I have some sympathy for the farmers of Nyngan and Cobar in New South Wales and the newly formed Regional Community Survival Group in their struggle to manage invasive woody weeds. I have posted some information from this group, including a note on the recent blockade.
I have less sympathy for NSW Farmers Association and their new campaign “Get Off Our Backs”. The NSW Farmers Association never stood up to the Wentworth Group and they went along with the Greenpeace anti-GM canola campaign.
I detail my thoughts on the issue in my latest column in The Land:
“I hope NSW Farmers Association’s new campaign intended to improve the image of farmers with the slogan “Get off our backs” resonates in Sydney. But I doubt it.
The association’s website explains that the community “has been misled on green issues for too long. It’s time for the truth.”
So what is the truth?
The way a lot of people see it, just a year ago NSW Farmers was asking for drought aid.
Remember the 2000-strong drought rally in Parkes? It generated lots of interest in Sydney with stories about desperate farmers, dust and hungry animals.
Unfortunately, through the years these stories have reinforced a perception that many Australian farmers are environmental vandals flogging a dry landscape.
If farmers want governments off their back, they must realise Australia is a land of drought and flooding rains and not keeping claiming exceptional circumstances.
There is some concern at the moment about the Wilderness Society and its “Can’t find a billabong ‘cos they’ve bulldozed the Coolabah trees” campaign.
But in terms of long-term damage to the reputation of Australian farmers this campaign pales into insignificance next to the National Farmers Federation (NFF) campaign of 2000-2001. Back then NFF executive director, Wendy Craik, pleaded for a massive $65 billion to stop the spread of dryland salinity and repair 200 years of damage from claimed unsustainable European farming practices.
Not a month goes by now without a newspaper headline telling how bad it is in the bush.
On federal budget night, Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced another $500 million for the Murray River to reduce salinity levels — the centre-piece of the Government’s commitment to saving the Australian environment.
I was hoping some farm leader might have seized the initiative and issued a media releasing explaining that salt levels in the Murray are at historic lows and they don’t need to be artificially pushed any lower, but instead there was silence.
Last week I read how water levels in the Murray River are the lowest since records began more than 100 years ago.
But the article was confusing low water inflows with low water levels, the journalist apparently unaware that the Murray River ran dry in 1914.
In this drought, South Australian irrigators are receiving 80 percent of their water entitlements thanks to the dams and weirs upstream in NSW and Victoria, and the river is full of water all the way to South Australia.
The latest false claims about the Murray’s record low water levels also gave the ABC another opportunity to suggest agriculture is in trouble and lament yet another catastrophe in rural Australia.
If NSW farmers are going to have long-term success with their campaign, “Get off our backs”, then farm leaders need to try harder to correct such misinformation.
City dwellers would be surprised at how much they’ve been misled by the environment lobby (not to mention how many more trees there are now than at the time of European settlement), but more farmers will need to take more responsibility for their own businesses come drought or flood.
It’s no good telling people to leave you alone if they honestly believe, or have been hoodwinked into believing, you are wrecking the environment.“
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The campaign needs more of a positive view than a list of complaints. A positive prospectus for a rural and agricultural future.
The efficiency of Australian rice and cotton producers needs touting, insecticide minimisation. Striving for greater water and fertiliser efficiency. Huge flocks of birds on farm dams. The sacrifice and benefit to the nation in terms of millions of tons of carbon in trees that will not be subject to clearing – how is Australia really meeting it’s theoretical Kyoto targets.
Celebrate Landcare as practical hands on environmentalism. What examples do we have of envionmentalists working positively with farmers?
You need to be able to sell an ethic of biodiversity conversation on farm. A position that argues all Australian systems need management – bush needs a fire regime, weeds and ferals need control. Just locking up land is not an answer. Land requires proactive intelligent management. Landholders are that management force.
The woody weeds patch – not as land clearing – but as ecosystem rehabilitation.
Be careful on the more trees than ever rhetoric – this sort of argument can backfire – the trees that have increased are actually a form of land degradation. And absolute numbers of trees do not compensate for losses of entire regional ecosystems e.g. the Brigalow lands.
And instead of handouts do not landholders need taxation reform that allow them to take more from the good years to ride out the bad ones. A drought bank.
And despite government research efforts you need to take back the unique types of monitoring and research that are falling through the cracks and form your own research foundation.
Overall – be positive – not negative.
Burke’s REALLY BIG Backyard ?
Nobody in their right minds would invest in agriculture as a business if they knew that there were so many others who had management rights to your business without investing a cent.
I think it is like highway robbery, without invitation special interest groups invade your house, drink your beer, raid your irig and watch your telly. And then walk out of your house leaving you with mess to clean up and bills to pay.
I think that “Get off our backs” is a bit limp, howabout that classic English phrase “F*** off”
Rog, you are right. But there are advantages. I am not a farmer but have some low value agricultural land on the suburban periphery which I will hold until it can be developed for subdivision. In the mean time, I costed out a program to enhance the biodiversity of 10% of the land (the only part that is environmentally sensitive), doubled the cost and submitted a bid for a grant of which I was successful. I have given up management rights for that small part but at a price that I am adeqautely compensated.
I have always viewed the drought assistance as something of a poisoned challis because any claim for some sort of charity for farmers will be met with a demand for more than a pound of flesh by the city. It provides them with an excuse for callous treatment in every other policy area because they think farmers have somehow rorted the system.
But then, I have never been in a situation where I have needed drought relief and must defer to those who have. And one thing is certain, even city businessmen can get the dole if they work it right. They can hand control of a loss making business to a subordinate and then fully comply with both the income test and work tests for the dole until conditions improve. Farmers cannot do this.
