Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

Russell Rees, chief officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, yesterday said firefighters could no longer guarantee saving the lives of those who chose to surround themselves with vegetation despite the obvious fire risks.

His warnings came as it emerged that Victoria had ignored repeated demands to reduce bushfire hazards and crack down on “tree-changer” housing estates in the years leading up to Saturday’s deadly fires, which are believed to have killed more than 200 people and left 7000 homeless.

The state was berated by the federal government in 2007 for ignoring some of the findings of two national bushfire inquiries held after the 2003 Canberra blaze.

As shattered communities prepare to rebuild from the ashes, the Australasian Fire Authorities Council yesterday called for more controls over housing development in bushland on the urban fringe.

The CFA’s Mr Rees told The Weekend Australian that firefighters were on the “receiving end” of the tree-change trend in which people choose to escape urban living for a bush lifestyle amid dense vegetation on the fringes of major cities.

“We’ve got to choose,” he said. ‘If we choose to live in this way, then who do we blame? My fear is that people will say the fire service failed (last Saturday) and I will go to my grave saying we fought our guts out.

“Fundamentally, our community is choosing to live in a way I can’t, and our people can’t, guarantee their survival. Why do we choose a system of civilisation that puts itself at so much risk?”

AFAC – representing the nation’s fire and emergency services – yesterday criticised Victoria’s “piecemeal approach” to the planning and construction of houses in bushfire-prone zones.

“Currently there is not suitable and comprehensive legislation,” AFAC chief executive Naomi Brown said. “This includes such things as the construction and maintenance standards of buildings, planning for new sub-divisions, and defendable spaces around structures so the property can be defended during a fire. There is no cohesive approach to assessing and enforcing the application of existing controls that are clearly linked to the fire risk around Victoria and Australia.”

Similar concerns were raised by the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in a submission to Victoria’s 2007 bushfire inquiry. “There is a clear need to manage the bushfire hazard more effectively than current practices seem to be achieving,” it said.

“The following important issues need to be addressed: improved fire management planning at the urban interface; improved access for firefighting; enhanced implementation of effective prescribed-burning programs; and ongoing applied fire management research at the state level.”

The firefighters’ union yesterday called on the federal Government to seize control of fire management – including the introduction of an automatic emergency-alert system – from the states and territories to save lives.

“We’ve just lost 200 people, for God’s sake,” United Firefighters Union national secretary Peter Marshall said. “Multi-millions of dollars have been spent on bushfire research and what’s it done?

“Each fire service … has got different methods and they’re all running their own race. I’m very fearful of this (Victorian tragedy) happening again.”

Mr Marshall said state and territory governments, including Victoria, had failed to learn the lessons from other killer fires, such as the 2003 blazes that razed 500 homes in Canberra.

“The recommendations from the (Victorian) royal commission will be no different to those that arose from the inquiries into Ash Wednesday, the Dandenong fires and the Canberra fires, that haven’t been implemented,” he said.

His comments come as the Victorian Government’s chief fire officer, Ewan Waller, revealed that there were critical gaps in intelligence at the height of the bushfires which made it difficult to deliver timely warnings to communities.

He said an extraordinarily dense and high blanket of smoke from the fierce fires near Kinglake late on Saturday had cut off vital intelligence about the movement of the fire fronts.

“It became too dangerous for our planes to fly and to map the edge of the fires so for quite a while we could not get the intelligence we wanted,” Mr Waller said. “We had to rely on bits and pieces – reports from the field and watching satellite information.”

The CFA’s incident controller responsible for moving fire trucks and tankers during the height of the fires around Kinglake last weekend has also admitted that the fires were too big for any effective firefighting response.

“It moved through with such ferocity that there was nothing the local brigades could do,” said the CFA’s Jason Lawrence.

“We could not provide any overarching control to any effective degree. We were requesting assistance for more resources but around our areas all resources were already in use.”

Victorian Premier John Brumby announced yesterday that former Supreme Court judge Bernard Teague would chair a royal commission into the bushfires.

“Victorians rightly want and deserve to know all the details about how the bushfires occurred,” Mr Brumby said. “That’s why the royal commission will have the broadest possible terms of reference and capacity to inquire into every aspect of these fires … no stone will be left unturned.”

The CFA’s Mr Rees said he believed climate change was responsible for the freak fires of last weekend.

“That is my belief, 100 per cent,” he said. “There is no doubt we are suffering more extreme events … the spike in the changing weather is getting worse.”

Mr Rees’s call for change echoed warnings raised by AFAC in a submission to the 2007 parliamentary inquiry.

“The rural-urban interface in Victoria cannot be made fireproof,” AFAC warned at the time.

“The choice to live and work in areas where there is a risk to people and property from the effects of bushfire means that Victorians in these areas are, to an extent, trading lifestyle and location choices for a vulnerability to fire events.”

AFAC said people living in bushland on the city fringes and in the countryside could not expect an inner-city fire service.

“These days many people living with the rural-urban interface expect that a fire truck will arrive at their door to put out a wildfire, in a similar manner to the urban firefighters responding to a building fire within a city,” it said.

“This is an unrealistic expectation, which in most situations cannot be met.”

“If locusts are seen hatching, roosting, forming dense bands on the ground, or flying, please report them, and where possible, spray them.

“Small landholders can buy an appropriate chemical from their local garden chemical reseller, such as a hardware store or nursery.

“Treatment can be practical where high numbers of young or mature locusts congregate to feed on abundant green growth in gardens and paddocks.

Mr Eggleston said it was vital the presence of locusts on both large and small properties be reported.

“The efforts of small landholders, combined with the efforts of local farmers, will help in getting on top of the current outbreak and minimising the harm locusts can cause,” he said.

