanthropists.

James said he had been overwhelmed by the level of interest, saying they were very busy people but wanted to attack the issue.

“What’s been missing before now has been the opportunity to turn the dialogue digital,” he said. “It used to need hard work to action ideas, but we can action them sooner now.

“I think we’ve created a ripple effect – people made lots of connections and were discussing ideas outside the room afterwards.”