And many urban businessmen can also supplement their income with part-time jobs etc to get them through a bad patch while keeping tabs on the shop. Again, farmers cannot do this in drought. If they completely destock then they will take a huge loss on stock prices and pay through the nose to restock when the rain finally comes. And even when there are outside jobs to be had during drought they are rarely as conveniently accessible as urban ones.
So the bush needs a safety net that fits their circumstances. They cannot meet the work availability test for the dole while hand feeding stock so some other mechanism must be made available.
In a non-metropolitan state, this problem could be met by the provincial government setting aside normal years funding so that a larger proportion of road maintenance and capital works are undertaken in drought years so that skilled contractors can be kept in the bush at a time when they normally must drift away, rarely to return.
The less said about NFF and poor Wendy, the better.
Luke, you say change the message to “ecosystem rehabilitation” ! I suggest that most farmers would say ” What race is he running in ??”.Nearly all the rest will say “there is no money in it”!!
Farmers with environmentally valuable native perennial grass and trees country [scrub included]must get the NFF and the NSW Farmers association to make the Federal and State Governments give them a yearly cash credit for using their country as a carbon sink for the rest of Australia’s industry and cities and for those farmers that feel the need to grow annual crops with all their destructive properties.
Kartiya, I looked at another grant for small environmentally valuable land (ie tax payer money). They made it clear that the money was to help me maintain the land but not make a profit from the grant!! The grant I took was market based so I bid what I needed to be compensated. I am not surprised that they have stopped offering this grant now….
Kartiya – your colleagues here have been wanting to clear the Cobar woody weeds patch and running foul of regulations. I would think it’s uneconomic but it’s their call.
Ian you will find many farmers still stuck with tax year boundaries that make non-optimal land management decisions; and nowhere near enough use income equalisation deposits.
Also emerging ecosystem service philosophy will subsurbia will have to put money into rural landscape if they want to but the amenities and services they want from rural landscapes. e.g carbon sinks.
Guys the main point I am making is that if you want votes to change in capital cities you need a very positive up-beat message.
Yelling, posturing and screaming will reinforce the cities’ view. And you have to keep at it. You need to make the city see the bush with a positive future – not a sea of environmental woes wracked by drought and run by eco-vandals. It’s hearts and minds stuff guys.
Seriously – a weekly show that hybridises Burke’s Back Yard, David Attenborough, and Land Line might be a good thing too.
Luke,
I agree, and I have touched on this subject before, that the attitude ‘that we are right in everything we do and the urban population can “get stuffed” because they don’t understand’ just will not cut it going into the future.
We must portray a positive and optimistic zeal for working with our land, not only for the image we are seen by, but for our own physical and mental wellbeing.
It doesn’t all have to be a huge battle.
All the talk of having to flog yourself, your livestock and your land in a drought because you cannot afford to sell and re-stock is just bullshit.
We are in one of the worst drought affected regions of the state and it has been five years in which we have destocked three times. I put a value on my natural capital, and if our decisions reflect long as well as short term goals then getting the stock off is the right thing to do.
If the country is not productive then do not try and milk production out of it. Diversify and put your capital into something else that you can get a return out of. We added an enterprise (tourism), but there are plenty of other options. Imagine having a big portion of your equity parked in the stock market over the last five years….big return without even raising a sweat.
We don’t use our imaginations enough, and traditional drought subsidies do not encourage people to do the right thing. For the land, their finances or themselves.
Plenty of people out here our struggling and do need a hand out now, so I don’t want to appear too hypocritical. I receive an ‘interest subsidy’ myself which has been an incredible help as we have very low equity, and I am grateful for that.
However, the future I believe is in educating landholders in the ability to drought proof their business, rather than their land. Otherwise the hand out mentality will continue on in to the next major drought…where we will all be surprised again by how bad it is, as though we weren’t expecting it.
We are involved in the below EBC project, which has a variety of ways that landholders are being rewarded for achieving good ecological outcomes while keeping the people on the land and in the communities.
Personally I think ‘incentive based programs’ should be targeted as an incentive for landholders to develop long term improved management changes as opposed to short term contracts that fail to educate.
http://www.west2000plus.org.au/Key_projects/Enterprise_Based_Conservation/enterprise_based_conservation.html
Enough of this “The country needs us” caper.
Just say for a minute, everyone in the more marginal sections of western division was to walk away from their land. The general concensus of the farming community is that the place would fall into wrack and ruin; Scrub would encroach on everything, feral animals would explode in number, rare native species would be lost. But how accurate is that?
To put in in everyone favourite term.. What scientific, peer reviewed study has proved that?
The truth might be quite the opposite and improvements might come much quicker than expected, as everyone knows that things can happen quickly in the rangelands.
Within a couple of decades the ground tanks would silt up, or the bore windmills break-down, the roads would grow over. Feral animals would initially increase, but then plummet when the water supplies dissappeared. Good seasons, would at last, once again result in abundant grass growth. Dry thunderstorms would ignite fires that would without the hinderance of fire brigades and roads, meander across the woodlands for weeks on end. Woody vegetation, may or may not initially increase, but would soon senesce or succumb to fire. Open grassy woodlands and grasslands would rejuvenate, locusts swarms would successfully migrate and create more regular food, which would enable bustards and other grassland wildlife to thrive once again. We could continue to harvest wild animals (when in abundance), we could run real ecotours, looking at an interesting, wild, functioning landscape, and ecotourists would pay for the priveledge.
You see the difference between the outspoken rangeland farmer, who thinks that the country needs them, and the humble ecotourist, is that the ecotourist accepts that time spent in nature is a gift and a privilege, not a GOD-GIVEN RITE!
