Amongst other occupations I have also been a farmer, but I have also moved to other jobs in far flung places. It seems to me that farmers who insist on staying on the land regardles of the profitability of their enterprise have an unrealist expectation of what the world owes them.
This drought may well go on for a lot longer, and many areas are going to be in the same situation as happened in the north of South Australia, many years ago. A gent by the name of Goyder, had drawn a line in the sand, north of which he declared that cropping was not viable, and it turned out that he was right and those farmers who were involved all had to move out. No one has drawn a similar line in the sand in the eastern states, but there are likewise many areas where cropping has become unviable and farmers are going to have to put pride and stubborness in their pockets and shift.
We should not be paying out millions of dollars yearly to help them to stay, we should be helping them to relocate or even retire. If they are young and still keen to farm, there are thousands of acres of undeveloped land in the Ord with plenty of un-allocated water available. We don't need to shift the water to the farms, we need to shift the farmers to the water and provide them and their families with all the infrastructure that goes with it.

Drought relief for farmers – many of them simply not viable – is good for them, but what about the country and the rest of us?

Eighty percent of our agriculture product is exported, so we are told (for those idiots who constantly call me and others they disagree with ‘ignorant’ and ‘uninformed’, believing I/we make things up).

So government/taxpayer welfare for farmers is purely a trade thing. This means we pay more so that poor managers and farmers on land, which should not be farmed at all, can continue muddling on. Half of Australian agricultural land is now drought stricken, and experts say that that much, and more, will have to go out of production permanently in the future.

Despite our ‘good’ economic growth of recent years, there is anecdotal evidence out here in the real world that Australia is going down hill – as far as the ordinary citizenry is concerned. High interest rates, high debt, high food prices, and the lowest housing affordability ever. Not to mention the lowering of wages resulting from imports of foreign workers. The next step toward Third World status is we ordinary Australians paying more and more so that exports can continue while we cannot afford the goods exported.

Think – cheap imports to Australia that the people of the exporting countries live at a subsistence level to provide for us. Think – how many times a week do we eat our own crayfish (rock lobster) because of the massive prices obtained from exporting them.

The really annoying and stupid thing, as the author points out, is all this featherbedding is for a sector responsible for only 3% of the national output!

And, with reference to the author’s mention of salinity and degradation of the land, who caused most of that – our ‘battling’ farmers, of course.

The current climatic conditions have really shown up politicians for the drongos they are. The only help they should be giving farmers is getting at least half of them of the land, and dropping the idea that we must feed the rest of the world.

VK3AU has a point - we are farming marginal land at best - We can no longer afford the luxury of Agrarian Socialism -

add to that the gigalitres of water that is being sucked up by specualtive projects like tree farms and vine plantings pandering to the retirement dreams of cashed up professionals or operating as efective tax breaks - we are wasting resources - I was at a retreat many years ago at a monastary - a student of Indian descent suggested way back then in the 70's that the next major world conflict might well be over access to fresh water - I think he might be right

It seems to me that we have governments who do a lot of talking about market forces and yet do very little about ensuring that the market works effectively when it might affect the agrarian socialist lobby.

Australians pay far too little for the water they consume, and that includes town dwellers. If we all paid a more realistic price for the water we consume we would soon all learn to trim our consumption to a sustainable level.

There might be some pain to begin with, and government assistance may be needed to "encourage" some to exit, but if large-scale irrigators were required to pay a realistic price for the water they use, and waste, they would soon trim their farming practices or end up with an unsaleable, over-priced product. It wouldn't matter how much cotton Cubbie Station or its ilk were able to produce, if they couldn't sell it they would either change their practices or be forced to abandon their business.

Good article and comments, but it's high time, when you mention river health and water, that you mention damage done to river systems by poorly regulated mining operations as a major and escalating problem. In the Southern Coalfield alone, the Cataract and Upper Georges Rivers and, to a lesser extent, the Bargo River, and dozens of their tributary creeks and streams have been cracked, depleted and polluted by mining - and more mine plans are seeking approval right now. In NSW, eight major river systems have been damaged and fourteen are under further threat. The process is escalating as the price of coal rises, and the approvals process is both secretive and unaccountable,taking no notice of public concern or environmental issues. Senior bureaucrats in NSW Dept. of Minerals are finding lucrative jobs with mining corporations and the revolving door syndrome may mean a blind eye is turned to the fact of damage to our rivers in NSW.

The problem I have with articles like this is that they seem to be written from a desk in a city and the writer has used too much pop information and loud voices for the genesis.

Yes, there are questions as to water useage along rivers but these seem to dominate the interest of the vocals so that when the words 'farming' and 'drought' get used inevitably in the next sentence 'rivers' (and irrigation) pop up. Dude, travel west (or south west, or north west) of Sydney and check out the numbers of farmers who don't use any river water what so ever. Go to (say) Junee, have an ale with Bill Heffernan, then travel for another half hour to reach the 'Bidgee. Observe the numbers of farmers who rely on god to send down the odd burst of water at his (or her) discretion.

Only parts of farming are humungous (sic) sponges and those industries need to be looked and their water useage examined. But differently are those who are farming in marginal land and the viability of their approach. Farming marginal land isn't necessarily unviable it might just mean that a different approach is needed. As an idea, perhaps instead of permanent farmers and communities in these places they should be only farmed when the probability of a good season is high: treating the land as a call option, not a long futures contract.

I take the point that we shouldn't be propping up farmers for some 'spiritual' reason and the time when most urban familties could point to a farming realative/history are long gone. The hairy chested, knee jerk reaction of Vaile and Howard to the suggestion of famers being assisted to leave their land was presumptious in the extreme. I'm darn sure that there would be many (mostly elderly) farmers who would be happy to leave the industry with some capital and dignity.

This is the usual litany of factoids out of context and urban bias masquerading as intelligent discourse. Some facts.
1 farmers do not use 70% of "our" water. They use 70% of the captured water that is allocated to commercial users. As well as "allocated" water, a large volume is captured in dams and then released as environmental flow, often at times like now, when the rivers would normally be bone dry.

And in many schemes only a third of the farmers "allocation" actually makes it onto a paddock. The rest leaks out of the ditch into the ground water. And neither the government nor the environmental movement have supported moves to capture (fix) this leakage to enhance environmental flows. They found it was cheaper to simply put a few more farmers out of business by taking back their allocations to supply bogus environmental "needs".

Farmers use much more of "our" water because they own the land on which that water falls. Even in drought, it is still called rain. And it may come as a surprise for some to discover that the distribution of it is not determined on a per capita basis but, rather, by the area of land one owns. RAIN IS NOT DEMOCRATIC. GET USED TO IT!

2 Australian farmers crop less than 2% of their land. So all these lines beyond which cropping, and by implication, all farming, should cease has only a very tenuous link with the facts. Farmers don't invest time, fuel, seed and fertiliser on marginal land because it is a very quick way to go broke.

3 Agriculture may only account for 3% of GDP at the farm gate but only a fool would assume that this is the full extent of the value adding for this sector. Downstream processing of food and fibre would take the contribution of this sector to 15-20% of GDP. Those additional jobs still exist here because the produce is grown here so never delude oneself that the jobs would remain here using imported produce.

Perseus says "but only a fool would assume that this is the full extent of the value adding for this sector".

Well well, here we go again on economic multipliers where any activity can be made more significant, even the casinos get onto this bandwagon when it suits. Perseus, get it, 3 per cent is 3 per cent and that sector seeks to get taxpayer handouts and other favours far out of proportion to its contribution to the economy. It plays victim in the bad years, lies quiet in the good years. The dead lamb lying strategically behind the man letting the dust run through his hands plays on TV. Poor man, here's some more money.

Well what about the rest of the country?

The National Party operates like a trade union with a big letter V for victim on its back.

Get off the land fellahs. Let it lie fallow. I would rather see my money applied to infrastructure, smarter land use, superior crops, education on water and land management and anything that stops the restructuring with handouts to the "inches of rain", "bags per acre", "miles per gallon" victim brigade that some on this site seek to champion.

Incredible how Australia is stark contrast to say NZ can continue to support a mendicant activity at the expense of vibrant activities.

"Perseus, get it, 3 per cent is 3 per cent and that sector seeks to get taxpayer handouts and other favours far out of proportion to its contribution to the economy"

Umm actually not so Remco. Broadacre agriculture is one of the
few world competitive industries that Austalia has. Mining
is the other. If we relied on city slickers for exports, or they
had to import their food at much higher cost, their Aussie
peso would be worth very little and they would not even have
bananas to pay for their imports. Do not underestimate the
multiplier effect of agriculture.

The easy solution, so that handouts arn't needed, is to let
agriculture perform at its potential. City slickers are
holding us back from achieving that. The best way for farmers
to survive droughts for instance, is to sell livestock early,
before things get serious. City slickers are against live
exports, they won't let us import labour when its required,
yet the meat industry needs to be able to adjust to changing
climate, which even Govts can't regulate for. Take the
shackles off our industry, let the meat industry have a flexible
labour policy, then most drought payments would not be required.

Thats a win-win situation. The present situation is lose-lose,
due to city slicker stubborness. So cough up, if you won't
see reason. We'll sit back, as you spiral downwards.

