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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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  • Growth in organic sales nutures sustainable UK hopes

    No sector of industry has been immune, however, to the chill wind of recession blowing since October 2008. Organic shoppers, like all consumers, have clearly been tightening their belts – by shopping less often, buying fewer premium products and prepared foods, and switching to lower-cost retailers. The overall growth in organic sales by value masks a net decline in the sales volume of a fair few categories of organic food products during the year. The picture is mixed, with dynamic growth in sales of organic food through farmers’ markets and at Asda, as well as in some new, and still small, areas of organic sales such as textiles and health and beauty products.

    In the UK, economic conditions are particularly tough because of the significant burden of mortgage and consumer debt, and the pivotal role played in the economy by the beleaguered financial services industry. In some other European countries the credit crunch appears to have hit less hard so far, and demand for organic products has held up better than in the UK. It is difficult to predict how the global organic market will fare in 2009, however. Global sales of organic food and drink exceed £23 billion and grew by £2.5 billion in 2007, but we do not yet have the kind of clear picture on European and global sales in 2008 and early 2009 that this report provides for the UK.

    Importantly for the UK market, this report does show that there is a core of consumers who are in no mood to ditch their commitment to organic products. They are far more likely to cut their spending on eating out, leisure activities and holidays than to reduce what they spend on organic food. They would rather economise by buying cheaper cuts of organic meat or by buying frozen organic vegetables than by compromising their organic principles. 36% of these committed organic consumers expect to spend more on organic food in 2009, and only 15% expect to spend less.

    Some organic enthusiasts who are finding it tough to make ends meet may turn to the UK’s rich variety of independent outlets such as farm shops, farmers’ markets and box schemes. Price comparisons over the past year have shown organic fruit and vegetables to be consistently cheaper through box schemes than through the leading supermarkets, with the bonus that producers receive a bigger share of the price paid by the consumer.

    Whatever happens to organic sales in 2009, there are huge changes ahead in farming which are sure to favour organic production. The government has agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Such cuts can only be achieved in agriculture by deriving fertility from sunshine and organic matter – as organic farmers do – rather than from fossil fuel-based chemical fertilisers. It is ironic that the recession has triggered a slowdown in sales at the very point when policy makers are expressing unprecedented interest in sustainable food systems.

    It is clear from this report that much more work needs to be done to communicate the wider benefits of organic production to the public, especially in relation to health, animal welfare, climate change and the environment. The economic downturn has given increasing profile to ‘single issue’ market alternatives such as free-range, local, pesticide-free, fair trade, seasonal and ‘natural’ foods. Consumers have plenty of different ethical options – so many, in fact, that the choice can be bewildering.

    To cut through the confusion the organic movement needs to demonstrate more forcefully than ever that organic principles encompass all these single issues and deliver a set of interlocking benefits that can and will still motivate consumers.

    Where understanding of these interlocking benefits is limited, consumer commitment may be limited too – particularly in tough times. As we hear from a succession of voices in this report, however, those with a sophisticated understanding of all the benefits are the ones most likely to become or remain committed buyers – they know too much to turn back.

    » Read the full report [PDF, 756 KB]

  • Forests pump water as well as oxygen

    From New Scientist

    THE acres upon acres of lush tropical forest in the Amazon and tropical Africa are often referred to as the planet’s lungs. But what if they are also its heart? This is exactly what a couple of meteorologists claim in a controversial new theory that questions our fundamental understanding of what drives the weather. They believe vast forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet.

    If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert – even without global warming. The idea makes it even more vital that we recognise the crucial role forests play in the well-being of the planet.

    Scientists have known for some time that forests recycle rain. Up to half the precipitation falling on a typical tropical rainforest evaporates or transpires from trees. This keeps the air above moist. Ocean winds can spread the moisture to create more rain. But now Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia say that forests also create winds that pump moisture across continents.

    How can forests create wind? Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans quickly condenses to form droplets and clouds. The Russians point out that the gas takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure. Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent’s heart (see diagram). As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

    Coastal forests create giant winds that push water thousands of kilometres inland

    The volumes of water involved in this process can be huge. More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres of moisture every day.

    “In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises,” Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist. But, they say, “Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water.” The scientists, whose theory is based on the basic physics that governs air movement have dubbed this the “biotic pump” and claim it could be “the major driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth”. This is a dramatic claim. The two Russians argue that their biotic pump underlies many pressure-driven features of the tropical climate system, such as trade winds, and helps create intense local features like hurricanes.

