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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Plug the Pipe targets Brumby family farm

    “I think it is going to be little while yet for Melbourne with all the other sources (desalination and the pipe) … but I don’t think it’s too far off in other parts. Regional Victoria is most likely to find the need before Melbourne,” he said.

    Mr Bourke reminded the audience that Government policy did not include the drinking of recycled water, and said he was speaking with his “other hat” on – a reference to his involvement in shaping recycled water guidelines.

    Late yesterday he sought to clarify his comments by saying the drinking of recycled water was still likely to be the last option taken in most communities, once substitution opportunities had been exhausted.

    The Government repeated its stance yesterday, saying the ban on drinking recycled water applied to all Victoria.

    But the comments are likely to further concern some rural communities angry over the Government’s plan to take water from the Goulburn River to Melbourne for drinking supplies.

    Earlier this week, Mildura Mayor John Arnold said the drinking of recycled water would be discussed after warnings that drinking supplies along the Murray River could only be guaranteed for 12 months.

    A 2006 report for the Government found that recycling sewage at Melbourne’s eastern treatment plant then piping it to nearby reservoirs would be cheaper than desalination.

    A planned protest at the Brumby family farm by the Plug the Pipe group was the latest event in a long battle with the Government over the north-south pipe. The pipe will deliver a portion of the water that is hoped to be saved by major upgrades to irrigation channels in the Goulburn region, but protesters insist that water should stay in the region.

    Australian National University water expert Daniel Connell gave support to the pipe yesterday.

    “The productivity value and social value of maintaining a major city as opposed to, in many cases, low value irrigation, it’s not really I wouldn’t have thought a serious choice; you would always favour the city or you should,” Dr Connell said.

    “People in cities have got just as many rights as people in country areas. Because the water falls in a country area doesn’t mean that it is owned by the people in that immediate area.”

    Victorian irrigators were wary and environmentalists optimistic after a South Australian public servant Robert Freeman was named by federal Water Minister Penny Wong to lead the new Murray Darling Basin Authority.

    He will take the chief executive post in seven weeks. The authority will limit the water that can be extracted from the river.

    Northern Victorian Irrigators spokesman Dudley Bryant said the domination of SA officials was concerning.

    But Australian Conservation Foundation spokeswoman Arlene Buchan said Mr Freeman’s background could make him a good appointment.

  • Steel post prices jump on eve of Olympics

    Farmers, who do most of their fencing over winter, expect to pay 16pc more for wire than they were being charged a month ago, even though steel products had already been rising steeply for six months.

    Sales representative at Narrabri, NSW, steel products supplier, Well Australia, Wayne Wheeler, said the price of steel fencing posts rose from $4.95 to $6.80 with the arrival of the new financial year and his company was finding it difficult to find any from anywhere.

    “It’s our busiest time of year and we don’t have any posts available,” he said.

    “But I believe there was a heap imported and somebody is sitting on them for the time being.”

    Nearby, Upper Horton landholder, Peter Cupitt, “Pinaroo” stocked up on the useful items to avoid the July 1 rise, saving himself more than $750 for 400 steel posts.

    “They are just something you always need and if I could save that much money then I was going to do it – I got in early and will store them away until they’re needed,” Mr Cupitt said.

    At Inverell’s Sapphire City Steel, Graham McLachlan said his firm had also had to find a new supplier for leather rigger gloves from India, because the Chinese tannery which normally supplies them had also been shut down.

    “We’ve only got 46 star picket posts left and we are desperately struggling to find more,” he said.

    “It’s amazing how dear steel is getting. I went away for a week and sheep yard mesh went up by 25pc.”

    In Armidale, NSW, Paul Scales, assistant manager for Metalcorp, said the firm had thousands of posts, after being able to stock up in time for the winter fence repairing.

    “We’re having a quieter year because the prices have gone up and most people would rather straighten out their old ones to save a bit of money,” he said.

    At OneSteel, Sydney-based Vik Bansal said it was impossible to predict the end of the price volatility, but market indications suggest prices will stay high.

    “Global supply and availability of a range of steel products are tightening,” he said.

    “It is important to note also that this supply issue is occurring globally, with demand high for the forseeable future,” Mr Bansal said.

  • South Eastern capitals face 50 degree days

    From the Australian

    MELBOURNE, Adelaide and Sydney will blister in temperatures of more than 50C by 2050, according to the first hard look at the impact of climate change on extreme weather.

    The forecast is part of a long-term prediction that temperatures on the hottest day of the year will rise dramatically in parts of southern Australia, including the southern Murray-Darling Basin, much of coastal NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

    But the study did not find evidence that other parts of Australia would be so severely affected.

    “No one’s ever looked at these numbers before,” said Andy Pitman, co-director of the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre in Sydney.

    Scientists with the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have also assessed the nation’s future climate but they focused on average changes in extremes of temperature and rainfall due to climate change.

