"Farming is in our blood"

When Josie Clarke's dad, Glen, was injured in an horrific road accident, it looked as if their lives on the land would end. But Glen wasn't prepared to give up the family farm, and his daughter has inherited his determination.

- By Sue Smethurst

On a late summer’s morning two years ago, Glen Clarke and his daughter, Josie, were in the middle of a paddock checking the progress of a crop when Josie turned to her Dad and asked, “Is there any support?”

In that tender but rather random moment, Glen instantly knew Josie wasn’t referring to the soybeans they’d just planted on their cattle and cropping farm near Kempsey on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

In 1983, Glen miraculously survived a catastrophic road accident but suffered severe spinal injuries that caused paraplegia. Josie was just five years old when the Clarkes’ world was turned upside down and her question, some 20 years later, was a sign of the deep and lasting trauma the accident had on the third-generation farming family.

Glen’s frank answer – that sadly there wasn’t a network of support services available then or now to connect farming families impacted by disability – confirmed Josie’s hunch.

“I immediately set up a Facebook group where farmers from all corners of Australia could share experiences of living with a disability and how they’ve adapted their work and life on the land to suit their needs,” says Josie.

The response astounded her. Soon, the agronomist and PhD candidate’s inbox was inundated with messages. Within 12 months, more than 300,000 people had read Josie’s inspiring ‘Ability Agriculture’ stories. What began as a Facebook page blossomed into a vast, vocal, online community advocating to change the perception of disability in agriculture. Such was the impact that, in 2022, Josie won the NSW/ACT AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award and today, Ability Agriculture is a registered not-for-profit organisation championing change.