    To back up their hypothesis they show how regions without coastal forests, such as west Africa, become exponentially drier inland. Likewise, in northern Australia, rainfall drops from 1600 millimetres a year on the coast to 200 mm some 1500 kilometres inland. In contrast, on continents with large forests from the coast to interior, rainfall is as strong inland as on the coast, suggesting the trees help shuttle moisture inland (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.11.004, in press). In the Congo, for instance, around 2000 mm of rain falls each year at the coast and the same amount falls inland. The same is true in the Amazon, the Siberian Arctic and the Mackenzie river basin in northern Canada. But the US, largely forested until recently, now seems be headed for desert. Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist that without rapid reforestation “the degrading temperate forests of North America are on their way to desertification”.

    The Russians’ ideas have languished since they were published in a small journal in 2007. “We are facing enormous difficulties in overcoming the initial resistance of the scientific community,” they say. Antoon Meesters of the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, recently described it as “an untenable result of confused principles”. Meesters does not dispute the physics behind the Russians’ theory but claims the effect is negligible.

    This week, a leading British forest scientist based at the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Kabale, Uganda, came to the Russians’ aid. In a review of the work in the journal Bioscience (DOI: 10.1525/bio.2009.59.4.12), Doug Sheil and his co-author Daniel Murdiyarso underline the importance of the idea. “Conventional models typically predict a 20 to 30 per cent decline in rainfall after deforestation,” Sheil says. “Makarieva and Gorshkov suggest even localised clearing might ultimately switch entire continental climates from wet to arid, with rainfall declining by more than 95 per cent.”

    Sheil explains that current theory doesn’t explain clearly how the lowlands in continental interiors maintain wet climates. “There is a missing element,” Sheil says. The biotic pump “may be the answer”. He calls the Russians’ findings “a most profound insight into the impact of forest loss on climate. They will transform how we view forest loss, climate change and hydrology.”

    Many forest scientists are intrigued by the idea. “It makes perfect sense,” says Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, Oxford, UK. “We know that coastal rainforests are critical to maintaining rainfall deep inland.” He says it could offer a more convincing explanation for how Amazon rainfall is typically recycled six times.

    The implications are global, he adds. “We think some of the recycled Amazon moisture is taken on a jet stream to South Africa, and more maybe to the American Midwest. Gorshkov and Makarieva are looking at the front end of an absolutely critical process for the world’s climate.” If their theory is correct, it means that large forests help kick-start the global water cycle. However, because forest models do not include the biotic pump, it is impossible to say what wiping the Amazon off the map would mean for rainfall worldwide.

    The theory suggests that past civilisations could have had a much greater impact on global climate than we thought. Australia once had forests but is now largely desert. Gorshkov and Makarieva argue that Aborigines burning coastal forests may have switched the continent from wet to dry by shutting down its biotic pump.

    Climatologists are already worried about the state of the Amazon rainforest. Last month, the UK’s Met Office warned that if the planet warms by 4 degrees, 85 per cent of the forest could dry out and die. If Gorshkov and Makarieva are right, the Amazon will be gone before warming kicks in. They predict that even modest deforestation could shut down the pump and reduce rainfall in central Amazonia by 95 per cent.The same could happen in the world’s other large rainforest regions, such as central Africa.

    According to Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, “The jury is still out on whether the mechanism is significant or not. But the role of tropical forests in protecting us against climate change is severely underrated.”

    It’s not all bad news. If natural forests can create rain, then planting forests can, too. Sheil says, if forests attract rain, then replanting deforested coastal regions could re-establish a biotic pump and bring back the rains. “Once forests are established, the pump would be powerful enough to water them. Could we one day afforest the world’s deserts? Makarieva and Gorshkov’s hypothesis suggests we might.”

  • Raw milk second only to drugs in illegal trade

     

    It’s early Saturday morning, and the Brooklyn street is almost empty. Except at one half-open store, where about 30 people are lined up in the narrow aisle clutching empty backpacks, shopping bags and suitcases. At the door, a man checks each entrant, asking “Are you here for the…pickup?”

    Someone shouts “The van’s coming!” and the place burst into action. People run into the street and come back hauling heavy cartons and cooler chests. Then the store empties as quickly as it filled, as everyone lugs their contraband purchase home.

