Stock and station agencies are businesses which provide a support service to the agricultural community. Their staff who deal with clients are known as stock and station agents.[note 1] They advise and represent farmers and graziers in business transactions that involve livestock, wool, fertiliser, rural property and equipment and merchandise on behalf of their clients. The number and importance of these businesses fell in the late 20th century.
A stock-agent assessing his client's livestock
These rural business services institutions originated, when communications were slow and often very difficult, to cope with the double remoteness of early Australian and New Zealand primary producers from their nearest settlement and, particularly in the case of wool, from their overseas markets. In practice, they were the pastoralist's banker. Similar and sometimes the same organisations operated in Latin America and the Midwestern United States, which had extensive pastoral farming.
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