(Photo: Supplied)
April 6, 2026
Former South Burnett mayor Keith Campbell OAM is worried about the future of farming in the South Burnett, especially now in the wake of the Iran crisis.
Mr Campbell, a former CEO and general manager of Kingaroy-based Bean Growers Australia, said he wanted younger farmers to have a confident future in the South Burnett, as well as throughout Australia.
He said local farmers were not only grappling with the upcoming closure of Bega’s processing facilities in Kingaroy, but were now faced with rising fuel and fertiliser prices in light of the Iran conflict.
“We’ve all seen the recent headlines about the conflict in the Middle East putting huge pressure on two key inputs for our local farmers, fuel and fertiliser,” Mr Campbell said.
“But the bigger challenge with the rising prices is the fact that farmers simply cannot pass that price jump on to their customers, which places even more financial pressure on our local farmers who are already grappling with low returns.”
The weather has not been kind to local farmers, either.
In recent months, they faced a long dry spell and then some were hit by flash floods which damaged crops as well as infrastructure.
Mr Campbell said farmers had lost their “grassroots voice” over the years.
“They can rightly ask, what is our future in farming? We want to know what agendas are out there working against us,” Mr Campbell said.
“Are we progressively going to see further decline in market prices, in which case it just becomes harder and harder to exist under these arrangements.
“Farmers need to be given some hope and something to look forward to.
“There is no harder working group of both men and women, than farmers. They deserve to have a better outlook for their futures than is currently the case.”
Mr Campbell blamed the low returns that local farmers were receiving on the squeeze driven by rising input costs and shrinking prices for their crops.
“I’ve been raising concerns for some time now that imported products are competing with Australian-grown products and driving our industries out of business, as we saw with the local navy bean industry,” he said.
The Kingaroy region used to grow most of Australia’s baked beans.
“But slowly our local product was undercut by imported baked beans, to the point that both Coles and Woolworths’ private label baked beans are 100 per cent imported now,” he said.
He said Bega’s decision to close their Kingaroy peanut processing facilities due to financial losses and competition from imports had confirmed his fears that imports were deeply hurting his community.
“As soon as I heard that Bega was exiting our local peanut industry I immediately thought ‘Oh, no, it’s the navy bean industry all over again!’,” he said.
“It is my understanding that plantings of peanuts in the South Burnett region have dropped significantly since the announcement that Bega was selling its iconic peanut silos in Kingaroy and I directly blame imported peanuts for this situation.
“Unfortunately, most of the peanut butter sold in Australian supermarkets now is imported from India, Argentina and China which is directly competing with Australian-grown peanut butter and ultimately contributing to the decline of the Australian peanut industry.”
Mr Campbell said Australian supermarkets needed to be incentivised to use Australian peanuts in their private label peanut butter.
He said that incentive could come from government initiatives that supported Australian farmers and processors as well as public pressure.
“As the former Mayor of this region, and coming from a farming background myself, I’m deeply concerned about the future of farming in the South Burnett and, therefore, the future of our broader community which relies so heavily on agriculture,” Mr Campbell said.
“I’m calling on Coles and Woolworths to only use Australian-grown peanut butter in their private label ranges, and I’d like to see broad community support for calls for supermarkets to back Aussie farmers and keep our regional economies thriving.”