    And “lug” is the word. What’s being distributed at this store — and in countless offices, backyards, homes, churches and parking lots across the country — is milk. Raw milk.

    Apart from illegal drugs, raw milk — milk that’s unpasteurized and unhomogenized, just as it comes out of the cow — may be the most briskly traded underground commodity in the United States. By a conservative estimate, some 500,000 people in the U.S. drink the stuff, says Sally Fallon, president of the Weston Price Foundation, which is dedicated to spreading the word about raw milk — and making it legal. Her guess is that the true total is closer to a million. Even the Food and Drug Administration, which is doing its best to keep raw milk out of the mouths of citizens, has acknowledged that about 3 percent of U.S. milk drinkers drink it raw.

    It’s not that those Brooklyn milk-buyers were doing anything illegal — drinking raw milk is legal in every state. So is buying it. What’s not legal, except in eight states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico and Washington), is selling it to the general public. The other 42 states have a variety of bans. In some, it can be sold only on the farm. In others, it can be sold only as pet food. Some outlaw its sale altogether. Federal law prohibits transporting it for sale — even from a state where it’s legally sold — across state lines.

    Skirting the law

    That hasn’t stopped ingenious raw milk drinkers from finding ways around the rules. Some buy the milk in states where it is legal and carry it across state lines themselves. (Milky Way Farm, in Starr, S.C., does a brisk business selling raw milk in parking lots right on the state line to buyers from neighboring states where it’s illegal). Others form milk-buying clubs, which purchase the milk from a farm that’s allowed to sell it and bring it back to a central distribution point. In states where selling raw milk isn’t allowed at all, clever lawyers have taken advantage of old-time laws that let a farmer board and feed a neighbor’s cow to set up cow-share programs. Members legally own the cattle the dairy farmer is raising and milking, and — as owners — get the milk.

    These arrangements may fall within the letter of the law, but they clearly skirt its intent, so raw milk drinkers keep very, very quiet about their sources. A raw milk club in New York demands a reference from a current member before it will let you join. Joining one New Jersey club takes weeks because the club checks out each potential member (to make sure they’re not a government agent in disguise) before letting them in.

    The complicated legal arrangements make buying raw milk something of an ordeal. No running down to the corner for a quick quart: in most cases, buyers must order their raw milk online, usually by the gallon, several days before the pickup. (If you miss the deadline, you have to wait for the next one.) Deliveries are rarely made more than once a week and many are two or more weeks apart. Some buyers have to drive several hours to get to the pickup site, which is often in a hard-to find spot. “I’ve gotten lost so many times,” says Valerie Scott Massimo, a New Jersey raw milk drinker. “The house is un-findable, and they have a wooden fence six feet tall.”

    There’s good reason for these clubs to be cautious. While state authorities rarely go after raw milk buyers, distributors have gotten in trouble — late last year an Ohio raw milk co-op was raided at gunpoint by sheriffs’ deputies. And state officials regularly try to shut down dairies that sell raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which defends farmers’ right to sell raw milk, has a dozen cases on its docket right now. “People have the legal right to drink it,” says Pete Kennedy, interim president. “The problem is finding ways to enable them to exercise their right.”

    If many state officials get their way, exercising that right will get harder, not easier. State officials try continually to tighten the laws governing the sale of raw milk. About a year and a half ago, agriculture authorities in Georgia, where it can only be sold as pet food, proposed requiring all raw milk to be dyed charcoal gray, to make it less attractive to drinkers. (Activists beat that one back). In California, state authorities have tightened the requirements for raw milk testing, says Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the state’s biggest raw milk producer, demanding that the milk be free not just of harmful bacteria, but of almost any bacteria at all.

    A government conspiracy?

    Many raw milk enthusiasts see a deep conspiracy behind governmental attempts to prevent the sale of raw milk. McAfee, who’s managed to get into trouble with the law even in a state where raw milk is legal (by insisting on shipping it across state lines), blames it on the drug companies. They don’t want people discovering that food can cure what they’re selling pills for, he says. “They don’t want any encroachment.”