    Along with graduate student Sarah Perkins, Professor Pitman analysed daily temperatures. “There is nothing wrong with what they did, but they missed that last bit of evidence that identified the ‘extreme’ extremes,” Professor Pitman said.

    The researchers first tested the effectiveness of many climate modelling systems by “hind-casting”, testing how well they predicted past conditions.

    After identifying the most reliable models, they simulated daily changes in temperature and rainfall as greenhouse gases increased in the atmosphere. They found the increase altered the pattern of warming for rare super-hot days.

    To their surprise, there was also an indirect effect. Global warming led to a reduction in rainfall which, in turn, reduced evaporation. “If there’s less evaporation, the land surface becomes hotter, a process known as positive feedback,” Professor Pitman said.

    That is why extreme events in places such as Darwin and Perth did not outpace those in the south: there’s no feedback there.

  • Arctic oil reserves relieve economic pressure

    From the ABC 

    US Government scientists say they believe the Arctic holds as much as 90 billion barrels of oil, which is enough to meet the current world demand for almost three years.

    The report by the US Geological Survey also estimates that the Arctic contains as much natural gas, more than 1,600 trillion cubic feet, as all the reserves known to exist in Russia.

    This is the first time the survey has looked at the entire Arctic Circle and it says the area accounts for about 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of its undiscovered natural gas.

    As global warming melts the ice in the Arctic Circle the area becomes more accessible to companies that want to exploit its natural resources.

    Energy companies have already found more than 400 oil and gas fields north of the Arctic Circle, but it is still essentially unexplored when it comes to fuel.

    Russia is competing with China, Denmark, Norway and the United States to grab the huge energy resources in the Arctic, but environmentalists are warning that when oil companies move in, wildlife will be lost.

  • Wheat gamble in Western Australia falters

    Mr Tutt said WA was now facing the very real possibility of a 7.5mt harvest.

    He said this season was taking a similar path to last year with patchy, dry conditions preventing many crops from going in the ground.

    The prediction was made after Rural Business Development Corporation (RBDC) chairman Dexter Davies conducted an urgent visit to the Esperance region last week.

    Mr Davies reviewed the dry conditions on farms in the area at the request of Esperance Shire president Ian Mickel, who has also written a letter to Agriculture Minister Kim Chance outlining the situation’s severity and seeking assistance.

    Mr Davies said the situation was serious but warned it was not a crisis “at this stage”.

    He warned the dry conditions were getting particularly stark for growers in the eastern part of the region, especially those with livestock.

  • Soil carbon scheme takes off in USA

    Since 2003, the CCX has traded soil carbon under a broad zone system that assumes that over specific land types, under certain practices like minimum tillage or rotational grazing, an average amount of soil carbon will be generated.

    “Midwestern US soils that have adequate rainfall and good crop potential receive 0.6 metric tons of credit per year,” Mr Miller said.

    “The drier, less productive soils of the southern Plains states receive 0.2 metric tons of credit per year.”

    Arid desert soils, and some sandy soils in Florida are excluded from the system.

    “I believe that the CCX approach of establishing the scientific mean, but then using a credit rate that is discounted by some amount—such as 20pc as CCX does—is an appropriate way to set a rate that has strong statistical validity,” said Mr Miller.

    “With a credit rate that is discounted from the mean, the statistical probability of an agricultural-based credit delivering at least as much sequestration as is credited is greatly enhanced.”

    Perhaps as importantly as the small offset credits received by farmers—ranging from $3-$7 a ton—engagement with the CCX has driven interest and research into greenhouse gas sequestration.

    “We have protocols developed and implemented for no-till, grasslands, rangeland management, afforestation, managed forests, agricultural methane destruction at livestock facilities, and biomass substitution for coal,” Mr Miller said.

    “We have producers enrolled, projects verified, credits registered and traded and producers paid. That represents substantial achievement towards development of a new market and all of the market infrastructure that is required to have a well functioning and successful market.”

    The CCX traded 23 million tons of carbon credits in 2007, under a fully voluntary system.

    Closer to home, Alex McBratney, Professor of Soil Science at the University of Sydney, is working on a similar discount methodology that he believes may have the scientific rigour to get soil carbon into the Kyoto II protocol to be thrashed out in 2012.

    “It’s based on the best statistical sampling theory that we can muster, and some new technology,” Prof. McBratney said.

    “The methodology will tell you how much carbon you’ve fixed over five years, across a whole farm—not a plot or paddock—and it will also tell you the uncertainty on that number.”

    So far his research has been unfunded, but he is hopeful that an application before the Australian Research Council will get the project up and running.

    “Agriculture needs to be in the carbon trading system,” Prof. McBratney said.

    “Soil has the ability to sequester carbon. The only issue is whether you can audit it. But unless you can actually sequester carbon somewhere, I don’t see how the cap-and-trade system actually works—so we need some sinks for carbon.”