We are finally getting the message that Australia needs to look after its farmers into the mainstream media.
Respected Australian Newspaper Senior Journalist Dennis Shanahan writes this article with these headlines:
Farmers Need our Support
Food security is a bigger ethical issue, because of it’s immediacy, than addressing greenhouse gas emissions.
Dennis Shanahan [pictured] is right across the issues when he writes:
Right now, food security – the ability to be able to supply food not only for ourselves but also for countries that can’t produce enough – is a bigger ethical issue than addressing greenhouse gas emissions because of its immediacy.
Ironically, famine is listed as one of the side effects of climate change. And, unlike the impact of an emissions trading scheme on energy-intensive industries, which won’t be felt until 2010, there is legislation, regulations and government policies that are having a direct and immediate effect on food production in Australia.
Popular opposition to genetically modified crops and food, tax breaks for forests as carbon sinks and billions being spent on buying back farmers’ water rights are threatening Australia’s agricultural output.
Throw in animal rights’ groups campaigns against a slew of animal husbandry practices – from sheep mulesing and live exports to battery pigs and hens – and Australia’s farmers, beaten into the dust by drought and environmental demands, can be excused for feeling desperate and despairing.
I think Dennis in this article has captured the exact theme that we have been writing about here at Agmates and here on Crikey for the last 12 months.
Read the article, its a beauty, its accurate and well researched. It gets the message out to Urban Australia that the way we are going as a nation pursuing rabid environmental ideals we’ll finish up crippling our ability to feed ourselves.
For that wonderful piece of journalism in Australia’s best newspaper – The Australian, Dennis Shanahan wins a prestigious Agmates Onya Award.
From the Agmates Rural and regional Community a big thumbs up to Dennis for reporting it exactly as it is.
‘Onya’ Dennis.
Dennis is the 13th Winner of an Agmates ‘onya award’ and the first city based Journalist.
See list of all other ‘Onya’ award winners.
