Graham Cockerell established Need for Feed to help rural Australia. Photos: Jeanette Severs.
Need For Feed kept the trucks moving during the Victorian bushfires earlier this year, delivering hay to communities that needed it most.
Twenty years on, Need For Feed is far from scaling back its mission.
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Founded amid the Millennium Drought by Lions Club member Graham Cockerell, the project has a clear objective: to support rural Australia.
“I’m a dairy farmer’s son, and I lost my father to suicide when I was a boy,” Graham said.
“In 2006, in the middle of what became known as the Millennium Drought, we had bushfires at the same time ... back then, the media was saying about three farmers per week around Australia were taking their own lives and lots of others were walking off the land.
“It was very close to the anniversary of my father’s death and I was just motivated to do something about it.”
Need for Feed started with Graham giving away a small truckload of his own hay to a group of farmers in East Gippsland in Victoria.
It has only grown since.
Earlier this year, during the devastating Victorian fires, the Lions Club project continued to support those who need it most.
“We had trucks to all the fires early on. We were the first hay trucks that got held up at the roadblock in Yea for two and a half hours — that was all over social media,” Graham said.
While the team originally had plans to visit South Australia to aid drought-affected farmers over the Australia Day long weekend, Graham said he realised the need in Victoria was dire.
Need for Feed organises for truckloads of hay to be donated to farmers impacted by natural disaster.
“We decided we would concentrate on Victoria. We’ll still end up helping them out in South Australia, but we just postponed it,” Graham said.
“We put the call out for more trucks, and within a week, we were still signing people up. On Thursday night, we cut it off because we weren’t going to be able to organise it all.
“It’s a very Australian thing to want to help, and it was pretty special being able to do it over Australia Day.”
After passing through Seymour, the truckloads of hay were distributed at an Alexandra depot to a number of grateful, fire-affected farmers.
Graham said what made the project so inspiring was seeing how thankful people were.
“The closer we got to Alexandra, people were coming out at the end of their roads and driveways to wave to the trucks and hold up thank-you signs,” he said.
“They’re obviously from a burnt out area, but they still made the effort to come out and say thank you.”
For more information on Need for Feed, or to donate, visit needforfeed.org
