Editors Note: Below is a small exert from Julian Cribb’s article. This is a must read for every farmer and rural policy maker in Australia. Fantastic and well done Julian. Agmates has been saying this for ages, but it takes a world food shock for others to realize it.
Julian Cribb (pictured below) is an adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology, Sydney. He writes:
Farmers will be the Hero’s of the Coming Food Crisis.
Most people think of farmers as the people ‘out there’ who grow the food and, occasionally, gripe about the weather. The farmer of the 21st century, however, may be the person who rescues civilization.
International agencies, like the World Bank last week, are belatedly recognizing the global food crisis is much closer than the climate change crisis or even than the next oil crisis – as a string of food riots and disturbances round the world already suggests.
And only farmers can get us through it. Australian governments, it is almost redundant to say, have not yet woken up to it.
It is also a challenge for which Australia is singularly well-qualified ………… It is a task we cannot, in conscience, ignore - either in our own country or in the wider world.
It is also an opportunity like none other, for renewal of the natural world, for economic and rural growth, for the relief of human misery and for developing a sustainable basis for civilisation as a whole.
Read the whole article by Clicking here.
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Tags: Environment, Farming, Food
Good agricultural land is being split up into hobby farms and sold for lifestyle, because farmers can’t make a profit any other way.
The Australian Govt is helping farmers to leave the industry by allowing inferior produce into this country that saturates Australian markets.The other helping hand was the deregulation of the milk industry.The beacon to draw young Australians back to the land only shines brightly if there is money coming in for the farmer. Until there is evidence of money in the bank instead of the bank taking the money, young Australians will continue to head for the good paying jobs.
G’day Maureen,
You are right. Finally though there are some intelligent people out there who are just starting to realize that one of the most important group of people in our society is the group that grows our food.
For years we have had green groups and those that make policy believing we can live without farmers and farming in Australia because we can import food cheaper from around the world particularly 3rd world countries.
The global food shock is making some of these people realize that Food Security is paramount for any every nation.
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This kind of flattery only ever comes our way when someone wants something, lots of it, and mostly free.
And after more than two decades of systematic demonisation of farmers, even by the governments who claim to govern for all of us, it will take a lot more than a bit of stroking to get me or any of my family to place one skerrick of trust in these people.
Rights, fundamental liberties and substantial elements of family capital have been stripped away from us under legislation justified by fraudulent science and improper exercise of power. And until those rights are FULLY restored then there is zero basis for any form of cooperative approach.
The notion that a community could screw its farmers with impunity will be shown by history to be nothing more than a curious by-product of cheap oil. Farmers will survive this century because the urban community is finally getting mugged by reality. We will survive because we continue to produce something that people actually need rather than merely desire.
And the mesage to the broader community is simple. Fix what you have already stuffed up and only take what you pay for. And when you have done so, enshrine our rights in the constitution and make them binding on the states, and we will think about giving you the time to explain what else it is that you want us to help you with.
We gladly give all the help we can to our own community but you have spent two decades telling us that we were not part of your community. So good luck on your journey to hell, folks. It seems that, as with government, you get the environment you deserve and the cooperation you deserve.
G’day Ian,
What you say about what has been done to the farming community is in part all true.
But its amazing how things turn around in time. Our basic instinct to feed and cloth ourselves (basic survival) has a wonderful way of clearing the minds and senses of our law makers.
We all live in the same community. Farmers have a responsibility to feed and cloth the community and in a capitalist democracy with the expectation of a return on their labours and capital at the end of the day.
Those that govern us have a responsibility to ensure that those that farmer, have little or no regulatory impediment to do that.
In the past 2 decades innovative farmers and technology have produced an abundance of cheap food that society and particularly Australians have come to take for granted. Now adverse climate and global population growth have changed the equation and the pendulum swings back.
Thats life. Farmers because they have been badly treated can’t take their bat and ball and tell the rest of the world to go to hell. Those that govern us have to fix the wrongs and life must go on -
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Well, Steve, I look forward to the day when there is clear evidence that “(basic survival) has a wonderful way of clearing the minds and senses of our law makers” as you put it. More importantly, I look forward to the day when, having had their minds and senses duly cleared, they actually remedy all the problems they created before that fact.
