The wet tropics are just that, and where annual rainfall is measures in metres.
The danger of it turning into a dust bowl is farcical, but particularly, if the crops grown are mostly tree and or under-story crops. (Rubber, avocado, diesel trees, coffee, cocoa, sweet potatoes?)
There's as much protein in a single avocado, as a T-bone steak!
Moreover, if anybody bothered to look, there is far better grazing in in open forest as opposed to treeless plains, referred to by an earlier scaremongering poster.
And many crops can be grown in long wide rows, if companion hedgerow tree planting, also included in the farming plan!
If they had done that in the vast treeless American prairies, they might have retained their soil and productive farms, even to today?
And some of our natives, salt, frost and drought tolerant crops, like the soil and fertility improving legume, perennial native wisteria, could be trialled.
The oil rich seed is a useful source of omega three, or bio diesel, and the ex-crush material is a protein rich source that would support many feed-lots, chicken/pig production or fish farming.
After seven years, the less productive woody material, could be given over to bio-char production, which after extracting some gas or methanol, could be buried to further improve the soil and sequester carbon!
Coincidently, a fish farm the size of Eagle Farm's main runway, would produce as much annual profit as 10,000 acres of sustenance grazing; and, the fish filtrate, would likely support enough oil rich algae, so as to make the enterprise self sufficient in fuel needs. [And we do need to do something practical, to preserve and grow our wild ocean fish stocks!]
Extracting oil from oil rich algae, is as simple as sun-drying the harvested material and then crushing it, perhaps utilising a simple inexpensive water wheel and copious northern water?
Never say never!
Rhrosty.

The Dust Bowl story is merely an example of how people can do enough damage with misconceived agricultural development to wreck the environment and ruin themselves. I never suggested (and it is foolish to imagine) that Northern Australia would have exactly the same problems as the Oklahoma Panhandle. Here is a link to a world map from the US Department of Agriculture showing soil performance and soil resilience (i.e., whether it possible for the soil to go on producing in the same way).

http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/landqual.html

There is a link that you can click to get a pdf file with a high quality image where you can see all of the details.

What puzzles me, is why you would prefer to believe uninformed boosters rather than agricultural scientists familiar with the area. It is worth noting that agricultural scientists of the day warned Australian politicians against introducing the cane toad and about the potential for salinity problems (which could have been avoided with proper management) in the Murray Darling basin. Needless to say, they were ignored. There are great dangers in believing what you want to believe.

Some of Rhosty's ideas might actually have merit, but they need to be properly tested before people are encouraged to bet everything they have on them.

It amazes me the way 'sustainable' is code for anti/non-development. The spin offs to the Snowy Mountain scheme were enormous. When previous 'reports' were commissioned that specifically excluded such things a dams and irrigation then the inevitable result was all just 'too hard'.
This is a brilliant vision well worth serious study.

Luddy just what has sustainability got to do with garbage scrub, full of pigs & heaps of other exotic vermin, & consisting of a huge percentage of noxious weeds overtaking the original flora. Who wants a landscape of prickly Acacia, & rubber vine, except those who want to deprive humans from using it.

Why is it desirable to maintain a plant population totally dictated by the continual burning by the aboriginals.

This snapshot of a moment in nature being treated as something that must be now maintained for ever is the major weakness of the green & the sustainability lobby. In most instances any reasonably intelligent person can improve most landscapes quite easily, greenies excepted, but then reasonably intelligent excludes them anyway.

Divergence I presume you are talking about academics, so will ignore your suggestion we listen to them as that is a recipe for disaster in most endeavors. Genuine agricultural specialists have had little to do with the area, so know little. However give half a million Chinese a go at it, & they would feed millions.

<< It amazes me the way 'sustainable' is code for anti/non-development. >>

Prompete, it amazes me that some people can have such an end-of-the-spectrum perspective.

Come on, you know full well what sustainability is, at least in the broad sense, and you also know full well that those who espouse a sustainable future are not ‘non-development’!

Of course what we need is the type of development that is in line with the achievement of a sustainable future, rather than the type that continues to take us in the opposite direction… which could rightly be called anti-development.

<< This is a brilliant vision well worth serious study. >>

This vision of vast northern development HAS been studied over the years. As I say; if it had been feasible, it would have been done at least to a fair extent by now.

What needs serious study is how we achieve a sustainable future.

If considerable development of the north is part of it, then fine. But if this development is done with the same old ‘growth-is-good-and-faster-growth-is-better-and-nothing-else-really-matters’ dictum that has always prevailed in this country, then no, we should NOT develop the north.

Unfortunately, you can bet your bottom dollar that Abbott and his mob are just another bunch of growth-pandering sustainability-blind drongoes.

<< Luddy just what has sustainability got to do with garbage scrub, full of pigs & heaps of other exotic vermin, & consisting of a huge percentage of noxious weeds overtaking the original flora. >>

I dunno Hazza. What HAS it got to do with it?? ( :>|

<< Who wants a landscape of prickly Acacia, & rubber vine, except those who want to deprive humans from using it. >>

Huh? So, how much of the north is dominated by prickly Acacia or rubber vine?

As bad as these weeds are, very little scrub (or woodland or grassland) is dominated by them... or any other weeds.

<< Why is it desirable to maintain a plant population totally dictated by the continual burning by the aboriginals. >>

Vast areas, in fact the vast majority of the northern half of the continent, is no longer subjected to Aboriginal burning practices, nor to a modern approximation of them.

Hey, there is plenty of room for the maintenance of ecological values AND for extensive agriculture.

But that agriculture needs to be viable, and genuinely in our best interests, ie; in line with a sustainable future.

Otherwise, forget it.