    But a quick look at the past makes it clear why so many governmental officials hold to the need for pasteurization. B.P. (before pasteurization), many dairies, especially in cities, fed their cattle on — to put it bluntly — garbage, and their milk was rife with dangerous bacteria. Pasteurizing it was the only way to make it safely drinkable. After many years of pasteurization, just about everyone simply assumes that raw milk is dangerous stuff. Amy Osborne, a dancer, got a panicked letter from a relative — a dietician — when she heard Osborne was feeding her baby raw milk. “It made my husband really nervous,” she says. Another mother, reluctant even to have her name used, though raw milk is legal in her state, worries about whether to let her children’s friends drink it. “God forbid they get sick and blame it on raw milk, “she says.

    When a raw milk drinker gets sick, that’s generally what happens — whatever the evidence. Years ago, Massimo got sick a few months after starting to drink raw milk from a nearby dairy. Her doctor immediately blamed the milk — even though tests showed no harmful bacteria and nobody else who had drunk the milk had gotten sick. “He was totally convinced,” she says, “and he was a doctor and I wasn’t.” So she stopped drinking it.

    She started again 20 years later when — after moving to New Jersey — she developed diverticulitis and became very weak on the liquid diet that was all she could digest. Her chiropractor, Steven Lavitan, put her on raw milk, and she says she immediately began to feel better. Lavitan, who recommends raw dairy products to many of his clients, says he has even seen cataracts improved by drinking raw milk. He and others claim that raw milk can cure a host of ailments, including asthma, allergies, lactose intolerance and other digestive problems, many of which, they argue, are caused in the first place by drinking pasteurized milk. “Anything that regular milk can cause, raw milk can cure,” Lavitan says.

    It does a body good

    Raw milk lovers advance two basic health arguments. The first (flatly denied by regulators and most nutritional scientists) is that pasteurization destroys or damages many of milk’s most valuable nutrients. The second is that while it may kill dangerous bacteria, pasteurization also kills off all the good bacteria in raw milk — some of the same ones that big dairy companies are now selling as “probiotics” in pricey new yogurt and drink concoctions.

    In fact, supporters argue, raw milk is just as safe as the dairy it comes from. If the cows are healthy and the dairy is spotless, they say, raw milk is safer by far than pasteurized milk, because the beneficial bacteria naturally found in raw milk make it harder for harmful bacteria to grow.

    It’s not just health claims that make raw milk drinkers willing to go to so much trouble to get it. Milk in its natural state simply tastes better, they say — sweeter, richer and more wholesome. Ellen Whalen, a freelance writer and home-schooling mother on Cape Cod, says raw milk even goes sour more pleasantly than pasteurized milk. “Pasteurized milk rots,” she says. “Raw milk doesn’t go bad, it just changes.”

    Help on the way

    Some help for raw milk drinkers may be at hand. In late January, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who ran for president in 2008, introduced a bill that would legalize the shipment and distribution of raw milk and milk products for human consumption across state lines. It’s an issue of constitutional rights, Paul said in a statement introducing the bill. “Americans have the right to consume these products without having the federal government second-guess their judgment about what products best promote health. “

    One raw milk defender goes even further. Max Kane, the owner of a Chicago raw milk co-op who recently finished a cross-country bicycle trip, during which he ate and drank only raw dairy products to publicize the case for raw milk, would like to see massive civil disobedience. “As long as people keep trying these little ways to circumvent the law, this bull—- is going to continue,” he says. “I think everyone should come forward and say we’re proud to drink raw milk. Otherwise it’s always going to be us running, and them chasing us.”

    If you want to try raw milk…

    Raw milk’s hard to find, Kane found out on his trip, even when, as he did, you’ve got a crew of about a dozen friends e-mailing and cold-calling farmers to hunt the stuff down. The difficulty of getting supplies extended the trip by over a week and forced Kane to cross Mississippi and Louisiana by bus, since the few dairies he could find were too far apart to sustain him. He made it across Texas thanks to a farmer who met him regularly on the road with fresh supplies.

    To find a source near you, start by asking around, especially at health-food stores and farmers’ markets. Unless you’re in one of the eight states where selling it in stores is legal, you won’t be able to buy it at either place. But you may get some leads from other shoppers.

    Keep your eyes out for fundraisers for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, or programs sponsored by the Weston Price Foundation. While neither organization actually distributes raw milk, both fight for it, and their supporters are likely to drink it.