I did not intend to imply that we should take our bat and ball and tell the world to go to hell. Far from it. What I was indicating was that the rural community needs to raise its negotiating skills up to, at least, the level exhibited by the average Afgani six year old.
The ink has barely dried on seriously discriminatory legislation and the betrayals that are already embedded in the carbon trading regime have not even come to light yet. And all it takes is a few spivs to toss us a few scraps of flattery and we appear to be drooling at our newly discovered prospects.
In Qld we have Bligh and Lucas who’s political antenae have detected a need to be perceived by their urban voters to be mending fences and building bridges with the rural community. These voters like to maintain the illusion that they vote for honourable people who treat all queenslanders fairly. So what the government needs is a ready supply of photo images that reinforce that perception. They couldn’t give a tinkers cuss if any fences or bridges actually get repaired or built.
But what do our ‘industry leaders’ do in response? They deliver all the photo opps they need at zero cost. It is the negotiating equivalent of bending over and asking, “how do you want me”. We cannot winge about being used as a toe rag if that is the best we can do. We cannot expect a fair deal in a future carbon management regime if we demonstrate that we can be shafted at zero political cost.
Our ‘leaders’ need a crash course in negotiation skills. They need to make it clear that the only photo opp that Bligh is going to get will be in a paddock full of woody weeds that has been wrongly mapped as remnant vegetation. Or in the Yelarbon desert, the largest salinity outbreak in the state that is listed and mapped as remnant ecosystem that is actually less than its pre-settlement extent.
And before we, collectively, provide the slightest hint of willingness to lift a single finger to ’save their (backside) planet’ we should make it crystal clear, for example, that this bull$hit about making us liable for the methane burped by cattle is out of the question. Indeed, as food is not a discretionary consumption item then there is absolutely no excuse for not attaching this emission to the people and countries that eat the cow.
This is just one of the dozens of ’sleeper’ issues that are waiting for anyone who is gullible enough to jump into this stuff without thoroughly investigating who these people are that want us to bring our land, our labour, our capital and our enterprise into an unequal partnership with our kids.
There is a very wide gap full of nuance between being a toe rag and taking our ball and going home.
G’day Ian,
Not sure how we got from Feeding the world to a carbon tax on livestock. I see a program on the ABC TV the other night suggesting that we are heading into global cooling.
I know that 2 nights ago we had the coldest April night ever recorded in Gympie. But there is a solution to global cooling if thats whats happening - Methane gas.
The scientists could stop a mini ice age from coming - by nuking the polar caps and releasing millions of tonnes of methane gas trapped under the polar caps. - WOW don’t you feel safe?
Steve, perhaps you are not old enough to remember the ice age scaremongering of the mid 70’s ?
G’day Rosalie,
Yes I am old enough to remember the “Club of Rome” scaremongering of the 70’s.
Christopher Pearson wrote a Terrific article on just that subject. See it here.
“Its time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency plans about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age” Phil Chapman, geophysicist.
See Agmates article that talks about last year global temperatures recording the fastest temperature change (Down 0.7 degrees C) in recorded history.
Well said on both comments Ian. I would enjoy a beer and a yarn with you someday
Thanks, Doug. I suspect I might enjoy both the beer and the yarn.
Just to clarify for Steve and others, the reason we got from feeding the world to a carbon tax on livestock is that, whether we like it or not, the scientists have linked them both. And the fact that the government might leave agriculture out of the loop for a few years is of no consequence because these so-called agricultural emissions will still be included in the national greenhouse accounts. And the longer they stay there, and the harder the carbon tax measures bite in the wider community, the more certain it will become that we will be dragged into the mire on unfavourable terms.
Just as a reminder, a tonne of burped methane is deemed to be the equivalent of 20 tonnes of CO2. And that 20 tonnes of CO2 amounts to 5.5 tonnes of pure carbon and about 11 tonnes or cubic metres of wood.
