Agmates

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

Governments World wide are finding they need to be very careful about the policies and legislations introduce that impact upon their farmers. Governments are discovering that it’s citizens are incredibly sensitive to food security.

Argentina

Striking farmers are using tractors to blockade roads nationwide in a bitter 100 day stand off with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. The blockades have lead to shortages of eggs, chicken, beef in supermarkets and fuel across the country.

Picture #1 - Argentine farmers line up tractors and blockade roads across the country.

In March President Fernandez raised Soy export taxes on farmers by 10% to a whopping 42%. Since then farmers and protesters lead by the very powerful farmers organization Argentine Rural Society have blockaded roads and streets across the country.

President Fernandez, who took office just six months ago, has likened the farmers to ‘Coup Leaders’ who are attempting to overthrow her government in an ‘Economic Coup’. President Fernandez’s has seen her voter approval rating plummet from over 50% before the dispute to just 20%.

Argentina’s accounts for nearly 3 percent of global food exports and it is one of the world’s top exporters of soy, corn, wheat and beef.

An estimated 3-4 million Argentines took to the streets on Monday to protest against the government’s handling of a tense three-month standoff with farmers over export taxes.

There are fears that the ongoing dispute will force Argentina Latin America’s No. 3 economy into recession.

Spain

Thursday the 19th June. Thousands of Spanish farmers protest in Madrid against fuel price hikes. Soaring costs and low prices for the produce are driving them out of business. Spanish farmers are demanding lower diesel tax to cope with record fuel prices.

Spaniards are facing fuel and food shortages as a result of a nationwide strike by the country’s truck drivers who are supporting farmers in the protest against high fuel prices.

Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Belgium

Earlier this month Dairy Farmers for the 1st time in Europe banded together in a milk delivery boycott that saw large supermarkets run out of milk.

German dairy farmers began a protest action to secure higher prices for their produce. The farmers were paid 35cents a litre which was well below their cost of production and they were going broke. Farmers all over the country poured milk down drains in a boycott of dairy factories.

Swiss farmers, too, poured milk down the drains in support strike action demanding an increase for higher farm- gate prices.

Similar declaration of solidarity had come from counterparts in Belgium after Germans appealed to farmers outside Germany not to fill the shortfall. The German farmers were demanding a farm-gate price of 40 euro cents (62 dollar cents) a litre for milk.

It was estimated that 70,000 of Germany’s 100,000 dairy farms joined the boycott. The farmers blamed powerful dairy companies for depressing the farm-gate price of milk. They said they are being choked by increased costs, namely the rise in the price of fuel.

The Boycott ended after 10 days when large Supermarket chains agreed to increase farm gate prices by 10 cents for producers.

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Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

The United States and South Korean Governments yesterday caved into people power and agreed to revise the terms of their beef exports agreement as South Korean protesters continue to demand a ban on beef exports from the U.S.

Until now the US government had refused to renegotiate the agreement stuck on the 18th of April. The agreement gave USA beef open access to South Korea and was pivotal to a US-SK Free Trade agreement signed by Pro US Korean President Lee Myung-Bak who only came to power at the end of February.

As a result of almost daily demonstrations that grew as large as 80,000 people (pictured above), Lee replaced all his top advisers and his entire Cabinet also has offered to resign.

In the last week protesters have been calling on President Lee to resign as public confidence in his government plunges.

Protesters have been furious that their government had caved into U.S demands and had failed to consider the public concern about the health risks.

Under the revised deal, the South Korea will only accept beef from cattle aged less than 30 months. Younger cattle are believed to be less prone to mad cow disease. The new restrictions are set to start Monday.

The revised deal is good news for the Australian beef industry that has enjoyed boom trade with the 50 million beef loving population of South Korea since it banned U.S beef in 2003 following the discovery of mad cow disease in the U.S herd.

The U.S had been playing hard ball and refusing to renegotiate the deal. However unrelenting pressure from the people, that if not addressed could ultimately have lead to the down fall of the Korean government has lead them to the back down.