    Another way to contact raw milk drinkers is to do a Web search for “raw milk” and your state; there may well be a local organization that fights for it. Start with a search on LocalHarvest.org. Or you can do what Kane did: hunt for local farmers. Check out the Campaign for Real Milk, which lists producers of raw milk and cheese around the country and also provides a useful summary of raw milk’s legal status in each state. (Warning: if you’re not in a state that allows farmers to sell raw milk to the public, the list will be skimpy. Advertising on a raw milk site is “one of easier ways to get in hot water,” notes Kennedy, who says they’re regularly monitored by federal and local officials.)

  • Exotics and sheep restore farmland

    From The Land

    There’s nothing conventional in the management of the Marshall family’s farm at Reidsdale, NSW, and nothing conventional about the results, either.

    Willows, poplars, chestnuts, oaks and bamboo are used as fodder and to regenerate farm soils and streams, running against the official preference for native species—and yet by any measure of health, the landscape is flourishing.

    Soils are friable and well-structured, ensuring that any moisture that falls on the farm stays there.

    Streams flow permanently, in contrast to when Peter and Kate Marshall and their children Keith, Gus and Rita, bought the former dairy farm ‘Woodford Lagoon’ in 1990.

    At the time, the farm—now 250 hectares—was “ruined”, Mr Marshall said, with no permanent water; compacted, acidic soil with no ‘A’ horizon, and dozens of hectares infested with broom bush.

    In one spot, water penetrated only about two centimetres deep during a 10 hour immersion under a flood.

    For much of the property, the first step toward health has been a Yeomans plow towed behind a low-ground pressure Antonio Carraro 4WD tractor. With a seven-tonne break-out on the tynes, the plow rips to 700 millimetres deep, shattering compaction and opening up the soil volume available to plant roots.

    “We’ve got some areas where we excluded the stock 20 years ago and the soil still hasn’t loosened up,” Mr Marshall said. “But the minute we’ve passed a Yeoman’s through it, everything comes to life.”

    Only sheep and goats are allowed back on the uncompacted soil, because the Marshalls have found that cattle hooves apply enough pressure to cause the farm’s soils to “plastically fail”, or compact beyond a point where natural processes can undo the damage.

    Goats have been an essential tool in the farm’s regeneration. Killing the broom with chemical wasn’t an option, Mr Marshall said, because it encourages the seeds scattered beneath the bush to germinate, requiring another dose of chemical—an ongoing vicious cycle.

    Instead, the Marshalls introduced goats to continually defoliate the mature bush and its seedlings. They settled on the Boer as the most fence-friendly and productive breed.

    Between goats, fire, mulching, blading and soil improvement—strategies designed to encourage competitive species as well as kill broom—the bush has been eliminated as a problem on Woodford Lagoon and is now being dealt with on a recently purchased block, ‘Sunnyside’.

    Having worked hard to manage broom, the Marshalls then introduced what some consider to be a range of other weeds.

    Willows, poplars, chestnuts and oaks and bamboo have all played central roles in other human cultures, where they have been valued because of their utility, nutritional value to livestock and, in the case of the trees, their ability to coppice, or quickly reshoot after lopping.

    The Marshalls are using non-invasive single-sex varieties in a grazing system they call “lop and drop”, which utilises the 20 tonnes per hectare per year of timber and vegetative growth produced by their deciduous trees.

    Lopped limbs, “long fodder”, are fed to Suffolk sheep or the goats. The leaves provide a high-protein feed, utilising nutrients drawn from deep within the soil, and are high in condensed tannins, Mr Marshall said.

    That means that less digestive activity is needed by livestock, and subsequently less methane is produced. New Zealand research suggests that condensed tannins also improve twinning rates in sheep.

    Browsing lopped limbs up off the pasture conserves grass, and reduces the parasite load in livestock. Lopped poles are also nibbled free of bark, which prevents them from reshooting where they lie.

    “Once you get used to the sight of poles on the ground, having these big chunks of carbon lying around the landscape are a good thing for many different reasons,” Mr Marshall said.

    “They roughen up the landscape, so wind speeds are slower near the ground.

    “You get different pasture species establishing against the chunks of logs as they rot down.

    “And the logs act to trap debris on the hill slopes very effectively.

    “This system mightn’t suit someone else with a different aesthetic view. But it suits us, and we think it suits our landscape.”

  • Death of Murray Darling forces farmers off the land

    The ABCTV 7.30 Report

    Towns in rural Australia are at risk of dying off as drought and Federal Government policy takes a toll on agriculture and forces a “mass exodus” in some regions.

