Fiona Simson, the association’s first female president, operates a 5500 hectare property near Quirindi on the Liverpool Plains with her husband and family.

To discuss food security in an open forum, Tony Jones from ABC’s Q and A chaired a discussion on the issue.

“The question time went exceptionally well,” Vice President Peter Darley said. “We even had the program manager of Sustainable Agriculture from the World Wildlife Fund supporting farmers in their opposition to imports and wanting to preserve the quality of their land.”

The rising cost of farming was also on the agenda, with a high dollar affecting exports and the impacts of the carbon tax looming on the horizon.

Former president Charles Armstrong said farmers would be disadvantaged by any carbon tax because producers were unable to pass cost increases on.

“Farmers are price takers for both their inputs and commodities and they are dependent on electricity for producing, harvesting, cooling, drying, heating, processing and handling,” he said.

Other topics raised at the conference included the creeping acquisitions of farming land by China and concerns that coal seam gas and mining licences were too lax.

Despite these concerns, Mr Darley said most members were cautiously confident of the future.

“Although we are all mainly optimistic, we have to absorb all those extra costs and with the weather going back into a dry period there is a real concern out there about the future,” Mr Darley said.