Agmates

Central West New South Wales farmer Rob Wass writes:

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Things are quite wet down in this neck of the woods. We have had about 50mls in the previous 24 hours and about 100mls for the previous 10 days.

Interesting to note from Today’s Australian Bureau of Statistics  – GDP growth figures.

The second paragraph immediately below the first graph says this:

“On the production side, the strongest contributing industries to GDP growth (in trend volume terms) over the past four quarters was Agriculture (0.5 percentage points). The biggest detractions have come from Manufacturing (-0.8 percentage points) and Property and business services (-0.5 percentage points).”

From todays Australian Newspaper - World’s best exports may hold off recession.

AUSTRALIA has defied the collapse in world trade, achieving a growth in exports that may allow the economy to stave off recession.

China’s demand for iron ore and agricultural commodities gave Australia the world’s best export performance in the first three months of the year.

Trade has made its biggest contribution to Australia’s growth since June 1961 and may lift the March-quarter GDP into positive territory.

Agricultural exports are also doing well, rising by 18.2 per cent, with a big jump in wheat exports and strong sales of both meat and wool.

So the question is:

If “Agriculture” has kept Australia out of recession amidst the biggest global recession since the “Great Depression” then why is it that our politicians, in searching for preferences, along with the greens, why are they kicking agriculture to death ?

Of course, this is assuming that there is any life left in agriculture after having been kicked about for so long with the list of atrocities against farmers and their land bigger than the Nullarbor Plain.

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Have Your Say!

Below  is National Party Leader in the Senate – QLD Senator Barnaby Joyce’s speech to the National Press Club in Canberra today. I call this the speech the National Party Manifesto. A brilliant piece that succinctly sets out the future role of the National party in Australian Politics.

In my opinion this speech is proof that Senator Barnaby Joyce is a once in a life time Politician, blessed not only with an extraordinary intellect but an enormous dose of common sense. The following is a 4,500 word essay / commentary of Australian politics, political party’s, the demise of State governments,  and commentary of Labors handling of the Australian economy and our national indebtedness, the ETS, the ACCC, and much more. An fascinating, enlightening and enthralling read.

You’ll want to email this onto everybody you know.

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Senator Barnaby Joyce
Leader of the Nationals in the Senate

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB OF AUSTRALIA

ADDRESS : MONDAY 11 MAY 2009

After the last election – and I believe for the 16th successive poll going back to the 1969 Coalition victory – learned opinion-writers commented on the twilight of our Party.

And the time-honoured retort from a National Party politician in that circumstance is of course to note that we’re still here, and that one ought to check the pulse before pronouncing on the corpse.

Well, I’m not going to do that. The 2007 Federal election loss was a devastating event for the Federal National Party, not only because it saw us out of Government in every single jurisdiction in Australia, but because it underlined the drift from our Party’s history and traditions that we permitted for a decade or more in the name of unity.

It is also a low ebb in terms of our representation, exacerbated by three key features of our electoral performance since the end of the Fraser Government:

1. the loss of long-term strongholds to independents who in some cases express our traditional Party values better than we have;
2. the departure of Members to independent status, on at least one occasion because of a feeling that we had betrayed our heritage;
3. the concession of core seats to the Liberal Party, from who we had become insufficiently distinct or losses of blue collar conservatives who prefer Labor to a mute National or suburban Liberal.

In Australia there is a highly powerful political force. It has no name but it is instrumental in the determination of every election result. It has no policies but its desires are analysed and reanalysed and mused over and assumed and purported. It runs no candidates in elections nor does it have a party machine, yet everyone aspires and claims that they represent it.

In fact, this political force is the epicentre of our Nation and it lies at the heart of our system of government. That force has been brought about by the right and obligation of all to vote in elections.

In a country where voting is compulsory you do not have to inspire people to get out of bed to vote – they have to or they get fined. The trick is to somehow harness that vote, particularly the swinging voters. The swinging voters are the key to electoral victory.

The challenge for a major political party is to cultivate that centre group so that they swing to your beliefs or swing away from other’s mismanagement and put you and your political associates into Government.

In seeking to capture those swinging voters promises are made to win Government and then broken once elected where expedient to do so to stay in Government.

Playing only to the centre however has its dangers. In the desire to be opaque, lukewarm, inoffensive and passionately politically tepid, there are flanks that open up to the left and to the right of the centre.

The Labor Party strategy is very adroit in that their flank is covered by their able lieutenant, the Greens, who orchestrate political pas de deuxs on issues where it is inconceivable that the right could outflank them on the far left.

But when it really counts, that is election time, and on crucial pieces of legislation as seen in the stimulus package and alcopops tax, the Greens can be completely relied on to support the Labor Party. Good luck to the left in that they have a very clever political formula – this formula helped the Labor Party get 43% of the vote and win an election.