The U.S have until now refused to renegotiate believing any back down because it would set a precedent for other countries to back out of unpopular trade agreements and make it almost impossible to get countries like Japan to drop it’s U.S beef trading restrictions.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a press release:

“The implications of this agreement set an unfortunate precedent for U.S. beef trade with Korea and other countries.”

This is proof that populations of the world are very sensitive about food security. All governments need to be very careful about the policies and legislations they make and the impact those decisions have upon their citizens. Governments who ignore these sensitivities do so at their own peril.
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Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

Lazy & arrogant legislation making by an all powerful QLD Labor Government will create a huge flow on of bureaucratic costs that will pass all the way from food producers to consumers. This is an example of poor government in any form.

Last week saw the passing of the Transport Amendment Bill in the QLD Parliament. The passing of this bill Bill in Queensland will now pave the way for it to be legislated in every state of Australia.

The legislation due to come into effect in September this year means that all those involved in the food chain from farmers, agents, processors, wholesalers, retailers and private citizens will face fines and court action if they cannot correctly read a heavy transport drivers log book.

Considering that a large number of the states police cannot comprehend a truck Drivers log book this is a bizarre law by any standard.

The cost to industry and the state tax payer to incorporate the duplicate layers of systems and documented procedure will be millions of dollars. Those cost will either be borne by producers (who have no ability to pass them on) or in the end by consumers in supermarkets.

Passing this legislation with these flaws and prohibitive costs is just lazy out of touch governing by a party that due to its huge majority of seats, treats the opposition and the good hard working people of Queensland in the food - production / transport/ processing and retail sectors with contempt.

Despite well researched and impassioned pleas from the opposition benches Transport Minister John Mickel (pictured) and his Labor colleagues rammed this costly and impractical legislation through the parliament.

Not only did Labor use its huge majority in the Single House State Parliament to pass the bill, it also used it to cut short the debate.

With plain bloody mindedness, Mr Mickel the member for Logan (no food producers there to trouble himself with) and his Labor colleagues ignored numerous concerns voiced by Liberal, National and Independent Members on behalf of all Queenslanders involved in the food production chain.

On reading the Hansard of the day those concerns had been expessed on behalf of Queensland farmers by Agmates and AgForce and various members of the Livestock trucking Industry. Click here to read an extract from the evenings proceedings up to the final vote.

Agmates feature article last week “Log Book Legislation could See farmers Jailed” brought to light many of the difficulties that this legislation would impose on food producers.

Independent Member for Gladstone Liz Cunningham (pictured) read the Agmates article in its entirety to the house and asked the minister to respond directly to the questions we raised in his reply.

Minister John Mickel failed to address those issues in his reply and was bought to task my Liberal the Deputy Leader:

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Tim Nichol:

“A number of people have referred to a report released by Agmates, which I also have looked at. The Agmates report refers to a consignor being held responsible for manslaughter.

As I read the legislation, the chain of responsibility—and for the sake of clarity I would ask the minister to say yes or no to this—only relates to offences under this legislation.

Mr MICKEL:

“I will clarify it. The member is asking a fair question that he should take back to his constituents. The advice given to me in relation to that offence is that that would not happen.“

(Agmates: Is that a yes or no? That was government legal advise. It is not difficult to obtain differing legal opion on any range of legislation. I’m guessing that no one will really know until it’s tested in the courts.)

Tim Nichols:

“Clause 61 is one that has excited considerable comment and has been the subject of a number of releases and comments by AgForce in particular which seeks to remove section 150AB(1)(d)(v) and (vi). Subsection (1)(d)(v) and (vi) states—
rules requiring any or all of the following persons to ensure drivers of fatigue regulated heavy vehicles comply with a regulation under this part—
(v) consignors or consignees of goods in the vehicles;
(vi) loading managers of goods in the vehicles.

Effectively it is a regulation-making power that enables the government, through a regulation, to set rules about what a consignor or consignee or a loading manager must do in order to ensure compliance with the fatigue management rules.

I would like the minister to clarify that that is, in fact, the purpose of it…..

John Mickel:

The member has asked three questions. I am advised that the answer to the first question that the member asked is yes.

