Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:
An international conference on water resources has been warned of worldwide food shortages unless more land is cleared for agriculture. French hydrologist, Emeritus Professor Ghislain de Marsilysays soil and ecosystems will become more of a worldwide concern than access to water.
He says Asia and Africa will move toward having no land left for conservation because it will be needed for crop production, and other continents will also have to help meet Asian food demand. Read that story Crops More Important than Forests here.
Recently we reported that USA farmers were pulling 6 million acres of land out of conservation reserves to put into cropping grain. I’ve had a number of people as “how does that work”.
Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the US government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. The Conservation Reserve program was conceived as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. Farmers bid to put their land in the program during special sign-ups, with the government selecting the acres most at risk environmentally.
US farmers receive average annual payments of $51 an acre. Contracts run for at least a decade and are nearly impossible to break - not that anyone wanted to until recently.
The program peaked late last summer, with more than 400,000 farmers receiving nearly $1.8 billion for idling 36.8 million acres. Read full details here.
It’s interesting to note that the USA government pays its farmers an average of US$51 per acre to put at risk environments in conservation reserves for 10 years. Now when its needed to produce food for the world it can be brought back into production. Now thats smart.
This isn’t -
Compare that to the Australian Federal & State Governments. Through State Government Native Vegetation Legislation “Total Tree Clearing bans” Australia has locked up 76,000 million acres of productive rural land forever. Whats more it has been done without a scrap of compensation being paid to the landholders.
Will History Judge these two men as Environmental Champions or Leaders Guilty of Mass Genocide?
Thats a provocative question, but it is fair enough in this unprecedented time in history that we live in. Food riots, global food shortages, it becomes a moral dilemma for all citizens of the world.
The question that must be dealt with is ‘Whats more important, trees or human suffering and the potential extinction of millions of people in poor and 3rd world nations’?
Perhaps a statistician may one day calculate how many people in the world that Australian land if farmed may have fed.
As the world wide population continues to grow at 200,000 people a day by the year 2030 someone may then be able to calculate just how many people world wide former NSW and QLD premiers Bob Carr (NSW pictured above right) and Peter Beattie (QLD above left) have either starved to death or consigned to a miserable life of poverty and hunger through legislation that has locked up millions of acres of good faming land for conservation.
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Update No1: 25th April 11.20am
Researchers at the Institute For Rural Futures at the University of New England, have put estimates on the payments Australian farmers would expect if they are to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way.
The researchers surveyed dozens of farmers in the New South Wales Walgett region. Program leader Dr Ian Patrick says it is an important step for government and private enterprise that will have to share the cost of reimbursing farmers for changing their land practices.
The study found that for basic grazing land while still running some stock on it graziers would need $10 per acre/per year (AUD$25/HA), to manage their land in perpetuity for conservation. For cropping country, it would be $80 per acre/ per year (AUD$200/HA).
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Tags: Conservation, Food
Steve ,
You have been TOO hard on our Ex. Qld. Premier ( or should I say the Qld. Republic Leader) and NSW Premier!!
You can’t be this critical of them, without including the other Premiers and leaders, including the Coalition who have been complicit in the whole agenda to lock up viable farming land in Australia with a raft of overbearing legislation, thus removing the right of farmers to manage the land to best advantage, including protection of good quality native vegetation. The result in Australia is declining agricultural production.
I fully expect that the current visit to New Guinea by our Australian “delegation” will offer money to New Guinea to protect “their” rainforest and yet Government offers “nothing” to help Australian farmers in similar position trying to remain viable and protect some native vegetation. Instead we have a raft of legislation and an uphill battle; to retain our right to farm profitably, and make economic decisions on our land use.
Current State legislation in Australia is designed to enable removal of property rights and avoid the “acquisition” status. This allows the State governments to do as they please for the “community good” and not pay a red cent for the “theft”.
Unfortunately this will have along term impact on Australia, as farmers move of the land, or to a country that supports their agricultural sector, instead of being legislated/regulated out of existence.
Australia could help with the food shortage, however the cost in lost production from over-government, excessive legislation and over-regulation stands in the way. Australia has lost it ability to respond to such events in the short term, directly because of “excessive government”
Well I wasn’t aware that there was 76M acres affected with the Native Vegetation Legislation. Imagine how much value this could add to exports and how many lives could be saved if this land was able to be developed.
Think of it this way, if you were able to run an extra beast to 50 acres through partial development and that beast put on 0.1kg/day (all very conservative figures) there would be an extra 152,000kg of live weight produced each day. At 50% dressing percentage that is 76,000kg of meat/day extra for every man, woman and child. At $3.00/kg dressed thats an extra $228,000/day being added to rural and regional Australia.
I wonder if the bureaucrats pulling the puppet strings of Mr Beattie and Mr Carr actually realized what they were doing when they made these kinds of decisions. The sooner we see something like the USA, better off Australian Farmers, the environment and the world population will be.
G’day Ross,
A study commissioned by the New South Wales Farmers Association found that the Land Clearing bans are costing Australian Farmers just on $600 million dollars a year in lost production. Over 10 years thats $6billion in lost production - without a cent of compensation.
The real architect of tree clearing bans in Qld was Peter Costello, by his own admission. Beatty was simply too stupid to sort out the intrigue, and saw a short term green vote attached.Costello & Co wanted to meet Kyoto targets without signing same, for bragging rights. With policies like this no wonder we have a run down in assets, both public & private. The real tragedy is the lack of trust in the public domain. Alf Collins Sr.
G’day Alf,
Here Here - Your spot on with your comment.