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President of the United States, Barak Obama, has announced that the White House will not promote corn based ethanol as a future fuel source for American vehicles. Instead the government has backed the development of new bio-fuels that do not displace food production and which significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have been at odds with the corn growers because research indicates that growing corn to produce ethanol increases greenhouse emissions.
The Australian Conservation Foundation ACF will hold an emergency board meeting this week to resolve a split in the group over its president’s support for the Rudd governments carbon pollution reward scheme. The ACF was one of three well-funded environmental groups close to the government that announced support for the delay in an emissions trading scheme and further compensation for the polluters. Prominent members, including head of The Climate Group, Mark Diesendorf, resigned from the group last week.
From The Land
IDEAL growing conditions during two wet summers have kicked along stands of native Mitchell grass re-established by landholders on the north-west plains.
A number of farmers in the Walgett and Coonamble areas have restored Mitchell grass pastures to their properties, reclaiming in particular old farming country and weed infested areas.
The once-vast plains of Mitchell grass quoted in the diaries of explorers and settlers have diminished over the decades, thinned by heavy grazing, cropping, weed competition, drought and flood inundation.
The grass is well adapted to the 200- to 250-millimetre rainfall zones and heavy cracking clay soils.
The north-west plains lie at the southern extremity of its habitat, which stretches in a discontinuous band through western Queensland and the Northern Territory to the Kimberley in Western Australia.
Coonamble farmer and general manager of Castlereagh Macquarie Weeds County Council, Ian Kelly, said several thousand hectares of Mitchell grass had been resown in the area by landowners in recent years.
From The Land
WITH global raw sugar prices forecast to continue an upward trend on the back of what’s shaping up to be an international crop deficit of six million tonnes this financial year, interest in putting additional NSW northern coastal land under cane is growing.
World market raw sugar prices have traded between US12.5 and US14 cents a pound during the past four weeks, and analysts say ongoing reductions in crop predictions from key production countries, India and Brazil, is setting the scene for solid returns for Australian cane growers for the next two to three years.
While prices have not yet hit the dizzying US17.5c/lb heights of a short period less than three years ago, they are a long way from the bottoms of US4c/lb to US6c/lb cane growers suffered for the first half of this decade.
India has revised its 2008-09 production to 16 to 16.5 million tonnes, compared to the 26.5m produced last financial year, on the back of favourable soybean, rice and wheat prices and monsoonal conditions, Rabobank commodities analyst, Adam Tomlinson, Sydney, said.
And while sugar is offering better returns than ethanol in Brazil, there is a limit to how much of the South American country’s cane crop can be used to make sugar, Mr Tomlinson said.
Brazil has also been hard hit by the economic downturn, with expansion dampened by a lack of available credit and reports existing mills are even struggling to open for this season’s crush.
From the Australian Financial Review
Up to 19 giant olive harvesting machines, each referred to as “The Colossus”, were switched off at 7pm on Monday on two Victorian olive plantations by an entity that is 19.4 per cent owned by the failed Timbercorp Securities.
According to The Australian Financial Review, Boundary Bend, an entity that harvests and processes olives on behalf of Timbercorp, stopped the harvest on Monday night because of fears that it wouldn’t be paid.
Boundary Bend is 19.4 per cent owned by Timbercorp but the Timbercorp administrators don’t have control of it because it is majority owned by businessmen Rob McGavin and Paul Riordan.
Timbercorp administrator KordaMentha yesterday made an application in the Federal Court seeking a legal opinion on whether it had the right to use some of the proceeds of the sale of olive oil from the 2008 Timbercorp crop to help fund the harvesting and processing of the 2009 crop.
The court was told that if the 2009 crop at two plantations at Boort in north central Victoria and Boundary Bend near Swan Hill was not harvested, the $26 million from future olive oil sales would be lost.
Greens leader Bob Brown launched a scathing attack on the ACF executive in the wake of its decision.
“I’m a life member of the Australian Conservation Foundation,” he said.
“I can tell you that the Australian Conservation Foundation supports the Greens’ target of 40 per cent reduction by 2020. It opposes a delay in implementing this scheme and it’s absolutely opposed to the free kick going to the polluters.”
Senator Brown said the media would “have to ask Don Henry” about his stand.
The Greens’ deputy leader Christine Milne said Mr Henry and Mr Lowe would have to “will answer to their members and their constituents for supporting… (the) weakening of the CPRS.
“I find it difficult to reconcile with their stated positions,” she said.