Archive Article: 2001/08/24
24 August 2001
Machinery rings can still pay dividends
Running a machinery ring can be a thankless merry-go-round. What started as a simple pooling of labour and machinery has become a testing management exercise.
Encouraging farmers to take part seems to call for a high level of sales skill by ring managers. More than one ring has collapsed due to lack of interest. Foot-and-mouth, falling farm incomes and an acute shortage of skilled labour have all taken their toll.
So what is their long-term future? How ironic that farmers are fiercely independent yet now, more than ever before, could benefit from the machinery and labour savings a ring can provide.
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