Graham,
You are just capitulating. The greenies want us to “portray a positive and optimistic zeal for working with our land,” and guess what? The only successful ‘portrayal’ will be on *their* terms.
Your suggestion to “[d]iversify and put your capital into something else” will be gleefully lapped up by urbanintes, who swap jobs and houses casually. Farmers can’t. Quite simply, there is only so much that can be done with growing things when dirt is your productive capital. Biotech could expand farmers’ options, but that been cursed by Gaia, if you believe her shrill votaries.
The difference between an activist and a terrorist is that you can, actually, negotiate with a terrorist. Believe it or not, terrorists have visions and goals.
Activists are nihilists, and will not stop until nothing remains. Activists are against everything, and *for* nothing. A concession to them will not earn their gratitude, they merely want everything, until nothing is left.
Your words seem wise, but you can’t compromise with people who reject the notion of compromise outright. For them, compromise is either a betrayal of their cause, or yet another advance in their campaign to establish the “planned ecology.”
Pox on your house.
Land management is not without cost. There are the capital expenses of acquisition; property rates, machinery and plant, equipment, the ongoing costs of depreciation; fuel, registration, servicing, insurance (including public liability), loan repayments, consumables, taxes and other charges, interest, administration, workplace health and safety, advertising, marketing, wages, salaries, training and superannuation.
All of these costs are met on publicly owned tenures through capital and indicative grants and recurrent budgetary allocations. As ever-increasing environmental management obligations are imposed onto privately-owned lands through government edict, what was once a monopoly function of government has well and truly been extended onto the private sector.
There is no question that private sector viability requires an appropriate return for the sustainable supply of environmental goods and services, however, the magnitude and exclusivity of subsidisation upon publicly-owned-estate, prevents, restricts and limits the market demand from private-sector providers.
Economists differentiate environmental goods into ‘use values’ and ‘non-use values’. The total value of an environmental good is the sum of the use and non-use values. Use values are derived from the current, expected or possible use of the good (eg. the recreational value of a forest). Non-use values do not involve the consumption of the good but refer to other benefits derived from its existence (eg. knowing particular environmental values exist and valuing their bequest to one’s descendants and future generations).
Subsidisation upon public estate substantially dilutes the public’s willingness to pay for the achievement of such an altruistic virtue through the abundant evidence of institutionalised conservation, however, they are deceived by the misrepresentation of land tenure.
Neither the ACCC nor other Australian Competition Councils regard the environmental functions and mandates of government land management agencies as business activities; therefore, they are not required to maintain competitive neutrality. In addition, Section 51 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 essentially provides that regard will not be had to conduct which is specifically authorised or approved by any Federal legislation or by specific State or Territory regulation, regardless of their impacts conferring such substantial exclusionary influences to fair trade upon non-government tenures.
Incentives might address the impartiality, but the removal of disincentives through amendment of the TPA would achieve a great deal more.
I agree with Ian; government grants come with unacceptable conditions and often the imposition of a dependency on bureaucracy.
Fairness and equity; is that too much to ask?
So farmers will get their strategic advice from assorted departmental types and urban daytrippers on this blog, will they? Fat chance fellas. This is nothing more than a rehash of the same old same old that has been sprouted by the mediocrities in NFF etc for more than two decades. And you guys come out with it again as if you have only just thought of it.
And the really rich bit was the line by someone (it is not worth looking up) that farmers need to think about how to better manage for drought. WHAT THE @#$%&* DO YOU THINK THEY HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR THE PAST 200 YEARS BOZO!
Do you think they have been pulling Mulga in every dry spell since 1880 for landscaping purposes? They do it to take the pressure off their pastures. But while they are going further into debt by hand feeding and mulga pulling, the urban community leaves it’s un-culled ‘roo herd to starve a miserable death while tearing the last remaining tussocks out by the roots.
There is only one constant in this equation and that is the incredible hypocrisy of the urban community. They can come up with the most extraordinary moralistic pronunciamentos while simultaneously ignoring the cruel and unconscionable consequences of their ignorance.
I could outline a proven and highly effective strategy for fixing this problem, as per the worlds best practice approach of the French, Japanese and Korean farmers, but Jen would have a little “beige” moment and censor it.
Guys – so much anger. Such little desire to take charge and lead (save Graham).
Keep yelling and urbanites will just vote you down. Schiller is predictable and fun of course – but with tired old rhetoric like “actvists are nihlists” we’ll just dismiss him into the “tired old cold war warrior” class and regulate him some more till he comes to heel or quits.
Michael – I see where you’re coming from but I’m afraid I have to disagree – save the rainforest most of Australia is the product of fire stick farming by aboriginals. Europeans have introduced feral animals (especially don’t forget urban cat and dog owners – surely little minxy wouldn’t go wild and kill birds – oh yea !). Let go unmanaged – the existing remnant vegetation will thicken up and western grassland will become shrublands, forests will accumulte litter. Where trees are tall enough the liiter will become a huge fire hazard and wildfires which nuke everything will consume the land. Introduced weeds with few natural enemies – lantana, prickly acacia, rubber vine, mesquite, camphor laurel will explode more than now. Foxes, cats as big as houses, pigs, goats, horses, camels, donkeys galore. We’re now in that modified landscape reality. Humans have to actively manage our landscapes.
With watering points controlled, shut off or regulated it is sad to say but the way of things that roos will die in their 1,000s during drought. It’s natural.