Present land use systems are unsustainable in the long-term, as widespread degradation of land and water is already warning us, Dr John Williams, deputy chief of CSIRO Land & Water told the National Outlook Conference in Canberra.

Dr Williams called on the nation's research funding agencies to give far greater priority to strategic research aimed at designing new ways to use the Australian landscape that will both fight degradation and return income to rural comunities.

"Our present systems are not sustainable because they leak water and nutrients. By designing systems that avoid these losses we may achieve better harmony with the landscape.

"This "leaky" nature of Australian agro-ecosystems lies at the heart of the problem. We desperately need biophysical solutions to plug the leaks and capture both water and nutrients for productive use.

"It is not a trivial challenge - but our tendency to treat it as trivial has been perhaps the biggest stumbling block to sustainability," he says.

Guess when this intuitive piece was written? 1999 What have our fearless leaders done? Absolutely nothing.

Yabby, unfortunately, it is broadacre dryland farming which suffers the most from drought. With the climate change which seems to be upon us, our broadacre farms are generally becoming less likely to become competitive. Our friends at Coles and Woolworths import food cheaper than our farmers can produce it, so your argument there goes down the tube.

For the past 40 years or so, I have watched at first hand, while inland towns have dwindled in size as the numbers of farmers and supporting businesses have left. In more recent times, drought notwithstanding, the trend seems to be continuing as first the farmer's daughters go to the big smoke to look for work, and then their sons follow, firstly to earn some money and also to find a mate. The accountants of the seventies who forced the farmers to follow the philosophy of "Get big, or get out", forgot that to do so required the farmer to pay out more for labour and his sons wanted more than "This will all be yours when I die, son".

Remco, it is all very well talking about superior crops, but every time someone mentions GM crops a whole herd of environmental knockers comes out of the woodwork and says "You can't do that". Then there is the person who complains about chemicals, so what do you need to go to GM for but to get over that problem. Our dry land is generally of low fertility, so we need to apply fertiliser and the cost of maintaining the sheep which are generally run as an adjunct to the cropping, is also increasing. The days of being a dryland farmer for the lifestyle are numbered. The capital outlay required to become a farmer is much too great to give an adequate living wage in return.

Perseus. It is because of "Farmers investing time, fuel, seed and fertiliser on marginal land" that many are in the situation that they are in today.

Yabby, like Perseus, is clearly supporting the "inches of rain" mob when talking about impeding the export of livestock as an obstacle. Hey what about getting smart like say the Netherlands or Israel? Tiny countries producing high value added produce without the assistance rorts of Australia (eg see the rural assistance (rort) list at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/21/37034206.htm).

If you support live exports, you crowd out smart activities. How is it that our manufacturing sector (still four times the rural sector by the way and if you use Perseus’s multipliers of say three, you get more than one half the GDP being supported and a GDP three times actuality etc) has fallen to one-half without a hiccup and rising living standards? Why, because it got smart when protectionism ended. Not so in the rural sector due to its "trade union" the National Party.

Australia is getting drier, a pity the hand outs are not (yet).

For the "inches of rain" mob: If you face the sun, you can't see the shadows. Sadly, the government continues to hand out umbrellas to keep the mob in its support base and so we'll see that "bags per acre" man crouching near the dead lamb to pull the public's purse string yet again and again.

Remco, you of course miss one vital point! If we compare farmgate
prices of the commodities produced in Australia, on a global
scale they are as efficient as anyone, moreso in many. Value
adding to those commodities is something that manufacturing
should do. That is in comparative terms, a dismal failure.

Clearly you city people are not very good at what you do!
Farmers can be as efficient as they like, if you guys let
us down, we are lost. In financial terms, the best thing
we farmers could do would be to put all our livestock
on a boat and have them processed in a more efficient place
then Australia. Right now for instance, a sheep on a live sheep
ship is worth 4 times as much to us, as one sent for slaughter
locally. Its your shackles imposed on us, that are our problem.

Steve, long story, but dryland grain production has in fact changed
dramatically. New technology means its more sustainable then ever,
fullfilling many of the needs of Dr Williams. WA leads the way
in this, but then we always do it seems :)

VK, the stuff that Coles etc import is labour intensive. In labour
terms we are not competitive, so it will be imported. Do not confuse
that with highly mechanised broadscale agriculture, or extensive
livestock production. Our problem is getting product from farms
to consumers. Thats where costs arise. Your loaf of wheat might
contain 20c worth of flour, your litre of milk is worth around 27c
at the farmgate, your kg of meat leaves the farm for 0.70c-3$.
The rest is added by city slickers.

It's a few years ago. But I am a former chief of investigations at the AWB. I noticed quite a few farmers with cereal crops beyond the black stump on land that was bever going to support such crops on any consistant basis let alone the drought.

http://www.spectre.net.au

A quick reply to the comments (I found them all valuable):

Dealing with drought really is a tricky (and political) issue. On one hand there’s the argument that farms should be treated like any other business, subject to market forces and free from government intervention. On the other, there’s the view that agriculture is our historic national backbone, and struggling farmers need help. Neither view is completely correct, and both have merit. Agriculture isn’t like other industries. Most farms are quite small, often family run. There’s a strong dependence on natural conditions and the weather (which most farms adapt to remarkably well – and it’s not their fault we’ve had an exceptionally bad run of droughts). Also, agriculture is absolutely necessary for human life. Our food must be grown somewhere, even if it is only 3% of GDP. These factors need considering.

It’s often stated that Australia is one of the world’s most efficient agricultural producers – and that’s true. But what does ‘efficient’ mean? Some production may be economically profitable over a short-period – say a decade or two – but not all farm activities are environmentally sustainable in the long run. It’s true that, on aggregate, farms get more water from the sky than from rivers, yet only the latter can we really change. ‘Externalities’ aren’t being properly priced into farm costs in Australia. We need to do this when there’s competing uses for river water to ensure ‘economically efficient’ and ‘long-run sustainability’ coincide.

However, adjustment problems are formidable. Many farmers have been on the land all their life, and aren’t able to give it up and move to other activities. Over the past half-century or so, costs have risen a lot faster than revenues, squeezing profit margins, even in good times. There are big social issues that need addressing too. Solving ‘drought’ isn’t simple, and the policy prescriptions are often contradictory. Nevertheless, the government still has a long way to go towards making agriculture more sustainable – economically, environmentally and socially.

PS, to clear up some numbers, check out the ABS report that was released today: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4623.02000-01%20to%202003-04?OpenDocument

I have an answer to the city peoples free market ideals for agriculture.
How about we succeed from the nation, become a independent state, or at least do our books separate and that mean you will not have to” subsidise” us is the Constant theme I have heard here and elsewhere lately.

What would this mean?

• No restriction on regional Australia importing product with tariffs and other trade restrictions that cost us huge cost increases.
• Labour would be available at world market rates, not the massively subsided rates we have in Australia now.
• Agriculture income would not change, other than exchange rate changes. This is an income based on what the overseas workers producing the cheap imported products that the city people love, get payed.
• You (urban) would still be able to buy your food from the cheapest supplier. Something we farmers can’t do with our cost of doing business.
• Urban Australia would have best chance to supply urban aust with goods and services. ( but with the high price they need to charge to cover the highly regulated costs and labour market, doubt you will get much business from us)

The reason regional Australia is having problems is due to the total uneconomic secondary and tertiary sector in the urban areas. Most industries are subsidised by govt regulation of one sort or another. In fact most of the manufactured product is imported, but value added on price several times as a minimum once it reaches our shores.
Products with a retail price of less than $100, have a factory door cost of a few % 0f that. That’s single digit %.

Time for you lot to improve your productivity

One pertinent fact is lost by those that nay-say interest rate subsidies - the vast majority of those that have been severely hurt by the drought are those farmers that have sought to improve their efficency and viability by investing in new technologies and buying up unsustainable neighbours. To get bigger in this way requires borrowing of funds, and so these farmers are the hardest hit when the drought bit, with often large loans and subsequently high interest costs. Despite the large losses that they are currently generating, the vast majority of these farmers are the ones that we should be supporting through the hard times, as they are the efficient progressive farmers that the country needs. The small (you could ALMOST call hobby-) farmers are rarely in need of govt support as they tend not to take commercial risks and plod along, stripping as much out of their environment as possible, relying on the wife's income from her job to put food on the table. This is a fact often missed by city-based commentators, as they simply cant see this and dont realise the problem. The other point to address here is that the subsidies are not to offset rate rises - they cover 80% of total interest costs. The idea is to help to alleviate one of the higher costs of the business. There are also strict eligibility criteria, which results in many farmers not qualifying.

The city-slickers love to rant about the support that farmers get. I wonder what would happen if a tsunami hit the eastern coast of Australia (hopefully there would be enough warning for all the people to get out in time), destroying coastal businesses and decimating jobs. Do you think the same people would refuse government assistance to help get them through the tough times caused by a natural disaster, or would the same people that hate farmers getting help in times of extreme conditions, also be clamouring for Canberra to give them a handout?? Get real - of course they would.

cont...

I dont think anyone is in favour of govt assistance to farmers in standard dry times. It is a condition of farming in this country that weather is variable and land prices in various parts of the country reflects this variability. However, what we are faced with is not a dry spell, but a 1 in 100 year drought. It is not called exceptional circumstances relief for nothing. In this case it is no different to any other natural disaster and therefore relief should be available to those affected by it (and I include in this the rural townspeople that also cop it hard, but get little help).