And it has been the obvious intent of those who developed the carbon accounting framework that farmers, having been taxed for the methane burped by the cows that someone else will (must) eat, will need to set aside sufficient new land to grow the 11 tonnes of wood needed to cover the methane tax. Note, their plan was for new land to be taken because the wood grown in your existing forest will not be counted.
I am not certain how much methane is burped by a breeder and calf each year but we do know that only a third of a herd is sold in a normal year (if there was such a thing). And that means that each animal sold will need to cover the burp tax of three animals, not just itself.
And we also know from Bill Burrows that most of the rangelands subject to thickenning will add about 1m3 of wood/hectare each year. So we are looking at about 11ha of annual thickenning that must remain uncleared to cover each tonne of burped methane. But that would only be post 1990 thickenning. If not then it will need to be new thickenning on your existing cleared land.
So this is one of a number of reasons why I say they can talk all they want about farmers feeding the world and saving the planet but it means absolutely nothing if any of this stuff is implemented.
Farmers are eternal optimist and the greatest gamblers on earth,when I look back at the last seven years and the money and labour we have spent on our farm and for so little return I wonder why I do it. I really do hope that the human race can come out of the virtual age and finally appreciate what the farmers of this country are trying to do.
For the last eleven years we have been using natural mineral based fertilizer on our farm with great results,I believe we have survived this long drought and our country is in good shape because we have been putting minerals back into our soils.
It would help farmers enormously if Governments State and Federal would get off our backs and give us a helping hand.
As farmers divided we fall and now the Federal Government wants to do away with our right to market our grain as a group, the single desk marketing has in the past been our only way to put a decent price on our grain.
We care about our land and look after it. It would be nice to know someone out there appreciates what we are doing!.
Linden Baker.
G’day Linden,
Well said!
It’s just a pity that at times farmers and their State representative bodies are the own worst enemy. You’ll see an article later today and I’ll link it in HERE when I publish it that the Wheat growers poll showed 80% of wheat growers who responded to Tony Windsors Single desk wheat poll voted they wanted to keep it.
But the Pastoralist and Graziers Association PGA in Western Australia is calling on Prime Minister Rudd & Ag Minister Tony Burke to ignore the poll result - I mean Ahhh, can you figure that one out - especially when they hardly respresent any wheat growers in that state?
Their (being governments and the gullible public) chickens are coming home to roost. Farmers are reaching the age of retirement (much more than the 65 years of other retirees) and the younger family members, in general, are not interested in continuing farming in the current political and economic climate. So farmers are selling to any one they can, including tree growers, conservationists, governments for national parks etc, all non producers of food. And they will soon be feeling the food shortage as is the rest of the world, especially if there is an event that interferes with importation of food from overseas.
The big danger is that the hard earned skills for farming, learned from experience and not from a book, will be lost to a generation, and it will take many years for them to be regained.
Judy
You hit the nail on the head. As a young woman determined to have a career in agriculture I have faced no end of drawbacks.
Firstly I had to apply interstate to study Agriculture at a tertiary level, they only teach environmental science at Charles Darwin University. When qualified if I wanted to work for DPI in the NT I probably wouldn’t get a job as it is shutting down as fast as it can.
CSIRO in Darwin has no interest in the pastoral industry, preferring to demonize our pasture and ridicule our land management practices.
Then there is the ever changing face of the outback instead of family run stations and the like, we are seeing more and more tree-farmers and conservation areas and big corporate companies owning land.
I am fortunate that I can stay home and work our property and that I had the benefit of learning the old ways as well.
Many of our environmentalists did not know anything about the bush till they went to University (age 18+)and became qualified. I have spent my whole life in the bush, and it has been a huge part of my existence. I have a very deep connection with the land, particularly from an agricultural aspect.
Now would Australian farmers and graziers like myself be better at growing food from the land we know and respect?
Or would an environmentalist with absolutely no knowledge of farming or grazing but a vast knowledge of natural resource management be better equipped to help feed the world??