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The Forum > Article Comments > The tragedy of world farm clearances > Comments

The tragedy of world farm clearances : Comments

By Julian Cribb, published 26/7/2012

As small farmers leave the land who will guard their knowledge and its fertility?

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I share your concern Julian. We may be hitting a global food crisis soon, not helped by the virtual loss of the US corn crop this summer. On the other hand, economic collapse as we see in Greece is driving people, including the young, back to the land because there are no jobs in the city. But we do need to pay more for food and ensure farmers have a liveable income. What happens when the price of oil rises is another matter. Some farmers spend $150,000 on diesel a year to run machinery. Will they be able to plant and harvest if oil costs double? Meanwhile, we have to stabilise population numbers as a matter of urgency. It's a simple case of mouths to feed, or supply and demand. Let's focus on the demand side (i.e. stabilise demand) as well as the supply side.
Posted by popnperish, Thursday, 26 July 2012 8:08:57 AM
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As an example of this in 1950 40% of Australian voters were rural. Now rural voters only amount to 7% because of the drift from the land.
Posted by Country girl, Thursday, 26 July 2012 8:31:51 AM
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OK, we hear you and we share your concern. But concern alone does not produce a solution. What are the alternatives to a free market economy? Imposing tarifs on imports leads to isolation. Increasing Government subsidies only delays the inevitable. United Nation supervision / control? They have a poor records in managoing world affairs! Allocating production quotas? These things have been tried before, normally with dismal results
Criticism of a system without some form of viable solution to the problem is not much help.
Posted by Alfred, Thursday, 26 July 2012 9:10:31 AM
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Yes a good essay. Unfortunately there is probably nothing that anyone can to about the unsettling process.
Wendell Berry has been addressing this issue for over 30 years now.
His book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture is a classic.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Thursday, 26 July 2012 10:24:51 AM
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I also share your concerns Julian. Farmers are suiciding at the rate of 4 a day?
Small farms and small farmers are significantly more productive than the corporate model.
Small farms produce less carbon than the corporate model.
Small farmers probably pay more pro rata tax?
All those things identified Julian, are what one might expect, when the inmates take over and run the asylum.
Howard and other complex rationalists acted to shut down farmers'co-ops, as the Nats simply rolled over and begged for a tummy rub?
Honest John, would have better spent taxpayers funds, assisting diversification?
Farmers have few choices, in the face of the mineral boom, which robs them of the workforce they need.
We hear that the margins for too many farmers is as low as 3%; meaning, they could literally double their returns
by simply investing in term deposits.
The solutions are farmers' markets and co-ops, where they become price fixers!
They need surety of water and low cost fuel supplies, to remain viable on the driest inhabited continent on earth.
The NBN will assist them in ways not yet conceived, allowing them to operate other commercial enterprises that allow them to stay on and enjoy the independent lifestyle, self sufficiency, and the personal freedom that they love.
This is what keeps battling farmers on the land, not the often illusionary returns.
Some farmers need to get smarter and put some of the income earned in the better years into income earning off farm assets, rather than tie it up in brand new machines, simply to short-sightedly reduce their better years tax burdens, when what they already have is both serviceable and adequate?
We do need to assist our most productive people to remain on the land and encourage family members to carry on the tradition.
The Murray/Darling as a case in point, could be completely rescued as a wealth creating productive area; for town and farm, by the assisted transition, to very low water use algae farming and on farm bio-diesel production!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 26 July 2012 10:47:21 AM
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When the ownership model takes hold (whether ownership be corporate or private) what happens to the "inefficient" farmers is that they are pushed off their land by industrialisation.

In industrialised & industrialising nations, people who for generations past had enjoyed at least the basic security of a roof overhead and a patch of land for food must then win a place in the globalised market place. In the cities where employment is increasingly more competitive, they must rent from an owner. The communal model which had provided land security for them and for future generations is being replaced by an ownership model in the name of efficiency. No compensation can replace that security.


There are growing numbers are living in slums (right now 863 million people, a considerable increase compared to the 760 million in 2000)

Under the welfare provisions in some industrialised nations, welfare recipients are demonised & welfare is under threat from the competition (now global) which is intrinsic to the ownership model.

I think that at the very least, the advocates & beneficiaries of the ownership model have a duty to build an alternative to "welfare" or cold charity into their model.

My suggestion is for an urban public land provision in a model to create better urban environments for all. see http://www.ntw.110mb.com/NTWmodel/NTWModeloverview.htm

Chris Baulman
@landrights4all
Posted by landrights4all, Thursday, 26 July 2012 11:15:35 AM
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Alfred et al. My primary aim here is to attract some global recognition of the sheer scale of this issue. Putting one human being in 5 out of their work and their home is not trivial. I believe there are solutions, and that they need not involve replacing the free market system with something else. Indeed, most farmers like it. What we need is a system that assist them to produce efficiently while looking after increasingly scarce production resources, which rewards their efforts to care for the world's land, water, atmosphere and wildlife - as they now do, unrewarded. Which rewards healthy food production rather than industrial rubbish. Which recycles its wastes. We can usefully debate how that would work.
Posted by JulianC, Thursday, 26 July 2012 12:30:37 PM
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Julian could do with a history lesson..