Remco, et al, I suggest you have a good read of the works of Fernand Braudel on the development of commerce and capitalism in Europe from the 1400's onwards. It is by far the best explanation of how the addition of a manufacturing and service sectors are not evidence of a decline in the importance of agriculture but rather, evidence of a capacity to maximise the downstream benefits that come from agricultural production.

It is knuckle dragging ignorance to simply view the value of farm gate production and then conclude that it is, therefore, dispenable. And your repetition of your cliche's indicates that you have learned nothing since the last time you flogged your particular horse.

The reason we apply multipliers to agricultural production is because it often becomes the raw material for further value adding.

The $25/kg steak in your supermarket left the farm gate at $2/kg so someone, somewhere, is adding a lot more value to it, especially if that Kg is divided into three parts by a chef and sold for $35 for each part.

And you can take your chances on the prospects for doing it all without locally grown cattle but there are very few economies in the world that are willing to pass up the local option if they can possibly avoid it. So when you have done so, successfully, come and tell us all about it.

The claim for one in a hundred years special circumstance assistance does not justify taxpayer moneys any more than anyone else who is forced out of business like one-half our manufacturing sector in the past few decades. Why do rural people feel special? I feel sorry if you are there suffering but why not accept money to LEAVE and put YOUR family first. But if you stay, put away ONE per cent of your income to cover that one in a hundred year circumstance - it's YOUR choice, not ours to support.

And on efficiency. There is TECHNICAL efficiency and ECONOMIC efficiency. You might be the most efficient producer of something, but that does not make you economomically efficient. You might be the most efficient hat maker in the world, but it might be cheaper to import them from Ecuador (sorry cliched).

So, the economically inefficient live cattle, cereals, cotton might have to go in favour of other activities (or let the land go fallow). That "inches of rain" sector might have to leave with tax payer money to help them. We have beautiful fertile abundant land and "Australia" has an international reputation, but the old school involved with inches, live exports, with "multiplier" arguments have to leave, graciously and with dignity. Perhaps one quarter revert but that 1%of GDP (dont talk multipliers Perseus) is quicky compensated by higher value activities (hey look at eg. NZ).

Droughts are a feature of rural activity and not for ingrained subsidy. Stay if you must, but dont cry martyrdom helping indifferent city people. It's your life, not mine to support.

Remco, you are either confused or dodging the question.

The economic efficiency of most farm commodities is not in question,
it can be shown for what it is, world leaders.

Our problems arise, once the stuff leaves the farm gate and gets
into your hands in the cities. With all your rules, regulations and
lack of efficiency, you seem determined to prevent manufacturing
from achieving those same world benchmarks as farming has.

Farmers plight is largely due to your choosing. If you freed up those
regulations a bit, for instance allowed the import of seasonal labour
into the meat industry, so that it can operate at its potential,
then farmers would be that much better off and no drought assistance
would be required. But as you seem determined to hold us up from
operating at our true potential, you deserve to cough up. So be it.

Yabby, I follow your argument about the need to give farmers assistance in a one in a hundred year drought, but what happens if , due to climate change, this turns out to be a one in ten year drought. Do we keep on encouraging farmers to keep farming less than marginal land. There has to be a limit.

The price that we currently pay for food is another area which needs to be looked at. The population at large, which includes some of the people on this page, need to realise that there is too big a discrepancy between what farmers are paid and what the consumer pays. I will give you three examples. In West Gippsland, milk leaves the farm gate at around 30 cents a litre and sells in the shop at around 115 cents.
The supermarket sells potatoes at around three dollars a kilo and pays the farmer 30 cents to deliver it to the store already packed in trays. Locally, grass fed beef sells at something less than two dollars a kilo to the farmer and the consumer pays between 10 and 25 dollars for the meat. The yield from the carcass is something better than 50 percent.

If farmers were paid a decent price for their produce, then they could put away a reserve for hard times, instead of having to go to the government. Realistically, we should be subsidising farmers all the time to make up for the way they are being screwed by the supermarkets and the middle men all the time. The drought assistance only partially makes up for that.

I came to Australia 44 years ago from Yorkshire. My family were not farmers, but I lived in an area where there were plenty of farms and many of my friends were farmer's sons. I regularly heard the stories about what happened when it was too wet/too dry. Or too hot/too cold, etc.

When I was in the hostel, I met a migrant who had been a farmer in the north of England. He told me that he was buying a large area of undeveloped land in the Wheatbelt through a WA govt scheme for 2/9d an acre. [28cents]. OK, 28cents was a lot more in 1962 than it is now, but still an apparently amazing bargain. He explained to me that his part of the agreement was to clear and fence the land at a predetermined rate and make it productive. I remember wondering if there could be a catch to this apparent generosity on the part of the govt.

I travelled extensively through WA as a sales agent and suchlike and was Wheatbelt manager for an insurance company in the 1970s. I saw the spreading salinity problems first hand and some of my clients would point to a salt lake and dead trees and tell me how it used to be a fresh lake with abundant wildlife. I also saw obviously very marginal land [even obvious to a Pom!] being released and farmers being encouraged to take it up, with the same clear and fence agreements which my friend had explained to me years before.

I also saw some of them struggling to handle the difficulties of profitably farming land which was probably basically unfarmable. Weatherwise, they were generally amongst the good years. I wonder how they are getting on now.

cont

A little different, but similar in a way. I also spent some of my early years here covering the forestry areas of the Southwest. Around Manjimup, Northcliffe etc, the big trees, at first glance, seemed to go on forever. But look beyond the facade of trees along the road margins and consider the rate at which the trees were being felled and even a Pom could see that the timber industry could not continue indefinately at such a rate.

We all know that big business doesn't give a stuff about anything as long as the profits roll in, but what were successive WA govts doing to allow things to get to where they are now?

To Yabby in particular, you are not correct and this is important to those supporting assistance for drought. A farmer or an activity can be very efficient, world standard and yet be economically inefficient. The term “technical” is often dropped when talking about efficiency. So while we can be most efficient (ie. technically so) in something in Australia, it is possible that it is simply economically inefficient and hence better for us to import. So by that we don’t manufacture TVs, bicycles, and a host of things we import.

A mature society trades what it produces efficiently and imports what it cant do well. Australia went through its protectionist era ending under Keating, but we are stuck with the mendicant rural sector that is resisting change (the manufacturers did not have its National Party).

There is no question that the rural sector has its technically inefficient activities – they have to go, like the old manufacturing industry as until the late 1980s. Drought is like competition to the manufacturers who used to ply Canberra seeking relief from “unfair competition”. Drought like “unfair competition” is an inherent feature of being a farmer.

If say Israel can operate to bring our dairy farmers to inquire how come they produce double the milk per cow, and we import their technology for irrigation, points to the malaise in the Australia rural sector.

The National Party, despite their name change, is the political trade union that plays the emotive handout drum. Look to NZ for no handouts (and please Perseus, don’t talk how easier it is there to farm there, that is again not a basis for subsidies any less than manufacturing comparisons. Drought aid, is like the “unfair competition” argument, it should be dead.

Remco, I come from the most efficient farming district in Aus,
namely West Australia. Note for yourself how few subsidies are
paid to WA, as compared to NSW etc. In technical, enonomic or
whatever other comparisons you want to make, we lead the field.

Yet no matter how good we are, we are badly let down by some of
the most inefficient processing and marketing industries in
the country. Our returns for lamb, mutton,
milk, beef etc, are some of the lowest in the country. When we
appeal to Govt to give us the tools to change these things, like
access to overseas labour when we need it, we are denied those
things by the powers of the East. Yet those are exactly
some of the tools we need, to protect ourselves from future droughts.


Yes, some things need changing in agriculture
in the East. At the moment we have a number of major dramas, a
collapsing wool industry, climate change, the worst drought in
history, etc. Those things can be investigated once the smoke
clears from the present dilema and a bit of sensible planning can
go into better water use etc. Some smaller farms will have
to go.

The thing is, don't get high and mighty about subsidies. Only
last week I heard that money was paid to GM for another project.
How much money is poured into the MV industry? How much money
has been stuffed into manufacturing for reform? Its huge.

Farming can and will stand on its own and so it should. But it also
needs some of the barriers lifted, for us to efficiently be able
to get out products from the farm gate to the ports. I wish we
had efficient meat processors here, as they have in NZ. Sadly we
don't, so WA farmers will continue to receive the rough end of
the pineapple. You city slickers can do your bit by
removing those barriers that you impose on us, otherwise don't cry
loudly when we put our hands up for subsidies, as does a large
part of our inefficient manufacturing industry.

Steve Madden says; “Present land use systems are unsustainable in the long-term, as widespread degradation of land and water is already warning us”

And has been warning us for a long time.

This is our very life-supporting primary produce we are talking about here, as well as a significant part of our export-income-earning and thus standard-of-living maintenance system.

It’s the very fundamentals of society. It’s the same thing that has led to the collapse of many civilisations.

We need to pull back on the whole agricultural sector. And for goodness sake, we need to pull back on the whole extent of human activity on this continent along with, or at the very least, STOP GROWING!

The rural situation is just another reason why we need to stabilise population…. and head directly towards sustainability, with all our collective energies.