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America’s giant Monsanto corporation is currently lodging patent applications in 159 countries to patent the Pig.

Unbelievable I know, but if Monsanto is granted the patent in the USA every other country may follow. That means farmers across the world will have to pay Monsanto a fee every time they sell a pig.

Patenting living organisms is already settle case law in the USA.

They already have this sort of control with genetically modified seed and plants. Patenting is all about control. Monsanto wants to own the world wide patents for our food. The patent is not just for pigs it is for their offspring. Every time a pig has a piglet it is a ‘patent violation’ and the farmer has to pay Monsanto for it.

Here is the first of a 5 part video series  that documents Monsanto’s ambitious plan to control food from the seed and field to the fork.

I will publish the next 4 videos over the next 4 days. Or you can watch them now here.

Thanks to Agmates member PhonyID

Monsanto Patent for a Pig (Pt.1 of 5)

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If you watched the video and were as alarmed as I was, please email this article onto every farmer on your contact data base. We need to inform farmers everywhere.

Here is a tiny URL for copying and pasting a link to this page into your email for sending onto your friends.

http://tinyurl.com/dm3qo7

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Have Your say!

How did this happen? Just two decades ago it was a badge of honour to say that you were a farmer.

The pride of being a landholder who fed and clothed a nation and indeed a fair portion of the world was worth boasting about. Indeed  even if you made the transition to the city to work it was ’something’ to tell others that your family was on the land.

Not so today. If your in the city and someone as what you do, and you mention the words farm or farming, you can see it in their face,

“Environmental vandal, destroying the environment to make your grubby money.”

By and by the Green movement have propagated this myth with such success over the last two decades that urban Australians now believe it to be true that:

“(Farming): has exhausted the soil, and yields of crops have collapsed; it has caused massive erosion; it has polluted some rivers, made many others salty and used all the water from the rest; its animals make methane, a main cause of global warming; clearing the land has made too many species extinct; put simply, we shouldn’t have come here – we should have left it to the Aborigines who were so much more in harmony with the land than we are.”

What Australian farming and its farmers need is an ongoing and long term public relations campaign to turn this around.

But who will do it? None of the National farmer organizations can or will.

There are a reported 130,000 farmers in Australia. If they all chipped in $200 that would raise $26 million a year for such a campaign. You don’t need to use that money on great offices and buildings full of people. You don’t see the Greens, the Wilderness Society, Greenpeace with great office towers.

No it just needs to be used on the PR campaign. Farming and farmers are in a life and death struggle with the Green minority. As long as the Greens win the PR war, farmers will lose.

It could be done. What do you think?

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Have Your say!

Northern Territory grazier Rashida Khan [pictured] writes:

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The average person only reads the info that’s right in their face. That’s how elections are won (or lost) and products sell. You have to remind people that we are here and also what it is we do.

Farmers usually think that people know where their food comes from and would also have the time to go looking for alternate info to the green propaganda they read. But they don’t. They don’t have time nor incentive so we must take the message to them!

I live on the outskirts of a small town and I still find people who think graziers and farmers are either environmental vandals or they are lovely old people with a milking cow, a couple of pigs, half a dozen chooks and some sheep (yes even in the NT) oh and don’t forget old Dobbin the Clydesdale.

Now that image is straight out of a kiddies picture book which sadly was probly the last time that person saw an image of a farm (that wasn’t screaming land clearing, river silting..look what their doing now!)

Its not hard to also campaign at a local level. Just by talking to your relations and urban friends you can raise awareness of agricultural procedures, restrictions and standards.

Every little helps and its time for agriculture to put its self back on the map.

Everyone needs to get involved! Dont sit there thinking “you know someone should do something”. That someone is you! (I mean that in a very broad sense)

We are all busy people and we all have a lot on our mind but the saying goes, if you want something done then ask a busy person!

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Have Your say!

Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Australian Senate writes:
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The Agriculture Minister Mr Burke appears to be the minister for empathy not action. On Sky News Agenda this morning Mr Burke said one of the reasons for the increase in supermarket prices is input prices for farmers.

This would suggest that farmers are price makers not price takers. Mr Burke has conveniently avoided the facts of the matter which are that farmers are getting less and less for their produce, but consumers are paying more and more at the checkout.

Input prices for things such as fertiliser and chemicals have gone through the roof but farmers are unable to pass on these extra costs to the prices they get from the major supermarket chains.

It is just implausible to suggest, as Mr Burke did, that this is one of the reasons the price of groceries has gone up. In fact the prices farmers get for dairy products have gone down so when major retailers put prices of milk up, they are not covering the price of the farmers’ inputs they are just increasing their margins.