Ian – “what do you think [landholders} have been doing for 200 years”. No Ian they have not been doing it well. They’ve been feeding instead of selling, going broke, leaving the land, blowing their brains out behind the shed, drowning in dams, leaving a good record of land degradation, and getting more structured assistance from taxpayers then ever (drought dole, freight subsidies, interest relief) . In cities businesses go broke every day. Public servants get made redundant too. Drought is very complex stuff – part of the problem is the sheer grit and resilience of the Aussie farmer – hanging on like their yaks in quiet desperation on the smell of an oily rag for decades. Perhaps better to actually know when to call it quits, sell up and move down to Byron, Port or 1770. The way drought trends are going – it seems if one doesn’t work in town (teacher, nurse, mechanic etc) or you don’t have non-bush income – I can’t see anyone surviving really big droughts. With climate change we’re going to need bigger property sizes and regional adjustment. Can’t see how in the current climate.
The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is how to get the respect back with the urban electorate who if environmentally misinformed will indirectly cause the evolution of a whole generation of departmental ideologues and spivs that will regulate you into submission – or break you down if that’s what’s required.
How are you going to get the voting power back.
Here’s the North American experience.
Strictly counting acres, the most widely, intensively-grown plant is grass. Yes, grass. For people’s front lawns. Because of that, “lawn care” uses more pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer than actual agriculture. That is, agriculture to make food.
Yet these urbanites wish to dictate terms to food producers about pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer. When’s the last time you saw someone try to regulate lawniculture? I’ve never seen it once.
In this neck of the woods, we have deer running amok, destroying crops. A friend of mine, driving one night, suddenly found a deer crashing through her windshield/windscreen and it died, but first pierced her chest with its hooves and strew her with flying glass. She has been in physical therapy for six years and prospects for her recovery, such as touching her own nose voluntarily, are “guarded.” Yet urbanites campaign tirelessly against hunting deer.
But then there was an urban “deer outbreak” in a college town. A town infested, because of its collegiality, by greenies. The deer had the temerity to actually eat flowers in flower gardens.
Urban greenies will put up with only so much. Rural casualties are–well, casual things. But animals eating urban flower gardens? That is beyond sufferance. So the city council hired snipers (with low-velocity rounds) to “harvest” the deer.
It is impossible to educate urban greenies, and most especially since there is so much money to be made, and votes to be rallied, from “being green.”
But urban green is quite an odd shade of green. Urban greens spray chemicals or call out the snipers whenever Nature doesn’t give them what they want.
Since there is no hope of educating urban greens, the only option is to educate them about boundaries. They may be amenable to the notion that they should mind themselves and leave others alone, and if necessary, a few of them may have to endure nosebleeds to discover the wisdom of not poking their noses into uninvited places.
Urban greens are not educable, and the leaders of urban greens are paid quite well to popularize ignorance. You can’t move ahead until you realize this.
Bolsh Schiller – it’s simple – shoot all the friggin deer and every animal that can harm a car – say bigger than a ferret. Blaze away. But what if a cow gets out – how many of us have come to grief hitting a beast. Better shoot them too.
Aussies have rotating blades on the front of our cars that turn any roving roo or beast into pet food. Convert your yank tanks. It works with greenies too.
Of course we dictate terms about chemicals. If we take our eye off people like you who are self confessed eco-vandals living in a chemical soup until your GMO mates have temporarily saved you; we’d be having dioxin and organochlorines for brekky with glass of nitrate contaminated groundwater. Methinks you are a right lil’ chemical eco-terrorist Schills. How many drums of the “good old stuff” are still in the barn. And what did you do with the drums – chuck them in the creek I suppose. Or did you just leave them lying around for the kids to play in.
And if you poison me with your profligate chemical usage I might just sue your arse off unless a Mott-ian jihadist rage overtakes me first.
I think just the sort of farmer we need more restrictive draconian regulations to keep contained. Mate you’re a homeland security risk.
Incidentally in terms of “poor you” I’m a farmer. Simply sell the farm – that’s what other businesses have to do with their assets. Don’t complain about being special. You can swap your houses and jobs. It’s simply that you choose not to and make snide remarks those who can.
Hey – how do you even know urban greens exist. Perhaps they’re like fairies at the bottom of the garden. Name two?
Ian:..” The world’s best practise approach of the French, Japanese and Korean farmers…”
Don’t know what Ian exactly means, but saw the farmers riots in Korea on the telly , where one farmer put himself on fire in protest( was it against GMOs or imported rice)?
And the EU agro sector is a big laugh, only bureacracy , regulations, a closed market and big, big subsidies to the farming sector and if you want to cut it down there is this big outcry from French farmers…
Agreed Ann and the EU eco-agro grant/subsidy system is also another big laugh.
Luke, I used to think hydro was a power generator..
I’ll just add that, like many things government, it doesn’t take much sign of self-help to cut rural people out of these supposed drought assistance funds
Christ Ian,
Every time I start to doubt your ignorance, you go and blow it by opening your mouth again…
Pulling Mulga is about feeding livestock, and not even contemplated till long after the pasture is all gone.
I’m starting to think that you have never left the city….
No offence to city folk intended.
How about some happy pills there Schiller…
Graham, what on earth could give you the idea that I regarded mulga pulling as anything but for feeding livestock. ‘Roos don’t eat mulga (except wallaroos) so it could only be livestock that it is being pulled for. But if you were a farmers armpit you would understand that if the stock are eating mulga then the ‘roos are eating something, obviously the last of the pasture. And your suggestion that mulga pulling doesn’t even start until the pasture is gone suggests that you have little contact with the community you claim to be part of.
The only time mulga pulling starts so late is when DNRM pondscum sit on the application for months while the farmer and the herd suffer.
And spot on schiller. Good fences make good neighbours. And don’t worry about the Lukes, Michaels and Grahams of this world, they have already said enough on this blog to ensure that no farmer will ever listen to what they say.