Comeon, we have to do this. Even if we were to get widespread rains now, even for a few seasons in a row, anyone with any commonsense would still realise that we have to pull right back on agricultural activities.

A variety or resource stresses have manifest themselves in very significant ways in recent times, although the signs have been there for years. So surely the message is now clear – head straight towards sustainability, do not pass go, do not collect $200. End of story

Funny how all these so-called progressives seem to turn into raving, rectal economic dries and social darwinists the moment they get the faintest whiff of a social safety net that might be applied to farmers. Could that be a set of metrocentric biases we see?

What has clearly taken place over the years is that every time a particular region goes into drought and gets relief these urban bozos assume that every farmer is getting welfare. And as there is nearly always some region, somewhere in drought, their simple minds conclude that all farmers are on the drip, continuously.

What it does tell farmers is that any "assistance" that is seen to come from the urban areas to rural areas is, fundamentally, a poison challice. It is like getting a favour from a junkie. You know damned well it is only setting you up for a much bigger rip-off some time later.

Clearly, if there is no capacity to empathise with the bush then there is no sense of common community. And if there is no common community then remaining in the one political entity would be very unwise. There is so much that regional states could do to fix these sort of cyclical problems and the sooner we get the urban drop-kicks out of the decision loop, the better.

You are right about big business caring only that profits are rolling in. This is one of the non-ecomonic reasons that family farmers should be offered assistance to help with the worst of times. Family farmers by nature are more inclined be sustainable (from an environment perspective), as there is an incentive to retain the farm as viable for future generations. There will always be rogue operators, but generally family farmers care for their land, as they know it sustains them.

As for farmers having to get bigger or get out, consider the NSW State governments stance on farm home maintenance sizes. It wasnt until the 70's that restrictions on how much freehold land you could purchase were lifted. Even once the general restriction was lifted you had to pay the govt a fee (currently 3% of your land value, if you still havent paid the fee) to convert your land to unrestricted freehold. This prevented many farmers from expanding to more profitable sizes when they were in the position to do so, when living costs and input costs were both lower, and there was more money to invest in capital expansion. Perhaps the govt should be offering to buy the "good" farmers more land now to compensate for the restrictions they imposed back in these times.

More food for thought. The latest govt aid package announced was $560m. Even if this goes to only 1/3 of farms, this is 100,000 receiving assistance, just $5600 per farm. You'd be lucky to put food on the table.

And again, those farmers that are receiving receiving interest rate subisidies have to satisfy an independent viability test. I have seen applications for support rejected on the basis that the business is not viable. So the theory that this assistance is subsidising unviable farms is a fallacy.

To Yabby let me take your points as you made them as they apply to this debate and those like Perseus championing the good ol days.

>“Yet no matter how good we are, we are badly let down by some of the most inefficient processing and marketing industries in the country. “

Why are you let down? It is your lifestyle choice.

>“Our returns for lamb, mutton, milk, beef etc, are some of the lowest in the country.”

So why don’t you give up? Change the product mix or sell out and live off the capital?

>“Yet those are exactly some of the tools we need, to protect ourselves from future droughts.”

If we replace the word “drought” with “unfair competition” we’d have arguments used during the period prior to Keating for our then protected manufacturing sector. If you chose to farm, you chose to accept the good and the bad. Good times and bad times. It’s your choice and not for me to pay you to pretend otherwise that droughts are inevitable as much as economic droughts.

>“You city slickers can do your bit by removing those barriers that you impose on us.”

Barriers? I thought the issue was the vagaries of climate for which I am being asked to compensate the farmers. Or do you want compensation for perceptions of hindrance to trade?

Droughts are a feature of Australia. There will be many more, perhaps next year, or whenever and I am damned if should dip into my pockets to support marginal activities unless you care to help me and my family survive the next economic drought when it hits, and that is more than once in every hundred years.

I urge you to put your family first as the “city” simply doesn’t care, and nor should it. It’s your life and there’s much money tied up in the real estate. I am not aware of much zero value land meaning there are others happy to take over from those claiming to suffer.

CountryGal,

Very good point you make about government paying back farmers to the tune of that 3% of property value that had to be paid to convert to unrestricted freehold. I suspect that many of the viability problems of the very long term business that is farming are due to just such discriminatory taxes levied mainly against farmers in the past that have effectively established much of urban Australia (especially the public sector and academe) in such metaphorical clover.

I wonder what would happen if we factored past death duties into the drought assistance equation? The simple fact may well be that government took too much tax for too long for this industry to survive.

Remco, if farmers gave up as easily as you encourage, when they
hit a snag, frankly you would starve :) Do not forget that you
city slickers are not very good at earning forex, trading houses
amongst each other does not pay import bills!

Of course we are let down. You talk of economic efficiency. Why
can't the same apply to processors? I am simply applying the same
criteria to the city. Why can't we get our produce to ports, at
world standards? Why do we have to subsidise you? Why is so
much money paid to the MV industry and others?

Free up the meat industry, we might then be able to at least achieve
world parity prices, as our NZ brothers do. Don't charge for water
which you don't supply. Get rid of payroll tax on our exports. etc.

Actually, most of the so called "drought assistance" is little more
then city people get anyhow. Much the same as dole payments, when
they don't make a living. Well thats whats happening right now,
lots not making a living, so they get dole payments, much like
in the city. City people arn't required to move, to take on a job,
city people live in expensive real estate, whilst claiming the
dole. So where is the big difference?

BTW, personally I have never received a cent in any kind of payments
for anything. My point is your flawed argument. When huge payments
to manufacturing stop, when world class efficiency finally hits
the cities, then I'll take some notice of your complaints.

Meantime I'll continue to make sure that you don't starve :)

Remco likes to rant on about economic efficiency. Consider that agriculture is most heavily subsidised sector in the world. Australian farmers get a mere 4% of their gross earnings as ecomonic transfer from taxpayers. Much of this relates to the diesel fuel rebate, which is merely a refund of the road tax component of diesel fuel tax, to recognise those vehicles such as headers, tractors and farm trucks that are not used on public roads. Other countries receive up to 68% of their gross income in the form of taxpayer support, and operate with import tarrifs as high as 800% - Australia has next to no tariff barrier for agricultural imports. This is why our country enjoys some of the lowest food prices in the developed world. Our farmers can still compete... just. I'd consider that to be economically efficient, which stems from being technically efficient.

Farming might account for 3% of GDP, but consider the export factor? In 04/05 farms accounted for 20% of our export value - this has fallen to 15% expected in 06/07 given the drought halving farm incomes and the resource boom (more on this later). Where would our already terrible current account deficit be if we stopped exporting farm products and starting importing them instead. Basic analysis would show that this would well and truly leave us up the creek without a paddle (yes I'm aware of the irony given the rivers have stopped running). The solution to the CAD - stop your luxury imports city-slickers. You are driving this countrys overconsumption problem.

Back to mining, being 55% of export value in 06/07. Great, lets get right behind mining, tear up the countryside (or bury a few more miners underground). What happens when we've sold off our limited resources? Bugger! Farming is more environmentally friendly than mining and (done correctly) is sustainable long-term. Why do you think there is such a push at the moment towards bio-fuel.

We need some analysis done to show the twits in suburbia where their bread and butter comes from and why they get it so cheap.

Some interesting comments so far, and the negative ones against farming always come from people who have a subsidized job in a subsidized industry. I would like to be proven wrong, but doubt that would occur as most non rural industries receive govt assistance, no questions asked, or the employees receive increased wages as a result of govt regulation.
Where does this leave agriculture?
As you cannot subsidize yourself, the industry that gives handouts to the urban areas.
Stop and ask your self, if we had real free market in the Australian economy tomorrow, who would be the winners and who would lose?
Agriculture would have the same income
Wages would drop as we substituted imported goods with imported labour until it was no longer viable. (Can some one tell what the difference is anyway?)
All the tariff and govt subsidized industry’s would suddenly have to become more efficient, bring their sale price in line with the world market.

Result, an economy where everyone was treated equally
Result, an economy where agriculture would be able to survive droughts without need for what is called govt assistance, but in reality is just a small % of our funds being returned, minus huge costs to do so.

Another questions I have to ask, is if agriculture is 3% of the economy, then why are we having an effect on the economy? After all, a small drop in another industry would and does not have the same effect.
Maybe it’s because we value the goods and services produced by different industries, differently.
For instance, wheat is valued at $125 (until recently) at the farm gate, with a pair of trousers being valued at $50 retail
In china, wheat was valued closer to $300; let’s say $250 at the farm gate, with retail value of the same trousers was $7.
Let’s do a GDP for both countries; (1 tonne of wheat and 10 trousers for both countries)
The higher price for wheat in china is the farm gate in Australia, plus the cost to get it to the same place, full market competition.)
Australia
• $125 plus $500 equals $625. this is 20% agriculture and 80% secondary

China
• $250 plus $70 equals $320. this is 78% agriculture and 22% secondary

Yes you can buy trousers in china, retail for that price, and the same quality.
Importing costs would, at most 20 cents each. So the cost between $7 and $50 occurs domestically.

Maybe that explains why, while we have a low GDP against agriculture, we still rock the economy when we have a less than average season.

Maybe these quotes explain why many do not wish to understand things?