For Mr Burke to suggest something else on Sky Agenda is misleading. Here are the facts. As far as Mr Burke’s concerns about fertiliser and chemical prices he should be doing all he can to break up the market concentration in the fertiliser industry that is causing farmers to have to bear the higher prices for inputs.

And Mr Burke and his Government shouldn’t stop there. They need to deal quickly with the market dominance of the major supermarket chains which gives farmers less for their produce, but keeps charging consumers higher retail prices.

The margins farmers are getting are going down, but the margins of the major supermarket chains are going up. In addition, the European Union is increasing subsidies and subsidised products are pushing Australian products off the supermarket shelves.

The public are not able to discern the difference because of our weak country of origin labelling laws. Consumers are being exploited because of the overcentralised retail market with higher retail prices.

The farmers are being exploited because the same retail pair dominates the prices they get and Mr Burke, the Minister for Agriculture, is doing diddley-squat about it.

To add insult to injury, Mr Burke is part of the government process of implementing an Emissions Trading Scheme which will have immense cost implications for rural produce processors such as milk processing, abattoirs and sugar mills. These costs will not be worn by anybody else but the farmer and so they are further squeezed by Rudd Labor Government policy.

As our farm sector goes out of business and is replaced by imports Australia loses its capacity of food sovereignty at a time of great international economic uncertainty. We rely more and more on others to feed us.

That is the policy outcome Mr Rudd and Mr Burke are giving to Australia in the agriculture portfolio.

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(Note: No Link to The Sky News Agenda – Its a 22m download and on ADSL 2 it says it takes 22 minutes – Forget it).

Have Your Say!

Australia’s Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry John Cobb [pictured] writes:

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The Australian dairy industry was facing a horrible start to the year with some of the nation’s largest dairy processors slashing the farm-gate prices to dairy farmers by up 40 percent, a loss of around $200,000 a year for individual dairy farmers with a 300 cow herd.

The dramatic price cuts were a disaster for the industry and the Rudd Government must ensure the 11 cents per a litre levy on milk which is set to expire on the 22 February is past back to farmers and consumers.

I am extremely concerned that the 11c a litre levy which was placed on fresh milk sales in Australia to help the industry adjust to deregulation will be swallowed up by the retail sector and neither the consumers nor the farmers will see any of it.

Victoria has to date been the hardest hit as it is the nations largest exporter of dairy products and it is the export market which has been hit very hard because buyers are unable to access credit.

However, the Rudd Government is set to compound the current problems facing the industry by scrapping a critical 40 percent rebate on AQIS export certification costs, worth at least $35 million a year and the dairy industry will be particularly hard hit by the Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme with initial estimates showing the ETS will cost the individual dairy farmers upwards of $12,000 a year,

I am appalled at the The European Unions decision to reintroduce subsidies for its dairy producers:

From next month, the European Commission will establish an “intervention” or floor price of $US2909 a tonne for butter compared to the current global price of $US1800-$2000 a tonne, with a similar premium on milk powders.

European dairy traders will also be able to apply for an “export refund” from the commission to cover the shortfall between the domestic intervention price and what they receive in the global market for butter, cheese and milk powders.

Analysts fear that given the EU supplies a third of the world’s dairy exports, the global price will now be capped at the EU domestic price minus the export subsidy.’

The EU likes to pretend that it is doing something about poverty and global food security, yet it is the EU’s policies and agricultural subsidies which have been identified as a major reason for the appalling poverty in many African, South American and Asian nations.

Kevin Rudd has spent more time attending international conferences than he has in rural and regional Australian, yet has failed miserably when it comes to getting rid of market distorting subsidies.

I only hope that in with the current financial crisis a trade war does not break out with the US now indicating it may follow the EU’s lead, further damaging Australia’s export industries.

As the Australian Dairy Farmers president Allan Burgess [pictured] recently stated;

“We’ve been belted by the global financial crisis and now belted by the European Union …

On top of that we have (Federal Government) policies on emissions trading that will flow back to the farm gate plus a cost-shifting policy on quarantine that will cost agriculture an extra $40m a year.”

Mr Cobb said Australia needs a strong dairy industry, which in recent years has added billions of dollars to the Nations export earnings and supports thousands of jobs and businesses, just like the car industry which is set to receive over $6 billion of taxpayer support our dairy industry is a vital component in the Australian economy.

Last year the Rudd Government cut more $1 billion in rural and regional program spending, targeted drought funding and cut back infrastructure spending, country Australians are wondering when the Rudd Government will start supporting our home grown industries and jobs.

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Have Your Say!

Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:

I’m feeling like Winston Churchill must have felt when Neville Chamberlain was British PM and his and the governments policy of the day was to avoid war by appeasing Adolf Hitler.