Just keep talking fellas, there are still some deluded fools in the country side that still believe they can be part of your community. I just show them what is in your heart and they ditch that bull$hit quick smart.
OK Ian – you are simply full of it. What the hell do you really think you are going to do in this invisible revolution which only you seem to be talking about? You’re out-voted by suburbia. Withdraw your services and we’ll buy South American. And actually I totally doubt your support base – exactly how many people do you represent. SO keep raving Ian and frothing at the mouth Ian – you can’t be saved from yourself – the green urban vote climbs higher with every outburst.
As someone once said – you are neither a tactician nor a strategist – you’re simply increasing the isolation.
And stop standing up for yanks Ian. So much for sticking with your mates. Sepos go home and stop invading places for weapons testing. Just remember how well the yanks have accepted Australian lamb.
The Mulga one is obvious – when does Mulga harvesting (sign that you’re desperate and should have sold anyway – the suffering herd is your own managerial fault) become a quickie around the system for land clearing. You should only be harvesting enough Mulga to feed your flock for 2-3 days or the leaf content is useless. Anyone bowling over heaps on fodder permits is trying it on and you know so ! However if you’re saying you’re involved in ecosystem rehabilitation well that might be different.
See other try-ons (1) there’s more trees than there used to be (2) let’s generalise the woody weed patch to everywhere
Anyway stuff you – go and back slap your property rights mates and convince each other that you’re onto something – I’m sin-binning myself and adandoning the thread to the forces of darkness and division. Good luck.
…another Orchy bottle melt down.
….aahhh here we go again.
Read slowly please Ian.
Ian, historically we have never needed permits to pull or cut scrub for livestock, so that is one arguement that shows your ignorance.
If you think people would start to pull scrub with all its high cost and hard physical work (I’ll explain the later to you in another thread) before it is absolutely necessary then you must be crazy, or once again ignorant.
We have had the “roo” arguement before, so I do recognise the futility of trying to educate the uneducable.
Yes, and my views do differ greatly from the traditional approach and I come up against your style (sic) of arguement often. However, I see it as a challenge that I’m up for and relish the opportunity to influence my fellow land managers in a positive way forward.
As opposed to an approach based on nothing but negative bile and words that in the end will lead
to more of the same old same old.
The best thing to ever happen to me Ian was to realise that I had, and still have, plenty to learn.
Lets face it Graham, your here on this blog to advertise your dude ranch and the more you differentiate your own product from that of your neighbours the more punters you attract.
Mulga has been part of the grazing rotation since the 1880’s. It takes about 15 years after pulling before it is ready for pulling again and in that 15 years it grows back to remnant status.
Significantly less than 1/15th of the resource is cleared in any year so there is no ecological threat posed by Mulga pulling.
Yes, it is a lot of work but it sure beats eroding the equity base on purchased feed. And Luke, of course the nutrition drops off a few days after pulling, that is why it is done each day in small amounts.
And keep up the rationalisations, Luke, I am sure the vegnazis need to top up their justifications. Funny how easy it is to dismiss the suffering caused by your own people as, “should have sold anyway”. It is a bit like justifying the poisoned flour on the basis that black fellas were “heading for extinction anyway”.
New victims, same old rationalisation. Withhold the safety net that is extended to every other Australian because they “should have sold anyway”. What next for the brave new green utopia, second rate medical care for the over 70’s because they “will be dead soon anyway”?
Is that where you are taking us? Back to the Victorian notions of “deserving poor” that get assistance and “undeserving poor” who get the gallows? Thats fine with me if the first cab off the rank is withholding medicare cover for ailments caused by unlawful substance abuse. But that wouldn’t be “progressive” would it? Which is another way of saying that the mainstream urban community would be stuck with the social consequences.
Much better to indulge these neo-fascist ideologies behind an environmental facade with a community that is too far away for any consequences to come back on those who provided the mandate.
Just about everyone contributing to this blog, especially Luke, has valid points to make. But this blog is now generating more heat than light.
The easiest way to throw some light onto the Australian city country divide is to start with property rights. In Australia these are a bundle of land use rights that come with the property title or lease. The bundle varies in different States and with different types of tenure. The fundamental point of a property right is that it has market value. If damaged, diminished or extinguished, compensation is due. Australian conservation laws have got around this by first diminishing land use rights and at the same time creating statutory obligations on landowners to maintain or preserve the target of legislation. Governments are not obliged to help subjects meet their statutory obligations. So no compensation.
Australian conservation laws tripple hit landowners. First, dimunition of capital value of land with conversion of a property right asset into a property right liability. Second, the foregone income from not being unable to develop a resource. And third, the ongoing cost of maintaining that resource. These laws cover native vegetation, biodiversity, soil, water, air quality, etc. The presumption under Australian conservation laws is that landowners have statutory obligations to the environment which it is reasonable to expect they pay. The system in the EU is quite different. There, farmers are considered to provide envoronmental services, eg soil conservation, clean water, bidiversty, amenity value etc, for which it is reasonable to expect they be paid. Hence the EU eco/agricultural subsidies referred to by rog.
The Australian style of conservation laws are based on cost-shifting. Our Parliaments have a long, politically convenient history of this tactic. a lot of community demands re health, roads, sewage, conservation, recyling, etc are transmuted into statutory obligations and shifted onto local goverments – unfunded. Local Goverments have some redress, they can pass costs on by raising rates.
Australian farmers operate on the open market; so they cannot pass on the costs of unfunded statutory obligations to their customers.
The EU community is getting hit four ways. By taxes supporting farmers. By tarrifs keeping food prices high. By agricultural subsidies to farmers, and by environmental subsidies to farmers. The Australian community is having pretty much a free ride on all of the above.