In relation to the example that the member gave, as part of the education process we will be giving advice to people in the industry on the codes and procedures to assist them.

This is very much part of the education process…….

In essence if you now are the consignor (sender / loader) or the receiver (unloading) you are required by legislation to take all reasonable steps to ensure the truck driver is compliant with his Fatigue management hours. The only way to do this is too check his log book.

Opposition MP’s Tim Nichols, Vaughan Johnson, Mike Horan, Liz Cunningham and Shane Knuth all spoke at lenght on behalf of Rural & Regional Queenslander’s.

They raised many issues of the impracticality of parts of the legislation from caretakers & junior Jackeroos receiving cattle late at night, to city people loading a furniture removal van etc. They may as well have saved their breathe.

Mr Mickel’s response was that the government will train us all and as long as we can prove in court we have taken resonable steps, there will be no convictions.

Mr MICKEL:

I will try to take the members through a couple of things in my non-legal way. I guess the defence is ‘reasonable steps’. (The minister is talking about defending yourself in court) —

Where a person did not know—would be a defence of a reasonable step.

There is no capacity to influence the outcome, so that would be a reasonable defence.

If an offence under standard hours could have been avoided if the driver had taken a short break, it is a defence if the driver can prove that at the time when the driver was required to take the short rest there was no suitable rest place. I think that covers what both members were saying—that the park was full, the guy was not there, whatever.

It is also a defence if the driver took the short rest break at the next suitable rest place available after this time on the forward route of the driver’s journey. In a situation where he goes to pull in and it is full or unsuitable, it is a defense if he can prove that.

There has to be an attempt to influence illegal behaviour or a breaking of fatigue management—or to reasonably know that what you were doing was in defiance of the fatigue management.

It was apparent from the number of Labor MP’s that spoke in favor of the Bill that constituents with grave concerns only speak to opposition MP’s as not one of the Labor MP’s who spoke raised a single negative issue with the Bill.

What QLD Labour has created with this legislation is that each and every producer, agent, processor, wholesaler, retailer and private citizen will now have to be a sudo Main Roads Traffic cop.

Every business in the State will have to have a system / code / procedure in place for the loading and unloading of all heavy transport vehicles (anything over 12 tonne) and checking drivers log books.

With those systems in place when the driver of the truck you just loaded or unloaded gets booked for a log book infringement and your infringement notice automatically arrives in the mail (as the last person to check the log book), you’ll be able to head off to court with your documentation under your arm to demonstrate to the magistrate that you should not have to pay the fine.

You’ll need to be able to prove to the magistrate with documentation that you took ‘reasonable steps’ to ensure the drivers log book was correctly completed.

Heavy haul truck drivers are one of the most heavily policed professionals in the state. They are regularly pulled over and fined for mistakes as simple as a spelling error in log books. Would I be cynical to think that the government will now be able to double dip on the fines. They get the truckie and now they get the Consignor or Consignee as well.

Link to complete Hansard recording from the day.

Tell us what you think. Have your say!

Ben Rees - Farmer & Economist writes:

Some extracts from a terrific article that Ben wrote as a perspective for the Courier Mail.

INTERNATIONAL discussion on the food crisis has more balance than the blatant environmental agenda pushed by Australian commentators.

Ethanol production is only one factor influencing United States and European Union food prices.

Other factors are speculators trading commodity futures, energy prices and farm input costs.

Like all policy changes, environmental policies carry opportunity costs. Land transfer from agriculture to forestry carries costs of forgone food and energy production. A land clearing ban at the expense of food production were acts of political opportunism and ideological extremism. Agmates article - Grow Trees or Grow Food.

Future food security for our growing population has become hostage to environmental extremism.

Food inflation originates from failed market economics, environmental extremism, escalating farm costs and high energy prices…………

To read Ben’s Courier Mail Article online Click Here.

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Read the article and come back and leave us your thoughts.

NSW North Coast Farmer and activist Ian Mott (pictured) writes: (Opinion)

The moralising on the supposed evils of converting grain to biofuel and pushing food prices to record levels in a soon to be hungry world has only just begun.

