Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture
The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.
admin /5 April, 2009
Speaking in Sydney last week, Woolworth fresh foods boss, Michael Batycki told reporters that the company rejects only one percent of the fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to the supermarket chain. He also denied claims that the supermarkets dominate the fresh food market. He said that Coles and Woolworths together sold only 47 percent of Australias fresh fruit and vegetables and 60 percent of meat. Woolworths faces widespread and ongoing criticism for aggressive buying practices that cripple primary producers. These charges led to an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Inquiry which came to the conclusion that there was insufficient proof to charge the supermarkets over the claims. One farmer, who wishes to remain anonymous, told The Generator that the criticisms are becoming irrelevant as the supermarkets buy into the agribusiness sector and supply themselves. “It is mainly independent farmers who are getting the rough end of the pineapple,” he said.
admin /5 April, 2009
Victorian forestry workers in conjunction with government departments have lit fires in at least five national parks since the February bushfires to capitalise on public sympathy for controlled burning to reduce the fuel load. Immediately after the bushfires, News Limited media and talk back radio stations ran concerted campaigns to blame the bushfires on a Continue Reading →
admin /5 April, 2009
The National Farmers Federation is proceeding with plans to make international agribusiness companies paid up members of the lobby group. The invitation to the national conference in Brisbane this June, overtly invites representatives of agribusiness to attend, subtly reminding working farmers of the plan mooted last October to allow agribusinesses to be affiliate members with Continue Reading →
admin /29 March, 2009
Bathurst, NSW doctor Carole Hungerford has told rural newspaper, The Land, that depleted soils and food additives are among the major causes of disease.”Some of us are eating good food grown in bad soils, or good food that is not fresh. More of us are eating bad food that is neither fresh nor grown in good soils,” she said. She quoted cancer statistics that indicate the incidence of aggressive diseases such as cancer have doubled and are affecting younger people than they did forty years ago. “Nature didn’t stuff up, we stuffed up. We’ve started putting chlorine in the drinking water, sulfates in the wine, additives in the food … people don’t know where they are getting their headache from because they are reacting to everything,” she said.
admin /29 March, 2009
A senior advisor to the Liberal party has warned that Turnbull’s announcement about biochar earlier this month is based on wishful thinking. “I’m not sure that all the science is in,” he said. “In order for [biochar] to be economic, you would need to have a carbon price in place.” Biochar advocates point out that the technique has been used in the Amazon basin for over ten thousand years and there are a number of emperical studies carried out in Australian Universities. While a price for carbon would pay farmers for creating charcoal and burying it in the soil, the benefits in terms of soil health and better crop yields would make the process economically viable, even without the incentive of a price for locking away carbon in the form of charcoal.
admin /29 March, 2009
The National Farmers Federation (NFF) last week described the findings of the Senate Inquiry into the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as environmental vandalism. Brett Heffernan, head of the NFF, said that the shift from Environmental stewardship to “lock up and leave” policy will result in feral animals and weeds running out of control in conservation areas.Greens Senator Rachel Siewet told the Senate that the ministerial discretion allowed under the current act had led to blatant examples of destructive clearing of forests and wetlands with disastrous impact on sensitive areas. THe review of the act is ongoing.
