July 25, 2010
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has delayed the release of its science-based report on future water allocations in the basin until after the election.
Irrigators --especially Big Ag--- are gearing up to fight the deep cuts they suspect will be made to their water allocations by questioning the independence of the authority and challenging the legitimacy of the basin plan when it is finally released. The delay helps the ALP avoid the backlash from irrigators, Big Ag and the Coalition attack over water cuts. The Nationals oppose any cuts in water rights, they are antagonistic to the Authority's charter emphasis the environment as well as agriculture and rural communities, and are hostile to efforts to return more water to the environment.
BigAg is not that interested in reforming agriculture----it is a subsidised industrial agriculture is an agricbusiness built around a chemically a saturated, water guzzling, biotech, export orientated agriculture that has little time for sustainable agriculture, organic farming or farmers markets. The latter is the province of small local farmers who are struggling to make ends meet.
As things stand today government policy, in spite of the basin plan, ensures that agribusiness, specifically biotech, stays central to Australian food policy both domestically and internationally. It also ensures that small farmers -- the supporters of the sustainable-food movement --- pose no real alternative to agribusiness.
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gary, it's as much about the people not being able to have a say at the polls if there was any party differentiation. Which there really wouldn't be if the plan is truly based on science and not merely an emotional reaction to a run of extremely poor inflows to the Murray system.
The biggest problem facing irrigators is the precarious financial situation they find themselves in at present. Decisions from financiers regarding future outlays are going to be heavily influenced by the outcomes of the Basin plan. The extending uncertainty is what irrigators are protesting, as they prepare for the oncoming season.
I'm a little disappointed to read that exporting our surplus produce is now also a blight upon Australia, and note some ire that farmers are not the subsistence variety envisioned. Poverty being synonymous with sustainability, presumably
Farming is a business, Australian farmers who basically have to produce commodities at prices third world consumers can afford have had to become efficient both through scale and technology. It is saddening to think that being truly world competitive (without government subsidy) through the use of available technology could be unappreciated to the extent indicated.
There is no such thing as sustainable agriculture while our cities fail to return their effluents to the land. It is cities that are unsustainable - but of course will survive and thrive through desireability and the ability of the human race to bypass sustainability. Through efficient farming practises to the ability to siphon off water from distant rivers.