Agmates

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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Northern Territory Grazier John Khan writes:

G’day fellow Agmates. My family are cattle farmers in the Batchelor area 100km South of Darwin in the Northern Territory (NT). This region has the most intensive growth of Gamba grass in the Top End.

There is an assured rainfall every year and it could be one of the most productive areas in Australia, but we have always suffered from the governments’ apathy and stubborn resistance.

(Photo of John Khan out checking cattle on his families property ‘Kita Lagoon’.)

I came to the Top end more than 40years ago after working on stations in others parts of NT, Western QLD and Northern SA. At that time cattle grazing was not very successful in the Top End.

The carrying capacity was very low due to the useless native grasses (predominantly Spear Grass) and the long Dry season, and the cattle were stunted and un-thrifty.

(This is a photo of native Spear Grass (sorghum intrans) which is the most worthless weed in the Top End.)

Three things have allowed grazing cattle to become a viable business in the Northern Territory

1. The introduction of Bos Indicus cattle:

(Steers Grazing out from Supplement Feeder on our property Kita Lagoon.)

2. Supplementary feeding of cattle (especially with urea) as seen in the photo above.

and
3. The introduction of the improved tropical pasture Gamba grass.

(These are our cattle grazing on Gamba Grass at Kita Lagoon.)

There was not much Gamba around twenty years ago but since then it has spread naturally over a large area replacing the native Spear grass.

(Below is Gamba Grass under Grazing conditions in the Northern Territory.)

About ten years ago a group of people formed a conspiracy to eradicate farming in Northern Australia, and return the savanna to a “pristine” wilderness.

These radicals hid under the cloaks of the Darwin University, CSIRO and the multitude of government departments and other organizations calling themselves conservationists.

They knew that the only way to realize their goal was to use “the salami slicing” method and they selected “land clearing” for the first slice.

This stopped new farms being developed but it did not affect the farms already cleared so the second slice was Gamba.

(Our Cattle love Gamba grass. See in this photo how around this watering point they are eating it under the fence of the adjoining paddock.)

Gullible local residents were steadily brainwashed with lies and propaganda about Gamba grass and then a wonderful opening presented itself to them.

A Batchelor rural resident, John Earthrowl, on a twenty acre block had a bush fire stopped fifty meters from his house. He blamed Gamba for the fire and made a lot of noise so the radicals set him up as the front man. Earthrowl organized and chaired a meeting in Batchelor to discuss what should be done with Gamba.

The meeting was totally set up, orchestrated and rehearsed with many of the speakers being radical. They whipped up hysteria with their outrageous lies and prophecies and the radicals shot out of the cupboard.

They enlisted the aid of the loony left, the suburban trendies, the poison pumpers and the hungry media and the campaign started in earnest.

My grand daughter Rashida and I had been researching Gamba for some time so we hit the Minister for Environment and the Government departments concerned with enough facts and information to almost shut them up for two years.

For example one of the lies they propagate is that Gamba is totally invasive, choking out every other species of grass. Gamba forms about 30% of the pasture mixture on our property. Here is a photo of Gamba co - existing with Stylo (a legume) on Kita Lagoon.

Under pressure from these anti - farming, anti development green groups Western Australia which has practically no Gamba at all, brought in legislation to ban and eradicate it.

Now these same groups are pressuring the Queensland Queensland Government to do the same.

The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland has teamed up with the Queensland Conservation Council and the Wilderness Society demanding that the Queensland government declare Gamba a noxious weed. Click here to see their current Newsletter article declaring Gamba Grass as “Australia’s Worst Weed”

If Gamba is declared a weed they will go for the next slice- probably Buffel, then Leucaena, Calopo, Stylo, Para grass until every useful pasture grass is banned. Be warned, their real agenda is to rid Northern Australia of Agriculture.

THESE RADICAL “WEED WARRIORS” MUST BE STOPPED NOW!!

John Khan

Have your say - Should the Queensland Government cave into the outrageous demands of radical green Conservation groups or listen to the responsible view of farmers and farm lobby groups like AgForce? Tell us what you think? - leave a comment.