Quote;
A person ability to understand a new idea,
Depends on if their salary depends on them mis-understanding it

Quote;
Trying to tax yourself into prosperity, is like standing in a bucket and trying to lift yourself off the ground.

Winston Churchill

How amazingly self centred are those that can lay claim to public money to practice their business and seek others to insulate them from the vagaries of the weather.

Look at yourselves those that that justify their claims based on the "country would starve" and we are doing our bit for the country bit. What false martyrdom.

You are in the country because YOU want to be there and then want the rest of the country to dip into their pockets each time the inevitable happens.

What utter self denial of the fact, you are there by choice pretending to help others.

A word with the letter "h" comes to mind (and ending with "y" if you dont get it).

Its going to get worse before it get better. I urge you to sell out as there are others willing to buy you out.

Drought, bushfires, city water shortages and GENUINE climate changes like increased (or DECREASED) Hurricane numbers and intensities are related NOT to OUR usage of the planets resources. They ARE man made, but related to the desire of an elite clique of global businessmen who want to reinvent FEUDALISM by overpopulating nations like Australia so they can reap ever more mobile phone, road and water surcharges and till associated overcrowding and resource shortages frighten us all into a slavery of FEAR.

To stop the drought and all other manner of environmental ills is dead EASY.

Wake up Australia.

All you have to do is demand that CEO salaries in Australia are less than or equal to Government ministers'. And back that up with your investment dollars. No matter how middle or upper class you may aspire to be, Howard's dodgy wealth-on-a-string economics will see you enslaved as sure as if you were a junkie.

If done, I assure every one of you here, except the usual political party forum stackers, that our population and our essential resources will stabilise. And our media frenzied overindulgences will not seem so bad after all.

Most of the pressure of immigration and associated corporate and media MONOPOLY marketed greed will dry up without top echelon incentives to drive it.

The internecine competion destroying our communities will vanish and water will miraculously revert to stable supply. We don't need more immigrants whom Howardesque and Iemmaesque politicians have more respect for than their own constituents

"How amazingly self centred are those that can lay claim to public money to practice their business and seek others to insulate them from the vagaries of the weather."

Actually Remco, to me the word "justice" comes to mind.

Farmers could respond to and plan alot better for droughts,
if it were not for some of the rules that city slickers
impose on us, to protect their own little patches of self interest.

So change the rules and stop holding farmers back from helping
themselves.

Meantime farmers are people too and some help in a time of
need is quite reasonable, given the amount of help constantly
given to city slickers

Continued,

And note that the propaganda that CEOs must have top salaries and bonuses to get the best people for OUR economic salvation is media monopoly lies. Our economic salvation has and will always be in mining. Its been that way since the 70's and everyone knows it. Our rising levels of wealth are a chimera based on more media propaganda. Howard's economic levers including interest rates can change all that in a flash. THAT is what CEOs are paid to do: pervert governments into FUNNELLING human capital and wealh into their global corporations for the personal economic salvation of those politicians and ultimately CEOs themselves.

Paying CEOs high salaries is SO, like standing in a bucket in order to lift ourselves off the ground that old Winston must be belly laughing cigar smoke in his grave right now.

And lastly, if farmers want to end the drought then they must look at the Sea Height Anomaly maps off the coast of NSW. EVERY energy change in our LOCAL REGION ends up affecting the pliant ocean surface in a 1:1 thermodynamic relationship between the land and the sea via the atmosphere. This of course is just the hydrological cycle and I will be presenting more evidence over the next 5 summer months (and into cyclone season) on how cleaning up NSW coastal wstewater emissions from Macleay river, Newy, Sydney, the Gong, Eden and Bega WILL stop drought in NSW by regulating the Hydrological Cycle via its thermodynamic 'gravitas' in the Tasman sea.
Today's SHA map shows just how disorganised (HIGH ENTROPY) the Tasman sea surface is due to wastewater emissions from the ports mentioned:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162094532.gif

And remember the second law of thermodynamics: LOW Entropy (all the goodness, heat and moisture in NSW farms) moves towards HIGH Entropy (Tasman Sea).

And It is imperative for all to understand that an end to drought can not even begin to take place until skewed migration into Sydney, the biggest polluter, and biggest CEO profit spinner is wound back to zero and the SYDNEY FULL sign is set up in neon lights.

Interesting angle KAEP, and Remco, but really nothing to offer what is a industry that is world income based( we feed the 3rd factory workers), yet our costs are the result of domestic regulation where the agriculture sector can not access the same markets for their cost of business.
We also have to contend with the urban wage being regulated up with inflation.
This actually means that fuel as related to AWE is no about 75% of what it was in 71 and 80. For a wheat farmer, it is approx 20 times what it was in those times, related to farm gate wheat price the world’s factory workers are able to pay for the product.

Seems your whole argument, if you call statements without facts “arguments”, is based on what SOMEONE else should do, not what needs to be done to remove the discrimination against agriculture, enabling them to put wealth away for droughts.
But then you get welfare, (without asking) as part of govt regulation, and some one has to pay for it, so lets blame the drought when in reality, it’s the highly regulated economy that causing the problem.

As far as these so caused drought payments are concerned, I would be happy for them to never be made, or part of govt policy.
This should also mean that the same free market applies to the urban areas, so no dole, no cash funds when a business does not need your services.
Stuff like that goes with no drought assistance, or we have discrimination.

Bring it on

And the squealing will be heard around the world from urban Australia.

As remco said, you chose to be ? (Unemployed for starters)
Or does it only apply to agriculture?

I find it sad that the drought has become a country v city argument in this thread. The issue is not a football match.

Of course we should help ALL of our countrymen wherever they live. That is the value of a society and it should be the way we measure our success and failure.

While we are content to be run by accountants, economists and lawyers nothing will change

So true Steve.
All we have to agree is that the same regulation's apply to both city and country people.

Things like equal access to govt education and health.
Free trade between city and country
If farmers can’t compete against imported food, then in it comes, even if it has a lower “standard”

Can farmers bring in the cheaper costs from the world market?
No, partly because labour is so protected here, we have this urban myth that they deserve to be paid more than a person overseas to produce a urban product, but still want the right to cheap food, imported if needed.

In reality, the drought is just a distraction from the very high cost of production inflicted on farmers by regulation, the benefit that is mostly urban based.

We have just had a regulated wage rise, at a time when farmers are least able to support the flow on effects from this higher wage costs because inflation went up.

No regulated income increase for regional Australia, it market forces, and world market forces at that.

How about we debate the reason the drought is going to be so bad for farmers, the high cost of business in Australia from regulation for urban benefit.

I recollect the days when industry went to government and successfully obtained government assistance for things like, unfair competition, for dumping, and with tariffs (to compensate for labour costs, transport etc), able to double, or treble their normal margins. Until the late 1980s industry was offered government assistance. Today, except for sneaky assistance (eg, GM to develop a 8 (eight) cylinder engine and more recently disguised assistance dressed up as environmental controls - what bull!) there is little assistance for industry - about 5 per cent at best and if the economic climate goes sour, too bad.

Please anyone shout to me, why our rural sector should be privileged with my money? Hey, costs are indeed higher in the rural sector. Education, power, food, medical services and power etc will indeed be higher - so what?? That is your choice to accept or move out.

Remember that there is no zero value land (except perhaps at the very fringe. Do you read this - NO zero value land meaning there is someone out there to buy you out.

Any assistance (ie money) goes to one place - LAND VALUES. In other words, the land is more valuable as a result of any assistance.

So you whingers on the land, sell out. Buy your little paradise on the coast and show us city slickers what happens when you withdraw your services. Show us that we will suffer from higher prices for your meat, your grains etc. Go on. Do it. You wont because it is just huff and puff. Just like industry up to the 1990s.

Get on with life. Put away a bit for the next drought or sell out to someone who will. Let land prices fall by selling out. There is someone dying to buy your retirement fund - your land. There is even government assistance to help you transfer your land to your children.

When they stop talking "bags per acre", "miles per gallon" and "inches of rain" then I will believe they are facing the future. Put your families first

Well Remco, lets look at another angle of this. If you city slickers
have no income, you go on the dole. Do your sell your real estate
before you go on the dole? Nope you don't, you can live in an
expensive house and bludge on the taxpayer. So don't go preaching
to farmers, a few of whom are getting the exact same assistance
that you do.

My preferred solution is of course that you'd get off our backs and
let us earn enough from real world markets, to put away something for
a rainy day. Our meat, grains etc are more then competitive, when
benchmarked with others. Our problem is getting it from farms to
ports, past your clutches and taxes. So get off your arses :)
Let us have the labour we need in meatworks, so that we obtain
world market prices for our meat. Shove your payroll tax. Don't
charge us for water that we don't receive. etc. etc.

Its ok Remco, I will continue to feed you, even though I've never
received a cent of help from you or any other city slicker :)

There are two issues here. As Country Girl has said, environmental management is likely to be better with family farms than with agribusinesses. Some years ago New Scientist had an article about erosion and other environmental problems on British farms. High inheritance taxes meant that very often the farmer's heir could not afford to stay in farming. In this case the farm was sold and ended up belonging to a bank or finance company. It was then worked by tenants who had no incentive to care about the long term health of the land, since they could simply move on if problems occurred. I don't have problems with a modest amount of relief to allow a family farm to stay in business. This assumes, though, that the farm is ultimately viable. Where it isn't, perhaps people should be encouraged to get out or be paid to do environmental repair work.

