This year’s Muster in Gippsland celebrated 30 years of GippsDairy and the organisation’s collaboration with Gippsland dairy farmers and service providers.
The Muster is held annually, with alternate years on a Gippsland farm, and addresses topics of interest to dairy farmers.
It is organised each year by a subcommittee of dairy farmers and GippsDairy staff.
This year’s Muster in Gippsland was held at Franklin Downs, on the dairy farm of Tania and Clint Staley, near Toora, Victoria.
The 2026 theme was a focus on long-term decision making - ‘From grass to growth: Building your farm’s future through smart succession, genetics and pasture strategies’.
GippsDairy regional manager Karen McLennan said the muster is about giving farmers practical insights they can take home and apply on their own farms.
“Muster attendees hear insights from industry experts and local farmers on ways to enhance the future of their farm business.
“Hosting the Muster on a farm enables peer to peer learning by farmers and they see concepts in practice on the farm in real time.”
This year’s breakout topics of discussion included the challenges of succession planning, utilising pasture, crops and fertilisers, and using genetics to improve the herd’s breeding and production potential.
The keynote address was delivered by Claire Booth, a lawyer and first-generation cropping farmer in the Dubbo region, NSW.
Claire pivoted her regionally-based legal business to focus on succession planning and distills her learnings into an engaging, relaxed and conversational presentation.
She was joined on stage by Clint and Tania, and accountant and first-generation grazier, Ken White.
Ken, based in Bairnsdale, Victoria, also advises clients about succession planning.
“Doing succession well means managing the transfer of the farm’s wealth on the balance sheet and keeping that wealth in our community and our farming families,” Claire said.
She said this transfer was especially important in the dairy industry, where the structure of the industry supported a multitude of family farms and enabled regular cash flow, asset growth and wealth creation.
“Dairy farms are pregnant with unrealised gain,” Claire said.
“Have the conversations about what people want to do, often and as early as possible. Managing expectations is also important in succession planning.”
Clint said his parents enabled conversations with their children from a young age, to understand each person’s goals and what they wanted to achieve, either in or outside farming.
He and Tania have three children and are preparing to start those same conversations.
“A lot of the time you don’t know the value of the assets you have, in the farm,” Clint said.
“We learned to use our accountant and lawyer and other advisers to identify the farm’s assets and break it down into values.
“Then we learned how to transition those transfers from one generation to the next.
“As dairyfarmers, you learn to manage people and assets. The next step is doing that same process for succession planning.”
Claire and Ken both advised including lawyers, accountants, bank managers and service advisers in farm succession conversations.
Many people forgot to include people such as nutrition, pasture and genetics advisors in their succession conversations, but these service providers also brought expertise and knowledge about the farm business to discussions about its future.
“Banks either want loans paid back or they want a succession plan in place that favours the next generation and their plans,” Claire said.
Ken told attendees that managing successful succession planning meant using the tools available to achieve the most efficient tax outcome for the business.
He said trillions of dollars of farm wealth would be transferred over the next decade in Australia, and managing that well included utilising the tax exemptions housed within legislation.
“Dairy farming is a good lever for building wealth and fairness in asset transfers,” he said.
Ken and Claire advised completing a tax impact statement for the business and identifying the appropriate tools for structural transfer of assets.
Break-out sessions during the day enabled attendees to discuss succession planning strategies for their own farm businesses, planning pasture and crop production against fertiliser shortages, and leveraging genetics for herd fertility and production gains.