Australia once had elaborate system of protecting farmers labelled agrisocialism, which included things like a reserve price for wool and dairy and egg marketing boards.. this has mostly been swept away (the wool reserve price scheme collapsed of its own accord)for the very good reason that it took money out of the pockets of consumers to subsidise the living of farmers who were not being given any incentive to become more efficient.

No-one now wants to return to that old system, may be not even the farmers (not now at any rate), except Julian and perhaps a couple of the posters. The rest of us have to live with changes in the markets and technology, why should farmers be shielded from reality?

Julian may have convinced himself that there will a shortage of food some time in the future (a piece of advice Julian, don't set any firm dates on your forecasts), but why having fewer, smaller farms would help these shortages is beyond me..
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 26 July 2012 1:26:58 PM
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Curmudgeon
I think Julian is more interested in the welfare of a sizeable proportion of the population (farmers) than propping up some tired ideology, in other words, he is acting out of altruism and compassion. In the background we have the looming threat of food insecurity aka hunger and starvation, so if we are to feed people we have to look after farmers to some extent just so they will keep on producing. If that smacks of socialism, tough. We may be able to produce fruit and vegetables through urban agriculture but we need farmers in the countryside to produce meat and the grain that supplies most of our calories. I have no desire to be hungry, nor do I want my children and grandchildren to be either, nor their respective generations.
Posted by popnperish, Thursday, 26 July 2012 4:43:46 PM
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We now have much more productive land than when lots of small farmers were literally eking out a living. Subsistence farming as in Africa means occasional or regular famines.
I am sure small scale farming is a lovely life style but needs must! Mate, the price of food will stay affordable only with big efficient farms.
Don Ruthven said that the change to efficient agriculture reduced prices and allowed people to be properly employed in Australia.
What do you suggest? Loads of subsidies and high prices for food.
Great if you are rich or some cosseted public servant with the rest of us paying your pension, I am not that lucky.
Posted by JBowyer, Thursday, 26 July 2012 9:10:21 PM
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It's a looming problem that will sooner, rather than latter, hit home in a big way.

It's a simply case of risk V returns, whereby the risks are simply too high now for the hope of a good return.

I was talking to a farmer recently, in the Gatton area, he told me he grew mainly potatoes and sold most of his crop to Wollies.

He said they turn up, mid crop, and say, we are going on special next month and we are paying you X instead of the usual Y. X being about 9c per kilo and Y being about 50c per kilo.

Now of cause he can say no, but then there is no one there to buy his crop as the big two have all but drowned out the competition.

It's our secsesive governments that are most to blame, as they have sat back and not only allowed this domination, but supported it with the likes of extended trading hours.

Of cause, we the tax payer will no doubt have to one day bail out the farmers as well.
Posted by rehctub, Friday, 27 July 2012 6:33:51 AM
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I do not share the gloom of Julian. However I agree there is cause for concern.
I consider that the future lies in what some term the 'corporate family farm' - that is an agricultural eneterprise that is owned an operated by an extended family. This outfit is often large and in some cases intensive, with in many cases more than one principal commodity being produced. This is in my opinion the best model for land stewardship and also overall efficiency.
Large corporations do not have the committment or the built in efficiency to operate large agricultural enterprises. Furthermore the shareholders want an annual dividend on their shares (try that in a drought!). Directors and others want to be recompensed, and all employees paid for overtime or extra hours worked. This is often not possible in agriculture.
We have had corporate agriculture before (Dalgetys, AMP etc. etc.) which have come and gone. My guess is that some of our current corporates will go the same way.
There are plenty of these 'corporate family farms' in the Australian agricultural scene, who are doing very well right now, and have done so for generations. However they are right at the forefront of modern farming technology, and this is often a reason for their success.
Posted by nswnotill, Monday, 30 July 2012 11:52:32 AM
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Man's inhumanity to man never ceases to fill one with horror. But this is confusing the corruption of so-called governments (dictators) with the operation of free markets (which are neither free nor perfect but are a damn sight more equitable than fascism or communism).
I am intrigued as to why the life and culture of the farmer is seen as so special, sacrosanct to some? There are fewer jobs for artisans than there were before the industrial revolution. One assumes their descendants re-trained as computer programmers and did quite well, than you very much. And I bet the descendants of those coal miners, who coughed their life away in English villages or the mill workers of Leeds and Lancashire, aren't hankering for the 'good old days'. On balance, and taking the long view, these changes were for the good of the employees and the good of the community who got cheaper goods through industrialisation. The truth is people want cheap food and successful nations rely on open, robust trade.
The inevitable solution to Cribb's impassioned cri de coeur is government intervention, costly taxes and regulations that, like that political stunt, the carbon tax, weigh on competitiveness of nations and on the entire community. It is no solution at all. Isn't it time we realised, given the wasteful global climate conferencing that has been going on since Kyoto, that global solutions won't work.
Incidentally, the number of dairy farms in Australia is closer to 7000 (not 3000 - see Dairy Australia's website) and while this is an apparently dramatic decrease, the farms are larger, more technologically advanced and more profitable than ever before (on average) despite the vagaries of international prices and greedy consumers wanting cheap milk. A return to 'noble peasant' agriculture will not feed the hungry.
Posted by richierhys, Wednesday, 1 August 2012 6:27:16 PM
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