Yabby's solution (one of them) of cheap labour was tried in California. The government decided not to enforce the laws against illegal immigration and, of course, to use the full powers of the state against people trying to enforce them from the bottom up. This is great for the farmers, but costs the taxpayers of the state to the tune of thousands of dollars a year for the health, education and other services the illegal immigrants use, far more than they ever save on the prices of fruit and vegetables.

How amazingly self centred and self righteous: Yabby says ..."My preferred solution is of course that you'd get off our backs and let us earn enough from real world markets, to put away something for a rainy day."

Are you really saying in effect "Dip into your pockets to pay us farmers but dont seek us to be accountable to you?"?

This HUGE land area (yes huge cf eg. Israel) supporting just 20million people needs me to pay you to continue to operate when you have two centuries to acknowledge you still cannot generate enough income to ride through the lean (drought) years?

That you continue to produce (acknowledging technology and practices improvements of course) like the shepherds and farmers of centuries ago, commodity grains and grazed animals when you say.." Our meat, grains etc are more then competitive, when benchmarked with others." So what? Irrelevant. If it aint viable, ie. needing me to pay you, put your family first and sell to someone who wants your land. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Don’t you get it? Put yourself first. If you can’t make a buck, take advantage of the fact there are ALWAYS buyers for your land. The 96 per cent of us Australians that you seek to dip into our pockets for you have to move, sell, or whatever when things to sour, what right has that 4 per cent to consider themselves special and privileged.

As Orwell put it. "We are all equal, but some are more equal than others". The failure of Kyoto seals your fate - its going to get worse , take the money and run.

Remco I think its you who don't get it! Australia spends 90 billion
on welfare, most of it in cities. You do not sell your house, when
you go on the dole, even though there are buyers. So why expect
farmers to sell theirs?

Farmers would in fact be quite foolish to sell farms in times of
drought, for buyers would most likely be city based land sharks,
wanting to take advantage of their misfortune. So perhaps
they are simply not as silly as you might think :)

Forget trying to compare Israeli farming with Aussie farming,
they are quite different. AFAIK Isreal has cheap Kibbuz and
Palestian labour, something which we don't have. We have comparative
advantages in other areas.

Your "so what" is not so what. If city based rules stop farmers
from getting their produce to market efficiently, its city based
rules that need fixing, about time they were changed. You still
have a long way to go, when benchmarked globally, so time to
get off your butts!

Regarding overseas contract labour, the US situation is quite
different and not what I was suggesting. The meat industry need
flexibility to deal with changing climate. If Aussies don't want
those jobs, even if they pay 1000$ a week, then its time that
we used overseas labour, health checked, on seasonal contracts,
to solve the problem. After that they go home again. Its been
done in Europe for years.

Stop praying Farmers it's happened.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162272758.gif

Today's SHA map, if it is correct, is showing a reduction (the light green areas off NSW coast) of extreme Sea Height anomalies off the NSW coast with the exception of that recalcitrant Macleay River system.

This is the third time this month I have seen this. I have no idea which authority is responsible but I guarantee at least Sydney Water must be involved. This kind of change in coastal dynamics has not showed up in any of the NSW SHA data going back to 1993.

By the second law of thermodynamics this means that the probability of moisture and rains going the OTHER way into NSW from the Tasman Sea has just shot up a notch or two.

I will keep presenting these maps while the wastewater plumes remain in recession and we can compare that with what happens in terms of future rainfalls.

GET READY FOR SOME RAINS -- this could be it!

Hopefully farmers can get some good rains, some decent crops and we can all have a belly laugh at those dopey poms and their ridiculous upper-class global warming gee-up over a beer or two.

Let’s get some facts straight here;

• Remco gets a regulated wages subsidy
• He was given a pay rise to compensate for the imposition of the GST, this is because it is included in the CPI, caused inflation, causing regulated wage increase’s (actually regulated tax avoidance)
• He gets redundancy payment by regulation from his employer if his services are no longer needed.
• Hi dole payments are based on the highly regulated (hence subsidized) Australian labour market. And don’t come at that story that you deserve more because you are “Australian”, (then so are regional Australian people.)
• He gets access to excellent health services, unlike regional Aust.
• He gets access to excellent education services, we often have to pay, after tax, for this “right”
• He gets easier access to 80% subsidy for tertiary.
• He gets access to heavily subsidized public transport from the public purse.
• He gets the first home buyers grant, (try getting one on a farm?)
• His house doubles in value, it is tax free
• Farm doubles in value ( oh really) and it is CGT taxable
• We buy water, does not get supplied, still pay, he still gets water, at below inflation increases

The farm gate price for wheat has drifted around $125 a tonne since 1971.
With so called farm gate to retail shelf productivity improvement, the price of weeties and bread has gone up not down.
Still trying to work that one out!

Agriculture is told it gets a fuel subsidy. What I am still trying to work out, is that it s cheaper on the world market that what farmers pay for fuel, AFTER the subsidy!
Again, still trying to work that one out.
After all a subsidy should mean that it is cheaper than the world market, not more expensive.
A negative subsidy result should be recorded here, not a positive one.

How amazingly altruistic of Yabby if you feel you cannot sell your land because it is going to what you call a “shark”. For goodness sake, put your family first – sell to the land sharks and let them bear the crunch of next years’ drought. And remember, that one-in-hundred year drought, may become a one-in-ten year drought so your “Sharks” will suffer wont they? Better them than you and what suckers those sharks must be.

You simply can NOT get away from the fact that the value of land (ie the business) is based on one thing: past and projected earnings – capitalisation of anticipated earning. And Yabby (and Perseus) capitalised in those earnings, is that drought insurance paid by the city people that you want to shove off as living off your back.

So FREE (paid by city people) drought insurance does one thing for you, it is capitalised to RAISES YOUR LAND VALUES (your superannuation fund!).

That jingoistic crouching farmer with the dead lamb that will no doubt appear on TV next year or the next, supported by your trade union, the Country (whoops) the National Party, will probably mean that you can spend your one per cent of earnings that would cover your one in a hundred year bad event. What a con.

Why not let your “land sharks” take the brunt. Why don’t you put your family first and let the sharks suffer by selling to them?

Mate, you’ve had two centuries and if you cant get it right by now you’ll never will.

Besides there are those out there doing well laughing up their sleeves at the fringe with their lambs at the ready for the TV camera. Leave or shut up. There’s many a drought ahead and I’d be damned to support the guy with sand running through his hand. I feel only sorry for that dead lamb.

Sheesh Remco, it seems to me that you remain confused :) One moment
you call for market based solutions, so I offer you a logical,
practical, market based solution, which you then refuse to accept!

So I will explain it again, slowly:

Neither you nor anyone else can yet accurately predict rainfall,
so you have no idea as to what will happen next year or the year
after that.

The best thing farmers can do, apart from holding large reserves
of fodder etc, is to quit a large % of livestock, before land
is bare etc, if things look like getting tough. Yet the moment
things look like getting tough, prices drop through the floor,
as with a large forced supply (due to climate) and limited
slaughter capacity, thats what the market dictates. So many
don't sell at low values, hoping it will rain after all.

The problem is not that the meat produced is worth less on world
markets. The problem is the inflexible nature of the meat industry,
due to Govt regulations. Any of those works could double capacity
by working another shift, if they had the labour. If they had
the labour, that would increase demand, thus prices would not
fall through the floor. SE Asia is closer to here in the West
then Sydney. A planeload of workers, able to process yet another
million sheep, is just a few hours away. So simple yet its
not allowed by your city based laws! You will not let a market
based solution happen! So don't preach to me about market based
solutions, when you deny them to me.

That kind of solution would let farmers plan for droughts and
be ready for them, not get screwed by the vagaries of an artificial
market, due to your inflexibility.

Remco, I will suggest that you go for a drive out of your cosy little suburban life, and find me a farmer that is currently doing well. A proper farmer too, not a Pitt St farmer. I've yet to find one laughing up their sleeve, and I've spent the last 3 weeks travelling NSW from Vic to QLD borders.

Gotta say though, there seems to be a misinterpretation of the fuel rebate that farmers receive, even amongst farm supporters on this thread. Guys, the fuel rebate is not a subsidy and it is not meant to make fuel prices for Australian farmers equal to world prices. It is simply the refund of the road users tax - a Federal Govt tax. Farmers still pay state govt excise on fuels used in production. The reason that the road-users tax (of $0.38143) is refunded to farmers is to recognise those farm vehicles that are not used on public roads - not too hard to understand is it. Farmers dont get a rebate for all fuel that they use, they must keep records to show what fuel is used off-road. Fuel used in their private cars, or in trucks to take grain to the silo is not rebateable. And there are audit programs - it is checked up on, like any other type of tax.

KAEP, interesting information, I wait with bated breath. However, please dont be so naive as to think that good rain now will help farmers. What the likes of Remco dont realise is that even if good rains are received now, farmers have already lost this year's crop. They will have no income until at least November next year. Between now and then they also have to find anywhere from $50000 - $500,000 to replant next year. They will also have to repurchase fertiliser, as most got crops up this year, which used much of the available nutrients, but then died due to the lack of follow up rain. This is the other problem that those from the city do not understand - rain does not bring instant income.

How about regional Australia succeeds from the nation?