I keep banging on about the importance of food security whilst our governments and peak farm organizations over the last 3 decades up to the current orchestrate the greatest routing our primary production industries this nation has ever seen.

A new report just released by the UN says:

By 2030 it is estimated that cereal production must increase by 30% and meat production by 80% to meet the demands of a global population of more than eight billion people.

The report The Vital Ingredient: Chemical science & engineering for sustainable food was released at Britain’s House of Commons by Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Hilary Benn.

Professor Peter Lilford is the chairman of the working group that prepared the report. He said:

The countries that are less technologically advanced and those that rely most heavily on food imports will be the first to suffer. It will be survival of the fittest.

Last year we saw riots in Bangladesh and Morocco because of food shortages.

As I’ve written here, here,  here and here Australia is rapidly heading in exactly that direction. Our Free Trade and environmental policy are crippling our Agriculture industry. We have lost 11,000 family farmers in just the last decade.

We only have 130,000 farmers left feeding a population of 21.5 million and many of those are struggling financially to stay in business. This is what we are doing -

• Tree clearing bans have effectively capped the amount of available arable land,

• carbon sink forests will lock up a further 84 million acres of highly fertile agricultural land over the next four decades,

• the governments environmental water buyback policy will cut agricultural production from the Murray Darling (the nations food bowl) by 50% over the next two decades,

• the emissions trading scheme with force 1,000 of productive food producers who are not in high rainfall areas where they can grow trees for carbon off the land,

• pursuing Free Trade policy is driving our productive farmers off the land.

• The government is slashing funding to Agricultural Research.

Any country that has an abundance of arable agricultural land that winds up not being able to feed itself is indeed the Stupidest nation on earth.

I feel like Winston Churchill (though I don’t delude myself for a nano second that I am even worthy to make such a comparison) warning of something that’s obvious, imminent and a real threat to our nations security, but no one is listening.

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Have Your say!

Farming is a hazardous occupation at the best of times. Developments at the Noosa hinterland Macadamia Nut farm and fish hatchery mean that we all need to take a very close look at the pesticides and fungicides we use in Agricultural production.

EVIDENCE has emerged of a possible cancer cluster next to the Queensland hatchery where bizarre double-headed fish embryos have been discovered.

All four households backing on to Cooloothin Creek near the Noosa River-based Sunland Fish Hatchery and a large macadamia plantation have had a cancer death or a cancer diagnosis since fish deformities and deaths began about four years ago.

Sunland Fish Hatchery foreman Bernard Gevers has just begun treatment for suspected bowel cancer.

“When I see what’s happening with the fish hatchery and read about the chemicals being used, it leaves me with a very large suspicion it’s from agricultural chemicals,” he said.

Roger Arbuckle, the owner and former operator of the plantation — he handed it to another manager last year — is himself in remission from prostate cancer. He emphasised there was no conclusive link between the cancers and the agrichemicals.

Personally my brother Justin cannot tolerate any exposure to organophospates after prolonged exposure to Luci-Jet as a kid, jetting sheep.

A good mate of mine passed away from Pancreatic cancer in his early 50’s. We all reckon it was caused by years of exposure to chemicals used in spraying cattle for ticks. Before he was diagnosed every time he sprayed cattle, he would be crook for days.

Whilst it has to be done, it is never pleasant using any pesticide or fungicide in food production. We really must do better than this to protect the lives of those that work on the land and have to use these  chemicals. Those that cannot be used safely should be banned.

Have Your say!

There’s no way Independent senator Nick Xenophon will support the Rudd governments emission trading scheme in its current form.

Senator Xenophon [pictured] said the Government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would lead to a massive churn of funds from industry and households to government and back as compensation, as well as higher-than-anticipated costs.

He pointed to modelling by Melbourne consultants Frontier Economics to warn that the CPRS could collect up to $80billion a year that would need to be reallocated.

“The scheme is all stick and no carrot,” he said.

“If the design is wrong, we shouldn’t do it.”

What hope has Australian Agriculture got of surviving the adverse impacts of the emissions trading scheme with our current Agriculture minister Tony Burke saying this in defending the ETS proposal:

“We’ve got the balance there in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to make sure that industries can deal with the challenges of the transition whilst making sure that Australia is part of the economy of the future and can credibly argue for significant emissions reductions for the major emitters around the world,

” Mr Burke [pictured] said.

That ‘balance’ the minister speaks of is turning 84 million acres of prime agricultural land into carbon sink forests and wiping out our livestock industry. Under the proposed emissions trading scheme, in 10 years time we won’t need a minister for agriculture, they can replace that with a minister for trees.

Have your say!