Community & Business
17 August, 2022
Yazidi at home at Heritage
It’s been a long road to get here for three members of the team at Country Heritage Feeds.
Country Heritage Feeds, like many businesses these days, has struggled to fill staffing vacancies but three workers in particular are proving valued members of the team and they’ve come a long way to get here.
Saad Qado, Said Hasso and Hussein Baker are members of the Yazidi refugee community in Toowoomba. The Yazidi are from northern Iraq and more than 1200 families arrived between 2017 and 2019.
“They are really genuine workers who inspire each other and they’ve been a blessing to our workplace,” Heritage Feeds operations manager Ron Phillips said.
“The language barrier is challenging but what we have found is that if you teach a skill they will keep doing that and then show others how to do it because they want their community the thrive.”
Saad, Said and Hussein were all beaming when talking about their work at Country Heritage Feeds.
The company employs about 18 staff and is the biggest organic feed supplier in Australia, sending organic wheat, sorghum, barley, corn, sunflower seeds and more across the nation.
Mr Phillips said the genocide of 2014 had seen many Yazidi family members brutalised.
“It is just too horrific to detail,” he said.
One man he met showed him photos of the harvester he had owned and said his brother had also farmed, with 500 head of sheep.
“When Isis came in, they just ran for their lives, leaving everything behind, all the things they had worked for.... so I find these Yazidi people are just incredibly grateful that Toowoomba has welcomed them into the community,” he said.