It has been described as nothing less than a “crime against humanity” by United Nations (UN) expert, Jean Ziegler and these sentiments were also echoed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The only thing missing were the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, but give them time, they are only just warming up yet.

Just be sure to take it all with a grain of salt because that is a narrow minority urban view. Afterall, the majority of the world’s population are still farmers. And under the principles of universal sufferage and one vote one value, it is the farmers perspective of high food prices that should, but rarely does, prevail over the bleatings of minority urban panic merchants. Read entire article Here

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Once you have read clicked through and read Ian’s article - come back and give him your feedback on his article by firstly using the Drafting gate - Bush or Keep and leaving a comment or question for Ian.

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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Once you have read the article come back here and leave other Agmates your opinion of the article!

Leave your comment below or click on the blue word Comments and the text box will pop up.

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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Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes

Australia is indeed the “Lucky Country”. We are rich not only in our vast agricultural production, but also in Minerals and this is insulating us from four global crisies that are rocking the world.

The world is being rocked by four crisies at once: the global credit crisis; the oil crisis, with the crude price hitting US$112 a barrel; the carbon price crisis in response to global warming; and the food crisis.

Converting grain crops into ethanol instead of food has produced a global food crisis that is worse than the energy crisis, the credit crisis, or the climate change crisis.

Regular Agmates Correspondent Viv Forbes (pictured below at his farm in SE QLD) predicted this in his article “Fuelish Food Policies” published on 31/10/2007.

Nestle, the world’s biggest food and beverage company chairman and chief executive Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said, “If we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 per cent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat. To grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible,” he told the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.

The crazy global enthusiasm for ethanol, to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and curb Carbon emissions will mean by 2020 the world will be putting 400 million tonnes of grain a year into cars - equal to the entire current global rice harvest.

World bank president Robert Zoellick (pictured below congratulating Australian PM Kevin Rudd on signing the Kyoto agreement at the December 2007 Climate Change conference in Bali) said the doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100 million people into poverty. He is calling on World leaders to donate $500 million to meet the shortfall in food for the worlds poorest people which is due to increased food prices.

Food riots & protests have broken out in 10 countries out around the world. People are protesting and rioting in Haiti, Cameroon, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Italy and Egypt among others.

(Pictured below A UN peacekeeper shoots tear gas at protesters near the Haiti national palace in Port-au-Prince)

Half the world’s population still depends on rice and its price has doubled in three years and is still rising. Last week medium quality rice exported from Thailand - a de facto benchmark price - shot to US$795 a tonne, up from US$360 at the end of last year. The price is expected to reach US$1000 a tonne in three months as people who would normally eat wheat based products are turning to rice.

Fertiliser group Incitec Pivot estimates, global cereal stocks are at a record low - down to just 10 weeks production.

Ethanol production is just part of the cause of this crisis. A longer term and more difficult issue to solve is the massive increase in demand for protein - meat, eggs and milk - in developing countries, especially China.

China’s meat consumption has tripled in the past seven years. While global grain production has increased 89 per cent since 1980, production of meat, egg and milk has only increased 6.4, 11.2 and 20.8 times respectively.

It is estimated that global food output must rise by 110 per cent per over the next 40 years to meet demand.

This has to be achieved with surface water available for agriculture contracting due to city demand, arable land area is shrinking, agriculture research is declining, marine harvests are dwindling, and biofuel production is continuing to rise.

The world’s population is now growing at 200,000 per day and it’s all in the developing countries, where there is also a diet switch from grain to protein as a result of rising prosperity.

Our answer to this global challenge here in Australia is to Ban the clearing of any new land for agriculture, declare valuable tropical pastures as weeds to be eradicated, build rain dependent dams on top of highly productive farming land to provide water for urban populations and block our farmers from growing superior yielding GM crops.

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Update 17th April @ 3.55pm

Click here to see a map of where the Food Riots are happening around the world.

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Do you believe it’s the responsibility of Australian farmers to produce more and better food to help feed the 9 billion people of the planet rather than biofuels?

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