Australian conservation laws are about property rights. About diminishing or extinguishing rights to property use without paying compensation, via the mechanism of creating unfunded statutory obligations. It helps enormously if the group getting stuck with the bill can be demonised in the eyes of the wider community.
Another area of serious concern for the bush is the conduct and motives of some of those administering the conservation laws. Our rule-of-law system presumes that public servants are employed to implement the laws of their respective parliaments, and are required to perform their duties in a lawful manner. The perception in the bush is that the professional, objective, rule-of-law style of public servant is being replaced by ends-justifies-means activists. Public officers prepared to misrepresent events or facts, exceed powers, and manipulate both stakeholders and decision makers.
I have seen my own state farm organisation outflanked by clever, plausible, re-assuring conservation public servants.
There are some powerful interests sitting, to their advantage, on the city country divide. The current NSW “get off our backs” push will only further play into their hands.
We need to start getting the truth through to the wider community, about the steady improvement in farm know-how to manage droughts, about the improving Murray River salinity, about the dryland salinity problem that largely never was, etc. And about the perverse consequences of inappropriate regulations and over zealous administration.
Correction on intent: That was sell the sheep not the property. Sell’em or smell’em. Turn the bores off. Drought feeding doesn’t generally pay in serious droughts. You’ll end up broke and also with dead animals in the long run.
It’s not an environmental facade – it’s resource management, family dignity, grazier blood pressure, and not flogging dead horses … err wethers.
Sounds like Luke needs a refresher in rooting zones with respect to mulga.
A Dutch Prof named de Witt reckoned that “there is no altruism in the plant world – there are no socialists”. And mulga is one of the least socialistic.
– Mulga starts as a seedling with a tap root, and then abandons it for a mass of surface roots mostly under the canopy area
– Its tree geometry directs rain that falls on the canopy down the trunk
– Infiltration rates are higher under the canopy (particularly around the stem) than in the inter-canopy area
– The water coming down the stem foams – ? something like plant saponins to help infiltration? This is observation and speculation on my part.
– When it sheds leaves (correctly phyllodes) it retracts a maximum of nutrients before they fall
– Its competition with ground layer production is not serious to about 10% canopy cover, but ground layer production is down to about 25% of potential by about 30% canopy cover (its a Grosenbaugh equation, Luke) , which it seems to do at about 1% a year. This goes with the suitability for re-use in about 20-25 years. I haven’t seen anyone mention the considerable amount of young tree growth that goes under a chain or a blade without being affected either.
– While mulga is succeptible to fire, its seed germination is also enhanced by heat. So, with adequate rainfall after a fire there can be mass germinations of mulga.
– CSIRO Rangelands in their Lake Mere work coined the term “fertile patches” – the environment under a fallen mulga is much better for germination in the leaf litter and protection
– But a burn with high fuel load can bake the soil surface and inhibit germination for considerable periods.
– As most of the mulga zone here has thickened, a return to aboriginal type firestick farming requires thinning out and removal of that fuel load without baking the surface.
– This thickened mulga zone has some of the highest kangaroo populations in Qld, so plenty of competitive grazing pressure
– Buffel has been around the mulga zone since about 1955. It needs around 25ppm of available phosphorus to establish – a level not available in many mulga soils, but available under poplar box canopies. So it is either already naturalized or not likely to establish.
Welcome to mulga management!
Helen,
You must be looking at very much the same rural scene as we have.
Sounds like it Ian, but the self-replacing haystack we have learned to manage over several generations, is not mulga.
Helen, property rights is the issue. Increasingly property owners activities are being influenced by special interst groups who have no financial investment in the property and are not concerned with its viability as a business.
Helen,
I agree with your points absolutely, but I would question one thing: “The current NSW “get off our backs” push will only further play into their hands.”
If them being on our backs is the problem, getting them off our backs would seem to be a solution too obvious to dismiss.
Compensation for unfunded mandates would set things drifting in the direction of the European model, which has become a policy nightmare.
Thanks for refresher course Ian Beale. Would not disagree with any of your advisory and knew about 50% of it and should have known the rest. Saponins very interesting. Now that’s the short of local knowledge that needs to get back into policy.
As I said previously “However if you’re saying you’re involved in ecosystem rehabilitation well that might be different.” I realise the difficulty in getting these systems back and how chaining or wiring it might be the only alternative. But is mulga pulling a good drought activity or a better wetter year task. And does drought feeding pay?
Just a short comment here. It’s very interesting to read about mulga etc….
And don’t want to bore you with EU agri policy ,the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. That is crap in my opinion and no role model. Not going into any details here , but most subsidies about 70% go to big agri businesses and big scale farming.
Now I want to support small scale farming and rural people, but where does the EU subsidies end up? For example Prince Albert of Monaco received a very big sum in EU subsidies.Also many nations parlamenticians who own big farms have received EU subsidies.
EU policies are all about “stakeholders” and “social partnerships”, the State has an interest in your land and will pay you to perform “environmental duties” or subsidies.
Subsidies distort markets and keep third world countries third world.
Rog:” Subsidies distort markets and keep third world countries third world.”
Wise words rog!
Yes, sometimes the EU pays you ” to perform environmental duties”, for example my brother gets subsidies for cattle grazing his pastures, so the landscape is “open”. But I can assure all that we don’t have any environmental friendly policy, this is just talk.
We have a great destruction of wildlife habitats in farmlands, only the new member states can show farmland habitats that aren’t destroyed…
Luke, One of the side effects of pulling mulga when wet is that it just rotates on the root ball and keeps on growing.
