Wonderful sentiment Jim. There are many people like you and I who wish for nothing better than sustainable practices to be introduced to farming to not only provide for our children's future, but our grandchildren's and all the generations who are to follow, but sadly I doubt any of us will make any headway whilst 1% of the World's rich continually strive to own everything and enslave everyone on Earth. We've wittnessed most of the old Australian companies either move off shore or (usually) bought out by overseas interests while our successive Governments stood by patting each other on the backs and attempting to sell the feel good rhetoric of Australia's need to participate in the Global economy. And yes, it's been able to bring about an abundance of cheap consumer products for the gullible to play with while our farmers struggle through drought and hard times. Many will leave the land, encouraged by big businnes and Government. Those same small farms will be snapped up by overseas interests who will plunder the land for all it's worth in good times and having an abundance of funds to ride out the bad. When our Australian soil has been destroyed so that it's useless to overseas big business, they'll drop us like a hot spud and move on to their next target which will already be well groomed into accepting that big business means big rewards for that country's inhabitants. Their fate will follow ours.
Whilst I appreciate your article and the message it conveys, I'm afraid we're doomed as a Nation until the general population begins to realise that capitalistic growth cannot go on unabated forever and that one day, probably very soon, the economy will come crashing down around their ears as their overburden of credit debt comes home to roost.

“It is timely to consider whether the nation’s research efforts are being optimally directed at issues such as efficient and sustainable water use, arresting land degradation, coping with climate variability and climate change, sustainable agricultural production, balancing energy consumption and production and permitting economic and social development.”

Absolutely it is time Jim. In fact, it has been time for a long time! It is now critically time to get our collective national arse into gear.

There are currently a bunch of very high-profile issues that are powerful indicators that we are not living unsustainably nor anywhere near it. And yet, just about nobody is talking about the sustainability. We just don’t have the mindset to put all of this stuff together. Each problem – water, climate change, peak oil, etc, is being looked in virtual isolation.

And what is even crazier is the continued worship of the continuous growth paradigm. Again, it is not in the mindset of most people to even consider stabilizing the ever-increasing pressure being placed on our resource base and environment by ever-more people, or I should say, by blithering idiots who facilitate and promote this continued expansionism.

I was hoping that Kevin Rudd could see the urgency of addressing our big-picture sustainability issues. But alas, he is just going twiddle his thumbs and allow continuous expansionism to go completely unaddressed.

Now that Tim Flannery is Australian of the Year and has an even higher profile than he has had for some years, we might just have a glimmer of a chance. But even though he has said that Australia can sustainably support somewhere between six and twelve million people, he seems reluctant to really address the total picture, at least with anything like the urgency that it needs.

It begs the question; what on earth has to happen before the whole community gets it through their thick skulls that sustainability is the all-important parameter?

Do we really have to crash and burn first, and then develop a sustainable society out of the ashes??

In the main, farmers live on their land that they farm. Foremost on their mind is the knowledge from long experience that any given acre will yield x amount of y crop and that with some judicious tweaking that acre may sustain a yield equal to z. Going beyond that, the farmer is aware that he is putting his land in jeopardy and his families livelihood and future well being at risk. Farmers are very concerned with the use of chemical (and organic) fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Water resources and any chemical leeching into that ground water that may occur from any use or misuse.
Industrial farm methods by their nature do not reflect such concerns. Massive amounts of chemical used to squeeze 10 more pounds of yield per acre or running 10 more of animal stock for that same acre are not the general conservative thinking found in farmers.
Science has been helpful. To that same extent, science has been unhelpful for concentrating it's efforts on maximizing yield per acre and not on the sustainability, and health of farmland in general.
What is really needed is a method of reclaiming land micro-biologically. Like finding a way to regenerate polluted or chemically saturated land mass with the use of microbes specific to a given area or pollutant and then once free of pollutant regenerate a natural microbial activity. We have forgotten the advantage gained by leaving some land "fallow" for a growing season.
With continuous farming and chemical use land can become sterile. It becomes no longer soil but, dirt. Dirt blows in the wind.

"Do we really have to crash and burn first, and then develop a sustainable society out of the ashes??"

Most likely Ludwig, that will be the end scenario. Our current Governments, both in power and in opposition have gotten themselves too far into bed with big business, particularly American big business to do anything but continue with population expansion and the perceived growth that flows from it. It's why some peak oil proponents live to pray for a sudden beginning of the end of cheap oil within the next few years. They realise that only a major catastrophe such as peak oil can possibly ever hope to stop the mad grab for power and wealth by a handful of the World's rich and mega rich before they destroy forever this wonderful planet on which we find ourselves.

Yet people are beginning to stir. Poor nations who have had their countries plundered by wealth ceation powerhouses such as the WTO and IMF and beginning to see the folly of trusting their Governments who have sold their people down the drain while their "leaders" live a life of wealth and luxury gained by greed and corruption. Our current Government is little different. I doubt that a change of Government will make the slightest difference. First, we as a nation will have to suffer greatly before our citizens wake up to the folly of greed and debt that currently prevails. Sometimes, like the phoenix, we must be burned terribly before we can rise from the ashes. Let's hope those same ashes are not too deep to rise from.

But Ludwig, as Marx pointed out - capitalism requires growth to drive it forward. The very foundations of our system mean that profits will continuously fall as competition drives the market, with the only antidote being growth.

Sure, Marx was wrong on plenty of counts, but on that one he was absolutely right.

It's all well and good to point to the problems associated with growth but you fail to address the problems that will inevitably arrive when it is halted.

Don't get me wrong - I agree with you. But if this mad race forward is to stop, then it might be a good idea to figure out how to work the brake.

A commonsense approach by Professor Scott which is unfortunately not very common, in particular the failure to take an holistic approach to policy and to take account of the medium to long-term impacts.