AS WE move into 2014 we are faced with a major eastern Australian drought and a Canberra rethink on agriculture.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
While some talk of Australia becoming the “food bowl for Asia” and a major export income earner, reality has seen policy that, since 1970, has left agriculture to the mercy of the free market.
Now a white paper for Australia’s agriculture and a Senate Select Committee hearing on the distribution of the meat levy are to take place.
That Senate Committee, in 2002, made eight feeble recommendations on Meat and Livestock Australia.
None were acted on.
This time, NSW Farmers cattle committee chair, Derek Schoen, has done an email questionnaire to all NSW Farmers members, which is also open to non-members to complete and return.
It is a breath of fresh air seeking much-needed new perspectives.
On the white paper, university graduates employed by farming organisations and the Department of Agriculture will be putting submissions to give guidance to Barnaby Joyce.
They have book learning and degrees, but little of the crucial “hands-on” experience.
I will make my agriculture white paper submission here, based on 60 years as a farmer and observer of Canberra policy.
There is no point in having an agricultural white paper unless the government intends to change course and take the sector seriously.
Firstly, the paper should analyse assistance to agriculture in countries that export their products.
Some examples include: government pressure on trade access; credit provision, as in the US Farm Bill and Brazil’s Development Bank; expenditure on infrastructure; legislation against monopolies gouging producers (as was done in the US Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921.)
Secondly, there should be an audit of Australian soil types, rainfall records and production patterns.
Can we feed a population of 40 to 50 million?
The Aboriginal population is estimated never to have exceeded 500,000 with its heaviest concentration in the Murray-Darling Basin.
This occurred during thousands of years and was not an accident.
Northern Australia was inspected successively by Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French and innumerable South East Asian fishing boat people.
They and the indigenous Australians did not concentrate there because of poor soil, and violent weather extremes.
Current cattlemen in the region have probably the highest bankruptcy rate in Australian agriculture.
Suggestions that it become “the food bowl of Asia” are ludicrous.
If Mr Joyce wants to make a real mark he should initiate a McKell/McEwen Snowy type project.
For example, water to the richer soils in the south with the old Bradfield scheme or flood Lake Eyre with a canal from the sea to increase south-eastern Australian rainfall.
The government rejected the proposal in 1883 saying the 400 kilometre canal would be too costly (estimated at $10 billion in 1985).
This is peanuts. Reach for the stars, Barnaby.