That will stop this debate in its tracks and please all.

It will mean urban people will not have to help during droughts, so they win.

It also means we will not have to;
• Pay for the car industry
• Pay for their public transport
• Pay for high school education that many do NOT receive
• Pay for subsidies fro many other industries

All these, and more are ongoing costs

Drought assistance is to a few farmers occasionally.

For instance, the total “promised” is $5600 a farmer so far, and with a national drought, really a drop in the ocean.

I see it as a win --win for all.

You rural people are right, I do NOT get it.

Why with all the duress, deprivations, inequities, higher costs, lower quality communications services, and feeling hard done by, why do you stay?

Why do you put Australia before your own family?

And so why, as most are sitting on valuable properties, don’t you sell out and join the privileged – ie. city dwelllers?

I come to one conclusion, you prefer to be there.

And if you do, then why should I pay you for the terrible droughts you are going to incur as the climate warms up?

I keep coming to one conclusion and you can guess that one.

Ok Remco, I will explain it slower, until you do get it.

I happen to think that the ratrace is a great place, if you
are a rat :) A country kid, who learns to weld, fix an engine,
drive machinery and cars, all by the age of 13, is better off
then one hanging out around shopping centres, looking for
a drug dealer. Your family argument is thus questionable.

You should feel lucky that some people are passionate about
farming, 4% producing 20% of exports, in the real world.
Just trading houses and hamburgers is not sustainable,
world bankers will eventually shut you down without us.

Some families have spent 2-3 generations building up what
they have, they don't take your defeatist cut and run
approach to life.

The way to deal with climate change is not to run from it,
but to deal with it through market based solutions, with
a win-win for all.

One option is to sell stock early, at world market prices.
ie 2000 sheep sold at 50$ = 100K. Your rules prevent that,
they mean 2000 sheep at 20$ = 40k, a loss of 60k thanks to you.

You pay yourselves 90 billion a year in charity, now you complain
when 4% of taxpayers want a tiny fraction of what they paid back.

Why do you believe in the tyranny of the city majority?

Today's SHA map is showing an almost identical coastal profile to yesterday. This is suspicious. I would expect additional changes over such a short (24 hr) time frame, if indeed real changes in wastewater management are occurring:

Nov-1
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162359544.gif

Oct-31
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162272758.gif

NOAA does sometimes present unspecified errors in their maps.

However, if the map is correct and this reduced Sea Height Anomaly pattern off the NSW coast, below Coffs Harbour to the Vic border, is maintained for one full week, we should expect some inland NSW rainfalls.

Country Gal, I think we are all waiting with bated breath.

ITM Peter Costello has said the minerals boom is over:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/31/1162278141451.html

I've got news for pistol-Pete: With a proposed expediture of 1% world GDP on green projects from now on, even if the Poms are mistaken about their faux global warming, commodities will skyrocket beyond current boom levels to levels we can hardly imagine right now.

You see Costello's problem? He can't be PM, so He HAS to be the best Treasurer Australia has ever seen. Thus he continues to assume his fellow Australian's are a bunch of zombies and SPINS all this BS about falling commodity prices. He hopes to jack up his treasury performance profile of the last 10 years by downplaying the impact of mineral wealth on the economy. Hey Peter, you can fool all of us some of the time but not all of us all the time.

Of course we know Costello has done bugger all except immigrate profits, creating enviro-damage and civil strife, pinch pennies from the poor, pi$$ off the states(especially NSW with that $3billion GST grab) and lie about our mineral wealth so he can take credit for our boomtime economy.

The truth is that without mineral profits the Federal government is in a shambles, descending into totalitarianism with media monopolies yet barely legal.

Why do people even vote for this ego maniacal fool in his own electorate? I would really like to know!

PS Watch the changes in the SHA maps NOW!

Clearly therefore, drought assistance is free insurance.

It is capitalised in their superannuation as land values.

The rural sector doesnt want to leave their unfair world (ie. of high costs, deprivations, trade barriers etc etc) as they are are in reality comfortable or at least better off than elsewhere. They scratch their heads about why their martyrdom in providing their commodities is less and less appreciated by the bludgers in the cities.

Multipliers, dead lambs, sob stories of unfairness marketed through their trade union the National Party, who holds out the hand to those in the towns that have to move on sell out or retrain when things go bad.

The "miles per gallon" and "inch of rain" man is getting his dusty hat out for the next TV camera crew to share his misery when the drought revisits. His family suffers over a principle.

How sad. Very sad we continue with his "life support".

Remco, have you ever used public transport, received family tax benefit, been paid a parenting allowance, gotten unemployment or disability support, attended a government school, gone through uni with HECS, gotten a subsidy for having private health insurance, gotten child care rebates or benefits? I dare say very few people can deny ever getting a benefit from any of the above. They are all funded by the tax payer. Should we cut off all of this support too? It is in Australias best interest to retain family farmers, because to corporatise farming would be to sound the death knoll for our fragile environment. It will cost Aussies much more in the long run to offset the effects on our environment caused by corporate greed. Whilst corporates have sufficient resources and diversification to weather a drought without assistance, we will suffer more for this than from having to loosen the purse strings now and then.

Droughtsupport is made up of two components. Interest subsidy and income support (unemployment benefits). Income support is available to those that have little off-farm income and assets. its available the way that unemployment benefits are, except that in EC declared areas you dont have to sell up your farming assets to qualify. This recognises that its preferable that these people have a business to return to (ie employment) once the drought is over, otherwise you are faced with quite a number being on income support for the rest of their lives (generally they will find it hard to get other work due to a lack of qualifications and experience). If you have off-farm assets (tried to insure yourself against drought) you are penalised, and refused assistance until you have used up these other resources. This is a disincentive to diversify.

Few farmers want a grant (subsidy) - there has been quite a push for no-interest HECS-style loans, that are indexed to inflation like HECS and like HECS are repayable to the govt once certain income thresholds are met. Dont blame farmers - blame governments for not developing these HECS-type packages. These would be a win-win solution.

Well Remco, its all quite simple. Free up the labour market in
the meat industry and farmers would have that much extra income
due to real market forces, there would be no need to pay them
unemployment insurance. I see your response of course avoided
that point completely, as I had expected :)

There are good reasons why a few city slickers object to farmers
receiving unemployment payments, much as they do. Firstly those
few don't understand a thing about farming and country life. Secondly
they clearly just want farmers as taxpayers to add to paying for the
90 billion charity bill, not as recipients. Do you sell your million
$ house, before you receive the dole? Nope you don't. Why not?
You are clearly applying 2 standards here, even though your city
house may well be worth more then alot of farms.

Political represantion for farmers is a good thing, it stops the
tyranny of the city majority, overwhelming country people completely.

Luckily most city people don't see it your way, they see the benefits
of farming families on the land, as opposed to say Maquarie Bank
owning the lot.

Today's SHA map is showing extreme anomalies off the NSW coastal port offenders, yet again.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1162457961.gif

We tried!

I'll keep monitoring and post if things improve again.

PS That will teach me to dob in a treasurer!

Kaep, you may be interested to know that it is raining in inland northern NSW. Where I am we have had just under an inch (or 22mm if you need the conversion) since midday yesterday. Other areas such as Moree have had at least double that. However, no rain in Central or Southern NSW.

Remco I know you have a set against anyone who speaks in inches, so I did the above conversion for your benefit. I am reasonably typical of those younger people from the land. I talk in inches of rain, cms of measurement, miles to the nearest village, kms to the nearest town, acres of land etc etc. I've only been out of school 10 years so I certainly didnt grow up in the times of imperial measurement, but am reasonably conversant in both. Unlike my husband, who despite also being in his 20's, actually thinks in imperial when in comes to small measurements, produce (bags per acre), land area, rainfall, car efficiency (mpg), but then also thinks in metric when it comes to long distances (eg how far to the nearest town) and in litres not gallons (most of the time). Given that the average age of the farmer means that they grew up with the imperial system, the industry still tends to think along these lines, with the younger generation tending to be fluent in both.

CG,

Thanks for that.

Can you tell me:

Which directions the rains entered,

When was the last rainfall and how much?

Thanks.

PS I am proficient in Imperial, Metric and various other sub-tongues and dialects.

PS2 We are just getting heavy rainfalls in Sydney as I post.
Maybe just 2 days of wastewater mitigation is all that is needed to seed some temporary rains. That there is a one day time lag in the system is not surprising given the inertia in sea surface thermal capacity.

Hopefully whoever cleaned those coastal plumes on Tuesday and Wednesday is reading this and is now prepared to go on with the EXPERIMENT.

Quote from Remco;
“You rural people are right, I do NOT get it.

Why with all the duress, deprivations, inequities, higher costs, lower quality communications services, and feeling hard done by, why do you stay?

Why do you put Australia before your own family?

And so why, as most are sitting on valuable properties, don’t you sell out and join the REGULATED privileged – i.e. city dwellers?”

Well Remco, of course you don’t get it, if you did, you would be on a lower salary then you are now if you did”get it”
Also you missed a word out that I have included in your quote.

We don’t want all of the above that you talk about, but with most people thinking like you, we are out numbered at the voting box, so the discrimination will continue as you continue with your selfish lifestyle.

You go to mention that we are all wealthy. Well I have news for you, as most urban people I know , and they come from all walks of life have more wealth than many farmers, as well as a income that never goes down due to govt regulation.

