“What struck me first was the asymmetry in the approach. There were three people who came at first. This was a team who had done this dozens of times. They'd approached multiple families over multiple years, over multiple projects. We'd never done this. That gap in knowledge and experience and even in project literacy was real and huge, and you start feeling a little bit like you're on the back foot.”
Agtech - So What? · Alternative Proteins · November 2026
Context
She describes her farming family's first meeting with a renewable developer's team. It sets up why she later helped form a landowner collective to negotiate.
Transcript
…to us is that my husband was actually in the shearing shed and a proponent literally walked into the shearing shed in the middle of shearing and said, oh, hey, do you want to host wind turbines? Look, something a little more formal. And all the shearers were in there going, telling to go away.
More shearing. Sorry. So just to get the terminology right. So proponent, that refers to someone who actually works for the company or are they actually a middleman? Sorry. Yeah, explain who that is for anyone else.
So the proponent to us is the person who first approaches you with regard to potentially being a host of renewable energy infrastructure. Now, keeping in mind that that proponent is not necessarily who builds and manages and maintains that infrastructure in the end. But what struck me first was the asymmetry in the approach in terms of, you know, you've got your landowner or your farmer and you've got the proponent. So the proponent comes, I think for us, there were three people who came at first. This was a team who had done this dozens of times. They'd approached multiple families over multiple years, over multiple projects. We'd never done this. So that gap in knowledge and experience and even in project literacy, that was real and it was huge. And you start feeling a little bit like you're on the back foot. So yeah, the start of that journey is quite confronting.
What, do you remember what they were wearing when they walked into that shearing shed? Like, were they dressed appropriately to come on farm?
Do you know what? They really were. Jeans, boots, shirt. Now that we've got to know them quite well over the last year or two, you know, that they are very real people, which I really appreciated. I think sometimes that when a proponent comes on who's a bit too slick, I think that can perhaps…
Absolutely. I mean, in other businesses, you know, I'm sitting at my desk most of the day. And if someone wants to talk to me about something, they're scheduling a meeting. And so then I know that I'm transitioning from this context. And so it always strikes me about agriculture where the line…
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