Attendance: 31 Members: 27 (of 47) 57% Guests: 4
Speaker: Graham Cockerell Topic: Need for Feed
On Tuesday night (11/11/25) we were very fortunate to have Graham Cockerell as our Guest Speaker. Graham was the Founder of “Need for Feed Australia” in 2005 and still works as its Coordinator. This project was started by his Lion’s Club and has been so successful that in 2020 it became a National project for all Lion’s Clubs in Australia. They have delivered stock fodder valued at over $60 million so far to struggling farmers in drought, fire and flood stricken areas.
Graham started with a short video titled “We are Australians”. This showed an impressive array of semi-trailers fully loaded with hay heading out to give farmers relief to feed their stock in the affected areas.
The hay is donated by farmers who can spare it, and
the trucks are driven by volunteers. Sometimes donations are used to purchase hay when there is a shortage in a lot of places. Often the drivers take a big bag of dog food too and this is very much appreciated by the struggling farmers. I can’t imagine the heartache that farmers must suffer when they have to shoot their own sheep as they have not got enough feed to save them. “Need for Feed” is a life saving project for these farmers.
Graham lost his own father to farm related suicide when he was eleven years old. This tragedy inspired him at a time when Victoria was being ravaged by both drought and fire, to do something positive to help farmers facing hurdles that might otherwise overwhelm them.
Thank you, Graham, for a really inspiring presentation.
Don Heath, Chairman.