IGA was proud to support News Corp’s recent Adopt a Farmer campaign

IGA was proud to support News Corp’s recent Adopt a Farmer campaign

IGA was proud to support News Corp’s recent Adopt a Farmer campaign, designed to highlight the issues our rural population are facing and support farmers, shops and businesses in country towns across Australia who are doing it tough as because of the ongoing drought.
The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Courier Mail, with the support of Public, Independent and Catholic schools in Victoria, NSW and Queensland set an ambitious goal – to use a gold coin ‘mufti’ day on May 8 to raise much needed funds to distribute via Rural Aid for recipients to spend in their local communities. Kids News also provided information on the drought and its significance, so teachers can use the mufti day as a chance to educate kids in the city about the rural plight. In total they raised over $300,000.
Proudly independent and with a network of 1400 stores across Australia, IGA is deeply connected to the communities we serve. We have strong connections with local suppliers and producers and given that many of our stores are located in regional and rural areas, we have witnessed first-hand just how tough so many people are doing it as a result of the ongoing drought. We were proud to be able to help in a small way by supplying $20,000 worth of gift cards as prizing for rural students telling their story about how the drought has impacted them. The response was overwhelming from children in some of the worst drought affected areas in NSW, Queensland and Victoria and the kids unique take on how the drought has impacted their young lives was heartbreaking. You can read all the winning entries here
Put simply, they miss spending time with their parents, are sad about losing animals and would do anything to help their families get through this drought.

Kids hit hard by drought write heartbreaking letters
They miss spending time with their parents, are sad about losing animals and would do anything to help their families get through this drought.
These are the heartbreaking letters from children in some of the worst drought affected areas in NSW, Queensland and Victoria written to The Daily Telegraph as part of the Adopt a Farmer campaign.

The drought.
I love living on a farm, but it’s been hard for my family. We have no money and the water is nearly gone.
Our sheep are getting skinny. They’re not very big, they’re not fat enough to sell and our paddocks are pretty much just dirt.
We are trying to grow feed, but we don’t have the money to buy water.
My Mum and Dad work hard every day to try and make money. My sister, brother and I help do jobs on the farm. We love to save the orphan lambs.
We have had to sell more than half of our sheep and still have no feed. Dad spends hours feeding out hay and grain.
I’m sitting at the table writing my story, It’s 8pm on a Friday night and my Dad is still working on the tractor.
I wish the drought would end, but sadly it isn’t.
— Abbey Wishart, 8, Macorna, Victoria

Hi my name is Fergus and I am 10 years old. The drought means that we have to choose 1 sport that we can play because there is not enough money to play other sports and Mum can’t drive us to all of them because we have no diesel. I love our cows and feeding our calves and it makes me sad that we might not do this soon. I would hate to sell our farm. From Fergus
My name is Violet and I am 7 years old. When it doesn’t rain we don’t have any money and my dad is very grumpy. We don’t see my dad after school much any more he works very hard. I wish he could eat tea with us but he can’t. I love it when he tucks us into bed but sometimes he can’t do that too because he is always working trying to make us some money.
I’m Harvey and I’m 13, the drought has had a huge affect on my family and all of the other farmers.
Before the drought we were milking 350 cows and now we are only milking 120.
We had to sell all of our cows to afford water and keep on farming in the dairy industry. Ever since the drought and all the water prices have gone up we are currently waiting for the moment to move out and my parents will have to find other jobs. We have had to get rid of our full time worker so that we can save more money. If I could win this money it would really help out me and my 3 siblings and parents. Thanks!
— Fergus, Violet and Harvey McGillivray

My name is Charlotte Darcy and I live on our farm Wattlebank on the outskirts of Tullamore. Tullamore is in Central Western NSW. We have been in a drought on our farm since the start of 2017.
The drought has affected not just the farm and the stock but also my family and myself. This drought has put myself and my brother behind in our homework and when we have assessments we have had to do lots of work to make sure they are in on time because we go out and help feed the sheep and move them around the paddocks to try and find more feed for them with our parents. We also have lots of dust storms that engulfs our house and property. We haven’t had enough rain!! Even after some rain we had a dust storm. It is really depressing!!
Tullamore is only a very small town, we only have 70 students at our school from Kindergarten to Year 12. I only have 2 other kids in my year. Because Tullamore is so small, it doesn’t have many things for us kids to do so each week Mum or Dad drive me to Dubbo so I can dance which I love. Dubbo from our farm is 115km. My brother Jack loves his football and he has to drive himself to Trundle (60kms away) to train two nights a week and then drive from home to lots of different places like Manildra, Peak Hill, Molong and other towns in his competition. This uses a lot of fuel with all the travelling we have to do as a family just so Jack and I can do physical activity. Mum and Dad have allowed us to do one thing each so that we can participate in something.
If I won the $1000 it would help my family a lot by helping pay for water, food and fuel. It would just help us a little bit which would be very appreciated.
— Charlotte Darcy, Tullamore