Desk devotees showed they were not giving up the fight to revive the national pool and single desk marketer by gathering at Parliament House on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of its abolition.

About 40 southern NSW wheatbelt farmers were joined in Canberra by Nationals senators Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash, John Williams and Members of the Lower House, Kay Hull and Mark Coulton, to mark the event.

The return of the single wheat desk remains the ultimate goal of the determined farmer group, however rally organiser, Jock Munro, Rankins Springs, admits a return to a single wheat marketing authority is unlikely.

“I don’t think we’ll get back what we had. We will have to be prepared to compromise,” he said.

“Something like the Auswheat plan that allows some markets in but offers more security would be 1000 times better than what we have,” he said.

Nationals Senator, John Williams, agreed it would be difficult to return to the single wheat desk, but said the protesters would to strive as far as they could.

“We need a system that removes the possibility for Dutch auctions, security of forward selling and payment,” Senator Williams said.

Mr Munro said the lack of security and the market dysfunction left no doubt there would be a reduction in the quality of Australian wheat.

Nor could he see wheat production increasing.

“It just amazes me that within 12 months, I (now) basically don’t care about the quality that we’re going to grow and I know a lot of my neighbours aren’t really interested either, because they know they’re not going to get paid for it,” Mr Munro said.

“We know that those grades are already getting messed up, so once a bad cargo goes overseas there goes Australia’s name as a quality wheat producer and exporter.”

Mr Munro said the protest day had resulted in a good dialogue with The Nationals in Canberra and it was good for younger farmers to see this.

Andrew Clark, “Murrell Park”, Ardlethan, said young farmers had joined the rally because they genuinely wanted to see the return of the single desk.

“At the moment we’re not growing wheat for the money,” he said.

Abolition of the single desk marketing system was meant to bring in new competition between private trader but it had just pitted farmers against farmers.