The next is not specifically at you, but your 50% provides the lead-in:-
One should be aware of what might be called the “first fallacy of academia” –
In academia a pass of 95% just abut guarantees a high distinction or whatever it’s called this week.
It takes re-education to realize that, in real life, one can have 95% and produce a right stuff-up.
And with things like landscape ecology (given the token funding for such research) one is not likely to have anything like 95% of the required information, particularly from text books.
And the chances magnify as the omission of existing knowledge increases.
Same in the UK Ann, the Royal family and other wealthy landlords receive £3.4B annually from the EU, all paid for by the taxpayer.
This is not businesslike its pandering to the sentimental.
Ian – emphasis was on wetter rather than wet – meaning years when grass seeds might get away. Doing most agricultural culivation with “wet” soil would be a bad idea from another of aspects.
But hey haven’t Mulga guys been saying that Mulga resprouts from the base after being pulled “dry” too?
Luke,
1. Doesn’t have to be very wet in the rain gauge for mulga to have concentrated the water at the base.
2. Opening up the canopy gives the ground layer a sporting chance to get away. See “fertile patches” etc previously. But it won’t with a few heat waves between rainfalls in the establishment period. And it won’t without management of grazing pressure, with the contribution to this from kangaroos uncontrollable and a significant proportion, as shown in data from western NSW.
3. Mulga will have a token go at resprouting from stumps, but I’ve never seen it succeed in regenerating .
But it can more than compensate for this from seedling establishment. E.g. The Charleville town common went from open (driveable in a car – perhaps about 100/ha pre the fire of the early 1950’s to an average of about 4500/ha with patches of up to 12000/ha by the 1960’s.
Ian – good stuff. So what happens to any regrowth with wire pulling vis a vis chaining.
Time and again we see the triumph of local knowledge and goodwill over lack of knowledge and imposed majority will.
But how can local knowledge ever combine with goodwill while an illinformed urban majority insists on perceiving local knowledge as self serving political spin and the demonised locals as devoid of goodwill?
I challenge the urban community to try just one experiment in complete local autonomy so we can get a conclusive outcome. There is a lot of urban hearsay about how farmers cannot be trusted to protect the environment but none of it based on firm evidence.
So lets have the balls to put it to the test. Lets set aside a large enough region where we can measure the results of 20 years of self rule and then compare some benchmarks. And lets have some consistent costings so the residents of the autonomous unit pay the same proportion of GDP as the urban majority. There wouldn’t be many farmers that would be afraid of the truth. What about our urban know-alls?
Wasn’t that experiment called the Cobar woody weeds patch Ian !
Perhaps we should pick the Gascoyne or Burdekin instead.
Or SW Qld?
ROTFL !! We’ll hold your balls in trust for you just in case of default.
Interesting experimental notion though. Perhaps a better be shoot-out between best producer practice, best boffin practice and best greenie/suburbia has to offer. It’s called a replicated long term grazing trial. And let’s do it in say 6 different climate zones/land systems.
Biggest bank balance, most soil left, most carbon sequestered, and most wildife at the end wins.
Loser(s) moves to Pitcairn Island after being made walk naked down Queen St.
En garde !
Fat chance, Luke, you know that the last thing any urban elite would allow is the prospect of (more) hard evidence of their mediocrity.
By the way, I thought you had bailed out of this conversation? Admit it mate, you’re addicted, can’t get through a day without jousting with reason and good sense.
Helen, Earlier I was referring to the political scene.
Luke, Chaining vs wire – I presume you mean cable?
I remember an article in a Popular Mechanics of about 1950 on cable and ball. It was invented to clear a dam site in US which had been logged. The cable was hooked to logging winches on the dozers so it could be moved to clear the cable off logged stumps.
I’ve only heard of one use in mulga. A friend used cable and ball with low horsepower (about 75) dozers – talked of the ball being up to about 3 m off the ground. So (in theory) this would magnify the leverage on the trees, and also magnify the chances of breaking them off and cultivating resprouters. Which is probably why it’s not common in my experience.
In theory also, being higher may let younger ones through, but that might depend on how dense the timber is.
As I mentioned earlier there’s plenty of young ones go under a chain too – the chain is lifted by the timber and isn’t always on the ground. There wouldn’t have been so much money spent on follow-up (or so much money spent on re-pulling where follow-up wasn’t done) if this wasn’t the case.
Try this for an optimizing exercise for your envelope:-
Minimize cost per area, subject to variables including:-
Size of machine (bigger dozer more available horsepower, but higher dry dozer cost/hour)
Available horsepower (more hp , wider strip or bigger timber, but higher fuel consumption)
Strip width (governed by type of timber and chain length)
Chain length (longer chain, wider strip – but higher parasitic drag)
Forward speed (faster gives more momentum and fewer delays with un-pullables, but rougher on machinery, so higher operating costs). (Speed is relative – for an example dozer max 3.6km/hr in 1st, 5.5km/hr in 2nd).
Ian Beale,
Yes, I realised afterwards that you were referring to the political scene. The rationale behind our cost-shifting of conservation laws is pretty similar across all Australian States. I do not have time to go into this today, but I will expand on it tomorrow, noting my source of information. My comments on activist public servants exceeding powers is based partly on my own experience. But there are lots of similar stories out there.
Helen,
I wonder how activist public servants stand in the light of that court loss by SA Lands on the Kangaroo Island high oestrogenic sub-clover?
Jennifer this post by yourself shows you’re interested in the organisation’s politics, not the issues. Same issue, but different groups with different political histories and alliances, so you divide your support and sympathy accordingly. What an IPA crock.
Us vs Them political maneouvering divides, doesn’t move forward. Next you’ll be banging on righteously about evidence-based impartiality again and self-proclaiming your own objectivity again.
