SUSTAINABLE BEEF HERD
IF THE back page article regarding increasing the beef herd by 10 million (“Can we add 10m beef cattle?”, The Land, August 3, p72) was not tongue in cheek, then the writer must be living in some age past, where sustainability was not a known and lucid aim. To use feedlotting to achieve that end would be an unmitigated environmental, social and probable economic disaster.
To attempt it via acreage conversions would also be flying in the face of good practice, that suggests that climate change has intervened to help us reconstruct an industry as a sustainable, development neutral, and clean and green farming entity.
Answers to global food needs are not going to be solved by this scale of development, which increases the poverty of our neighbours.
While I am pleased producers are getting a better price for their product, at present, it is only inevitable that nature will decide on further developments, and then will producers be complaining about the drought, the bad prices, the prospects of financial ruin?
Would it not be prudent, and potentially beneficial for all to remain steady – not to get greedy – enjoy the current good situation, and bring about global change by refusing this development paradigm that only deepens a divide between the very wealthy and the very poor?
In northern NSW, it is easy to see the effects of the beef prices on the fledgling hardwood plantation industry, where many large plantations have been summarily cleared to make way for more cattle, without allowing the potential uses of the trees to be realised. I’d welcome someone with the expertise to hazard the true cost of exporting our water disguised as beef (not only a beef situation, true, any commodity also uses our water to build an export product), and also the quantities of grain that would go into a kilo of finished product.
Chris Hoare,
Upper Duck Creek.
WITHER JBAS
ON THE morning, August 8, on ABC radio North Coast, a person from the cattle council or some equally obscure organisation, confirmed that, as far as JBAS is concerned, the only people who really might get some value out of the new scheme are the people involved in the live cattle export business.
It will serve no other useful purpose. That is not to say that the concept of a biosecurity plan is not a good idea for any property, but JBAS, with its expensive and unreliable testing requirements, plus the fact that Johne’s disease has no effect on meat quality, is a separate issue.
Why have the two been combined? It means that all livestock producers will have to jump through the hoops just to save the bacon of the live cattle industry. There is a more serious cloud hanging over the live cattle export industry anyway in the form of the animal rights lobby who are like a dog with a bone on this issue and aren't going to go away.
If the pollies cave in on the live cattle export issue, JBAS will be irrelevant.
The easiest way for all the other players in the cattle industry to rid themselves of this ill-conceived proposal is to simply boycott the whole thing.
The proponents make much of the fact the program is “voluntary”. What this means is that there is no legal requirement for anyone to take part. If nobody takes part, the whole thing will wither on the vine and disappear.
Graham Turner,
South Grafton.
SHENHUA STILL A THREAT
I WISH to clarify the NSW government’s announcement about the Shenhua Watermark coal mine exploration area buyback.
The proposed mine is the same mine, same place, same size, same destructive impacts – the impacts being to the ground and surface water, the dust, the salt, the precious koalas and of course the significant Indigenous sacred sites. The impacts are identical to that of the original licence. It is frightening the severe lack of understanding these impacts pose.
Effectively nothing has changed, except the government has forked out $262 million of taxpayers’ money to Shenhua for the exploration area they were never going to mine, including the Breeza State Forest. Shenhua can now mine without virtually paying for their exploration licence.
Governments make appalling decisions from time to time. Some might describe it as shenanigans. I describe it as a disgraceful waste of money and an ill-informed announcement.
Susan Lyle,
Caroona Coal Action Group chairperson.
LAST MINUTE AMENDMENT
ALTHOUGH there is no suggestion of mischief the motion passed at NSW Farmers’ annual conference about seeking an alternative test certificate prefix for “unskirted” wool was not the same as quoted in last week’s issue of The Land.
What was quoted in The Land on August 10 was:
“That the NSW Farmers seek the establishment of an additional test certificate in relation to wool preparation, with this certificate to be applied to fleeces with a common genetic background that have not been divided on the basis of crimp or yield and where:
a) Overall quality control has required the removal of atypical fleeces such as those that are cotted or discoloured, and
b) Skirting has been limited to the removal of stains, seedy shanks and excessive vegetable matter.”
The motion actually passed at NSW Farmers’ annual conference has been recorded as follows:
“That the NSW Farmers Association seek the establishment of an additional test certificate prefix in relation to wool preparation. This alternative certificate is to be applied to fleece wools where, although they have not been skirted in accordance with the prevailing Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) Code of Practice a registered classer has been employed to remove the likes of atypical fleeces, stains, seedy shanks, jowls and any other excessive vegetable matter.”
Please accept my apologies for not drawing your attention to these differences earlier.
Although the substance of both motions may be pretty much the same to the layman some of the divergences are likely to be significant in the eyes of those with particular interests in this area.
This is perhaps not least where the presence of a registered classer is required to ensure that despite any modification in skirting there has been the effective removal of any impurities that may compromise the processing quality of the wool concerned.
It is acknowledged that the final wording to be put to conference was subject to discussion and last minute amendment.
- Alix Turner, “Wayo Inn”, Wayo via Goulburn