"
If you hate farmers, be sure to give generously to the Farmhand
appeal. If you want the drought problem to get worse, applaud
the politicians as they hand out more tax payers' money to
drought-stricken cockies. And if you want to see our farmers
continuing to stuff up the Wide Brown Land - and then demanding
that you and I pay to clean up the mess, nod wisely when ignorant
loudmouths spout about "drought-proofing - Australia."
Mention the word drought and the cities fill with people who
like to imagine they're soft-hearted, but are actually soft-headed.
Talk about slow learners. Europeans have been here more than
200 years but we still haven't twigged that droughts are frequent
and reasonably predictable events. In a country such as ours,
droughts are simply a matter of efficient farm management.
Make a note: droughts aren't bad luck, they're bad management.
For
livestock farmers, how much you suffer from drought is a product
of how heavily you stock your land. Good farm managers don't
gamble on rain. They don't push their luck, but cut their
losses early. In plainer English, those who donate to drought
appeals are showing as much kindness as people who'd give
drug addicts another hit. The point to remember is this: the
less our farmers do to prepare for the drought, the more it
damages both the soil and their finances, and the more susceptible
that makes them to \the next one.
'Farmers
Who Fail Don't Deserve Pity'
by
Ross Gittens 'Sydney Morning Herald' 16.10.02
"If
you thought the notion of farmers and their political toadies
wanting to " capitalise the profits, but socialise
the losses " was a thing of the past, wake up. It's
happening right now. It got very little publicity in the
cities but, just this last financial year, Australian farmers
had their most profitable year in yonks. From a recent average
of $5.1 billion a year, farm income almost doubled to $9.8
billion. The latest estimate is that, this year, income
will slump to $3.7 billion. So what happens? Out comes the
begging bowl. Farmers must be the only for- profit industry
in the country that passes the hat whenever profits dry
slip. If any city businesses tried that, we'd laugh them
to scorn. But when Dad and Dave do it, we dig deep. And
if we don't, our vote-chasing politicians do it for us.
There's
nothing farmers can do to control the weather, but there's
much they can do to stop the absence of rain from becoming
'drought' - which is the absence of feed, water, and soil
moisture. It's in this sense that farmers influence how
much drought we have. The wider point is that we've got
to adapt our farming practices to suit the dry Australian
landscape. We've got to make Australian farming more peculiarly
Australian and stop trying to adapt the landscape to suit
alien European farming practices. We've got to cut our coat
according to our cloth It's doubtful, for instance, that
we should ever have gotten into cotton and rice growing.
They say some parts of the backblocks have been drought-declared
almost continuously for 30 years. Why? So they could be
continuously eligible for subsidies. But the obvious truth
is that such areas are simply unsuitable for farming - and
the sooner we face up to it the better." ends
