Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Food & Farming

Coal4Breakfast: Update from Geoff Hewitt

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LAST year Queensland farmers were informed that the Government had granted Tarong Energy a mineral development licence over the Haystack Road coal deposit on prime agricultural farmland.  The farmers are running a campaign against it.  Here’s the latest update:  

It was pleasing to see the very public commitment on the front page of the Toowoomba Chronicle on Saturday, 7th March, from party leader Lawrence Springborg committing his party, should they win government, to the protection of the iconic farming areas of Haystack Road and Felton, and to the introduction of a planning process to identify and protect other areas of prime farm land in Queensland.  Mr Springborg said, in releasing the policy commitment, that it was not an anti mining policy, and that LNP recognize the need to protect our prime farm land for future generations.  LNP should be congratulated for recognising the importance of this issue. 

A few days earlier, the Queensland Greens had announced that they too would protect areas of prime farm land from unnecessary mining development.  During the following week, a number of notable independent candidates also stated a commitment to this policy. 

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New Jungles

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By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.  Read more here in the New York Times.  This good news was reported eight years ago by Marc Morano, Read more here. 
And also here.

Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speech

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“To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.”   Read more here.

Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies

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REMEMBER the stories about how the Murray Darling Basin, the food bowl of Australia, was going to be lost to salt?  Headline after media headline told of imminent ruin from rising water tables bring salt.  

The Riverina, a once rich farming area in south western New South Wales, was considered most affected by this “scourge of salinity”, this “curse of salt”.  

In the next year it is likely that a lot of farmers in this area will walk, will leave the Riverina, but it won’t be because of salt.  Farmers in the Riverina worked with their local water corporation, Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL), and government engineers to solve the salt problem. 

While it was once feared over 300,000 hectares would be lost to salt, by March 2003 the area with shallow water tables had stabilized below 20,000 hectares and is now less than 4,000 hectares. 

Indeed farmers won’t be leaving because of salt.  They will be leaving because of prolonged drought, and government policy. 

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