I think the moral of the story, ie the crux of your point, is for farmers and industry groups to be wary of using PR and lobby groups because attempts to influence policy and public spending can come back to bite you.
Ian,
Some of the information on property rights I referred to comes from an interim report of the House of Representatives standing committee on Environment and Heritage into an inquiry into the effects upon landholders and Farmers of Public Good Conservation measures imposed by Australian Governments. Published September 2001.
But condsidering Pinxi’s comments I will now divert into outling the bare bones of my experience with the administration of an australian conservation law, and why I am not too keen on activist public servants exceeding powers.
South Australia introduced clearance controls on native vegetation in 1983. From then on, to clear, you needed permission. We needed to complete the clearance of some of our regrowth to have enough cropping land to be viable.
At the time we applied, about 10% of our property was cleared arable, 10% regrowth, and the rest of various types of native vegetation. The Native Vegetation administration recommended clearance consent for about 40% of our application, subject to us agreeing to sign a Heritage Agreement over the rest of our application area, all regrowth, plus all of our land between the application area and the sea. We had to object to this as the loss of so much grazing land would reduce our income more the extra cropping land would improve it. Clearance consent was refused.
The Branch, on behalf of the deciding body, the Native Vegetation Authority, asked us (verbally) to negotiate for a clearance consent/heritage agreement compromise. We agreed to do this, as by this time we had realised that some fragile country in the old growth country demanded for heritage would be easier to manage under a heritage agreement.
But assistance under a heritage agreement was not available until that area had been refused clearance consent. So we we went through the pretense of applying for consent and got the refusal intended. Thus opening up the way for us to comply with the heritage agreement demand over the country external to our original application.
The Branch immediately informed us (verbally) that they would no longer support clearance consent for us. It had been pointed out to them by the new NVA Chairman that demanding heritage agreements as a condition of clearance consent was levering on unrelated issues, which could be blackmail, which was illegal, so the practice had to stop. The Chairmand wanted to see no more such arrangements. Besides, heritage agreements were supposed to be voluntary. The new policy was that clearance was to be brought to a halt; all applications were to be refused. so the Branch would no longer support clearance consent for us, only heritage agreements.
Without the cropping land we needed to be viable, we had to keep as much grazing land as we could. So we reduced the area we were prepared to put under heritage to the minimum needed to properly manage that fragile country. The Branch were not happy with that. The conflict then focussed on whether we were exempt (from clearance controls) to maintain the grazing value of our regrowth country. Eventually a conciliator reported that we met all the requirements for exemption, and further, departmental failure to recognise the nature of our original application had resulted in signigicant grazing income losses.
The NVA “recommeded the Minister pay financial assistance … in recognition of hardship caused by delays in finalising the application to chain regrowth now considered to be exempt. The Authority further considered that any payment should be made as part of a package involving a heritage agreement …” This, to us, was levering on unrelated issues, and I honestly never saw it coming. We collapsed. So five years after agreeing to negotiate, we signed a heritage agreement under pressure (which we would have signed without pressure) without clearance consent.
As we picked picked up the pieces I started to ask questions. Getting answers has not been easy. But I now know that Branch briefings to inform the conciliator, the Native Vegetation Authority, and at least one Minister all omitted mention of the original heritage agreement demand over land outside our application area. All acknowledged some of the earlier negotiations for a compromise, and all omitted to mention the Branch withdrawal of support for clearance consent for us once the way was open for a heritage ageement over that improperly demanded country.
Further, on legal advice I now know that heritage agreements associated with native vegetation applications were intended to be a mechanism of receiving some compensation following a clearance refusal. They were also intended to be voluntary. To demand a heritage agreement before clearance consent was, in effect, putting the cart before the horse. I.e. reversal of process.
This sort of case, Pinxi is not about conservation, it is about the right to due process under rule of law.
What makes me so sad, Pinxi, is that the positive powers of the law we came under had everything we needed.
1.Clearance consent could only be recommended if consent did not offend certain guidelines. Our original application passed that test.
2.We were exempt to maintain grazing over all of our regrowth country.
3.Heritage agreements could be used to assist with management of fragile country.
The big flaw with that Act was that no appeal lay against a clearance refusal, or a condition attached to a consent. So there was nothing to keep that Administration within powers.
If you are wondering Ian, why we did not sue over the ‘hardship payment’event, well, few family businesses have the resources to take on the Government. The income losses did not help either.
I think Pinxi, the moral of the story, of the NSW farm organisation telling the Government to get off their backs is that perhaps some conservation agencies in that State are also abusing powers, and unnecessarily bruising their targets.
This is the classic story, Helen. The initial conditions that made the instrument a just and equitable measure were turned into a blunt instrument by untrained, illinformed and often downright malicious departmental officers. Subsequent actions were made on the basis of unsubstantiated verbal advice that was of a partial and fragmentary nature.
And any system that imposes totally disproportionate costs on the victim to access justice and equity is in fundamental breach of the social contract. Before any system was implemented they had a duty of care to get it at least 90% right.
Instead, they went ahead with a system that was more than 50% wrong and this ensured that any subsequent action could only compound the injustice, not fix the problem.
And that is why I advise every farmer to withdraw their custodianship of natural resources to the maximum extent that will still enable their economic survival. The community that has implemented this fiasco does not deserve any better.
The community that does not even recognise the contribution of your custodianship, let alone value it, needs to learn a very hard and ecologically costly lesson. It is very clear who has actually exercised the power over events in this matter and they must be made to bear the full responsibility for the consequences.
So we need to take the necessary steps to minimise the risks to our own interests, but the rest can go and get focussed on reality.