“No-one wants to see locusts eating out gardens, pastures and crops – so by working together we can get on top of the outbreak and get rid of them completely.

“Small landholders should report locusts to their local Livestock Health and Pest Authority at Wagga on 02 6923 0900, Jerilderie on 03 5886 1203, or at Deniliquin on 03 5886 1203.”

To date more than 1100 reports of second generation locust activity have been received and enough insecticide has been distributed to treat 21,000 hectares of second generation locusts.

After an initially positive week, which saw shares rise 3.3pc to $1.86, the price fell back 6pc to $1.76 on Thursday.

AACo said that the rain in many of its key regions was ‘the best in 90 years’ and expected it would boost feed reserves for two years, while lowering the dependence on imported feed grain, which will it claimed would dramatically lower input costs.

Slightly improved cattle prices were not factored into the AACo report, with the company saying that the mark to market value of the herd went up less than expected for the second half, in spite of a depreciating Australian dollar, taking the total year value to $12 million.

But the company is confident the falling Australian dollar will make Australian beef exports more competitive, while it also forecasts that the fall in diesel prices will also be a marked benefit.

Another positive was a 5pc increase in valuation of a sample of AACo properties.

While there were declines in central and southern Queensland, the value of some of the more remote properties, in particular in the Barkly region in the Northern Territory and in the Queensland Gulf country, rose appreciably.

Final AACo numbers are expected to be released to the market on February 10.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land(4).

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers(5). Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field.

In the early days of the Green Revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself(6). If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms.

There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for 40 years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early 80s(7). Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries(8). Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranhao 2000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami Indians, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unshakeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize their land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them. In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are 20 times more productive than its large ones, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, “farm output … remains low.”(9) The OECD states that “stopping land fragmentation” in Turkey “and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity.”(10) Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well.

Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them. Last week’s food summit agreed “to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets.”(11) But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business(12), while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won’t reveal whether or not it supports the study(13).

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive. A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world.

“Consumers are getting much savvier about the toxins which remain in fabrics after processing,” Mr Byl said.

“I want to promote Australian organic cotton.

“Currently, most organic cotton is sourced from India, Turkey and Africa.”

He says support should be provided for Australian cotton producers to encourage them to convert to chemical free.

“Without assistance, there are problems faced initially by Australian cotton producers competing on the open world market against products from less developed markets,” he said.

“In comparison, the cost of Australian organic cotton is high – but can still be made viable.”

The Organic Advantage also quotes Alexander Fawcett, from Edgeroi Organics, Narrabri, NSW, who produced what remains one of the only certified organic cotton crops in 2006.

He says producing the 80-hectare trial had its challenges, but the main restrictor was the expense of the cotton process overall, which ate into profit margins.

“There are a lot of steps in getting cotton off farm and into a final piece of fabric,” Mr Fawcett said.

“Organic cotton generally has to be sent to India or Indonesia to be spun and woven, and it’s an expensive system”

As part of the exhibition, the museum organised a debate at the Dana Centre to give the public a chance to debate GM crops and the food crisis with some key scientists. I chaired the event and picked up on a few issues I thought might be worth sharing.

The panel of experts included Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), who in previous incarnations has been a Nasa scientist, an adviser to the White House and chief scientist at the World Bank. He was joined by Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University in London. Tim used to be director of the London Food Commission, director of Parents for Safe Food, and has also spent time as a hill farmer in Lancashire. Rodomiro Ortiz, director of resource mobilisation at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, completed the panel.

I’ve been at GM debates before, sometimes on a panel and sometimes in the audience, and I’ve always been disheartened by the deeply polarised views I hear. There are those who overstate how useful GM crops could be, while others write off the entire technique, claiming it is inherently dangerous. It’s hard not to feel the truth is somewhere in between.

Tim Lang spoke first and stressed that our way of producing food has to change from the post-1940s push for quantity. Yes, of course quantity is still important, he said, but water usage, environmental impact and nutritional content have to be considered now more than ever. Tim doesn’t see GM as a technical fix that will put food in the mouths of the hungry, especially while it is in the hands of multinationals. He called for public ownership of GM technology, with the transparency and distribution of benefits that comes with it.

Rodomiro spoke next, describing the work his organisation is doing to genetically modify wheat to grow under drought conditions. The crops are in trials at the moment and if they are a success, similar strains of rice, maize and barley could be next.

Bob Watson spoke last. He began by explaining that today the amount of food available per capita has never been higher, how costs are still low, and yet still around 900m people go to bed hungry every night.

The major problem, said Watson, is not one that GM crops will solve. He stressed the need for good roads to get crops to markets, and simple technologies that will help reduce post-harvest losses in Africa, which currently stand at between 30 and 40%. “GM is a totally oversold technique,” he said.

The debate that followed covered some interesting ground, but it seemed easier to identify the problems than the solutions. How can we ensure GM foods are safe when some countries do not have sufficient procedures for testing and evaluating any health issues, let alone the impact of novel crops on the environment? How do you ensure that farmers in the developing world can plant higher-yielding GM crops without becoming dangerously reliant upon a company that has the power to hike prices or withdraw seeds without notice? The problems are recognised, but I’m not sure anyone at the meeting had concrete ideas about how to solve them.

Though GM crops are common in many parts of the world now, they are still absent from the UK and resistance to them is strong in many parts of Europe. Sir David King, the government’s former chief scientist, said last year that Africa’s ills are largely down to Western do-gooders who oppose GM in favour of organic food. He argued that organic food is a luxury Africa cannot afford and that modern agricultural technology is needed urgently.

It’s striking that the views of King and Watson are so diametrically opposed. If these two have such differing positions, is it any wonder that the public is confused?