    The town of Deniliquin in south-west New South Wales is the heart of what was once a thriving agricultural region. But after years of drought, water levels in the Murray River are at their lowest in more than a century.

    With the Federal Government offering to buy back farmers’ water allocations, some are giving up on agriculture altogether.

    Many families and businesses are struggling to survive, prompting a mass exodus from the town.

    The Wettenhall family has been farming in Deniliquin for 30 years, but they have decided they cannot go on.

    The worst drought in history means they have had no water for irrigation for three years and Adam Wettenhall says this year they are only promised a trickle.

    “It’s been incredibly tough. In fact the last three years have just been negative income, we’ve had to pull the heads right in, we’re not spending money on any machinery, we haven’t had a new machine in five or six years,” he said.

    The Wettenhalls are financially crippled by the fixed charges they are forced to pay for water they do not receive.

    ‘Exploiting farmers’

    The Federal Government is buying water directly from farmers to replenish the ailing Murray-Darling system.

    For some it is a welcome cash grab to pay off mounting debt. But Rob Brown, a financial planner in the region, says many farmers believe they are being exploited because the Government is the only buyer and it sets the price.

    “The farmers are frustrated and hurt and know they’re being exploited and the reason they’re being exploited,” he said.

    “They know the Government knows that after 10 years of drought, you’re sitting ducks.”

    Deniliquin has enjoyed decades of prosperity on the back of the rice industry and farmers were drawn to the region by an irrigation scheme they believed would make the region droughtproof.

    But times have changed and the town is experiencing an unprecedented downturn.

    Last year hundreds of people lost their jobs when the rice mill closed. The mill was once the symbol of Deniliquin’s prosperity, the largest rice mill in the southern hemisphere, capable of producing enough grain each day to feed 30 million people.

    Deniliquin’s Mayor Lindsay Renwick estimates that two families are leaving the town a week.

    “Since the rice industry has stopped we have had a mass exodus,” he said.

    Deniliquin’s future

    Now, the big question is, how will farms remain productive when the drought does break if the Federal Government has bought the majority of the water?

    Chairman of the Murray Action Group, Lester Wheatley, is worried that the Government has not considered the future of both food production and the town of Deniliquin.

    “There has been absolutely no concern, no apparent concern by either state or federal government about what we’re going to do about security for the future,” he said.

    “I’m convinced that the Government is not in the slightest bit interested in fact their attitude is more likely to be ‘Well, it’ll be natural attrition. If nobody lives in Deniliquin and everybody moves to the coast, well so be it’.”

    But the Federal Government says it is doing everything it can in the face of a changing climate.

    Minister for Water and Climate Change Penny Wong says the Federal Government is trying to keep the agricultural industry going.

    “We have to face up to a reality of a future where we’re likely to see the less water. What we’re doing is rolling out projects – seeking projects that will ensure efficiencies and continue to produce more crop per drop.”

     

  • Government fails to finance food

    From The Land

     

    CLIMATE change poses a threat to Australia’s food supply on a scale that urgently requires the attention of the Prime Minister, says industry leader Kate Carnell.

    The combination of drought, the proposed emissions trading scheme and the global downturn are all posing significant challenges for Australia’s food industry, but there is a lack of strong government direction to address the problems confronting the sector.

    “The viability of the food manufacturing sector is under threat – and if these challenges are not addressed, they will significantly impact on Australia’s long-term food security, and our capacity to be self-sufficient,” said Ms Carnell, the chief executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council.

    The $70 billion-a-year food industry, employing 200,000 people, is Australia’s biggest manufacturing industry yet is regulated by about 20 government departments when what is needed is a co-ordinated approach overseen by the Department of Prime and Cabinet, Ms Carnell, a former ACT chief minister, said.

    The impact of drought and the prospect of a carbon trading scheme that would penalise the local industry but not foreign food competitors is highlighting the need for a national food policy.

    “This whole industry is based on available water and low-cost power and really, like any other agricultural products, if your water is not there – no water, no food – that’s a bit of a problem,” Ms Carnell told the National Press Club yesterday.

    That problem becomes more daunting if the price of power rises as a result of the emissions trading scheme, with significant knock-on effects given 90 per cent of the inputs to the food industry comes from Australian farms, Ms Carnell said.