Would you like to share with us what industry and what part you play in it so we can asess what “govt subsidy” you are really getting?

With the attitude you have, maybe you will support regional Australia seceding from the nation, leaving you without the problem of agriculture for your tax funds to be directed to.

Maybe this forum would like to discuss what would happen if was to occur, the winner and losers.

If Remco is right, we will be big losers, but some how I don’t think so, as the regional sector's income is world competitive, but the urban areas are not.

Would any one like to comment?

Well if the truth be known, Remco's banana republic, would not
even have bananas to trade, in the real world market!

The way they work it is quite simple. They are by far the
majority in numbers, so they invent the rules as they go
along, to suit themselves and their self interest. We are
totally outnumbered, so apart from the odd protest, have
little choice but to go along with it all.

When we complain that some of their rules are restricting
our world class efficiency, they dodge the question and
get upset when we want at least a part of our hard earned
tax dollars back.

I guess thats why I think that the ratrace is for rats,
give me good old country living any day! Without us
they would be stuffed, quite frankly.

"NSW Premier Morris Iemma said climate change was a real threat to the state's way of life."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/heat-to-soar-in-nsw-says-csiro/2006/11/06/1162661577166.html

Iemma's a croc.

From desal plants to corrupt overdevelopment to exorbitant tollways funnelled into gridlocks, Morris Iemma and his Italian oligarchy, operating under the pretense of a Labor Government is the real threat to NSW.

From the farms to the cities, what do we want NSW?

We want a return to one on one DEMOCRACY,

We want an end to the political manipulation of science and of the CSIRO; if the CSIRO was allowed to be independent, the truth that the NSW drought was 90% caused by wastewater dumping into the TASMAN SEA (from Macleay river, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Bega and Eden) would be known and correctional strategies put in place.

We want an end to the paradigm of Sydney being the New York of the Pacific for the exclusive benfit of politicians, politically influential businessmen, gambling operators and new immigrants of the correct political flavour

We want an end to the pretense that Howard and Iemma are enemies when in fact they both conspire, good-cop-bad-cop, to monpopolise the NSW economy for their own political and fiscal ends with the very same tool of unsustainable-immigration, which dilutes the rights and quiet enjoyment of every citizen in this state, enslaving us all.

We want an end to media monopolies and their fascist PROPAGANDA that NSW citizens are responsible for water, labour and clean air shortages when we all know that politically motivated, corrupted and ill conceived immigration strategies are to blame.

Continued ...

Continuing ..

And last but not least, we want recycling of as much sewage, stormwater and other wastewater off the NSW coast as is economically feasible in order to change the (entropy) land/sea thermodynamic balance in favour of increased rainfalls rather than the current worsening situation where dumped pollution (high entropy) pumps and sucks (low entropy) heat and moisture out of NSW in cardio-rhythmic high/low pressure pattern that can be seen clearly on any animated regional weather map, at any time of the year.

Come March 2007, shock and awe all the lazy self serving political bastards and their smug busuness buddies that WE run this state, that we know how to stop the drought and we want it stopped NOW!

And remember if America can stop their hurricanes we can stop our drought and if they can get rid of Bush, we can get rid of Iemma and Howard.

Can you have anything positive to say “kaep”?

All the negatives you talk about are from the dominate vote from the city, not from regional Australia

How about some comments and researched ones at that, instead of this blame some one else way that seems to be the norm from many, partially the left wing element.

We have the economic and social problems we have because of who we vote for.
By artificially creating a low “result” for regional GDP, thus not giving the wealth creation sector its rightful voting power, we also end up with consumption exceeding production of wealth, as we have had for the last 30 plus years in Australia.

I AM the one who is positive Dunart. You just don't comprehend how Howard and Iemma are using immigration into coastal areas to further their Neo Fascist agenda of creating weak civil resistance by diluting individual rights. The ruination of country areas is just a byproduct.
Telling this TRUTH is THE most POSITIVE thing.

As for backing up scientific assertions, the second-law-of-thermodynamics governs out drought. The top metre of the Tamsan sea has more stored heat than a column of air 5 Km above it. The heat capacity of air being 5 times less than water and air being 1000 times less dense than water. IPCC and other scientists attributing climate change to air masses with or without CO2 heat trapping, when compared to the ocean surface is WRONG. It stinks of vested political and green-business interest.

Proof: The US will not have any hurricanes next year and I will step everyone on this forum through the US hurricane season from May 11 to Sept 1 2007. Further after last tuesday and wednesday's SHA maps showed retractions of NSW coastal-wastewater-plumes, we had rains across NSW till today. I am expecting more wastewater retractions soon because authorities are now obliged. The stakes are HIGH. When they occur I will post them, and then wait for the ensuing rains.

That IS science. LIVING science. These results will trump anything the IPCC or other groups can spin. It will devastate them and all we have to do is wait and watch.

Additionally, after March 2007 Qld is in for more big cyclones. I already have enough information to tell where and approximately when they will happen, and how to stop them.

Thus Global greenhouse warming theory is DEAD. Many scientists will be out of grants and jobs. That is why they too avoid the TRUTH.

Now tell me, do you have some ulterior motive in protecting the current iniquitous, unsustainable and inequitable coastal immigration push? I mean are you of recent immigrant stock social climbing over your fellow Australians and immigrating your own people to annul the rights of your fellow electors?

KAEP

Of course there are some who want the second law of thermodynamics repealed.

"This is America," said Duane Collins, a Gatlinburg, TN, distillery operator and father of five. "And in this country, we have the God-given right to change laws we don't think are Christian. We are united in our demands that the second law of thermodynamics be repealed, and our voice will be heard no matter what. That's just a plain fact, and nothing anybody says can ever change it."

:)

QUOTE;

‘I AM the one who is positive Dunart. You just don't comprehend how Howard and Iemma are using immigration into coastal areas to further their Neo Fascist agenda of creating weak civil resistance by diluting individual rights. The ruination of country areas is just a byproduct.
Telling this TRUTH is THE most POSITIVE thing.’

I am all ears Kaep

Instead of the statement blaming other people, enlighten with facts about the above comments.
I am particularly interested in the “ruination of the country areas” statement

For the record, the weather is a factor farmers take into account, in fact far more than the urban areas do, so all your ramblings about the weather is side tracking from the real issue. That is, the poor terms of trade that stops farmers putting funds aside for the “droughts and flooding rains” that is a part of farming.

Tell us your wisdom, complete with economic models.

We rural people love the truth.

As for me protecting the coastal push that you accuse me of is a bit of track.
For a start where have I ever made a statement to support that?

As for my genetics, that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that all Australians are given the same chance.
Regulations that enhance the wealth of groups of people in the Australian community are abhorrent to me.

Kaep, when are you going to stop talking bull*hit.

The rain that Sydney has just got was carried by a jetstream from across the top of the northern Territory and Queensland, down the coast.

Go back and have a look at the cloud pictures.

Thanks VK, I'm on to it.

However, the SHA maps for the Tasman have shown a reduction of coastal SHA extremes from Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Bega and Eden on 3 occasions since Oct-1. Each time, rains have followed. Additionally If you trawl the NSW SHA data back to 1993, there are no other examples of these SHA reductions.

I am also on to this and I can assure you that it is NOT BS and that the EXPERIMENT continues, both meteorologically and politically.

Capiche?

No worries - the escalation of coal mining means that farms are being de-watered hand over fist in NSW's coalfields. So the solution has already been found - give up agriculture in favour of mining (too bad that the coal runs out after a few decades).

Rivers are wrecked, creeks disappear, whole catchments are desiccated. So drought or no drought, farming is finished in these areas and this is on the increase. Drive past Singleton and you'll see the scale of the destruction. Rehabilitation is a joke - the plantings are never watered and, deprived of shade, wither away in no time. Anyway the rubble which now replaces the surface soil is unuseable.

Now the Liverpool Plains are under threat from BHP Billiton's latest venture - this will continue the process by breaching and draining the aquifers under the plains, and by wrecking the Mooki and the Namoi Rivers. These rivers run into the Murray-Darling river system, already on its death bed. Good work, NSW politicians - especially Minister for Mineral Resources Ian Macdonald and Planning Ministger Frank Sartor.

I've just come across this discussion: it's been interesting to say the least. There's one comment that I think sums this up:-

"You are in the country because YOU want to be there and then want the rest of the country to dip into their pockets each time the inevitable happens."

That's so silly. Why is Australia so amazingly urbanised? Partly due to silly attitudes like this, which are "your problem, talk to my shoulder 'cos I'm not raising my hand to talk to you".

How viable would a city like Sydney or Melbourne be without the rural areas to provide spaces to play, grow wine, and more? Perhaps that a cheeky comment for me to make: really a lot of people are amazingly selfish and domineering when it comes to talking about regional places.

Here's a simple way of looking at drought:-
Firstly, it happens. This is an extremely dry place. Get used to it.
Secondly, you have no right to live in a city, and you over there have no right to live in the country. Actually none of us have a right to live anywhere, we're just fortunate. So appreciate what you've got (whatever it may be) and think for one moment of someone else's lot in life.
Thirdly, there are poor agricultural practices. There's poor urban practices too, very poor. All of them are caused by humans, who are imperfect, but ingenious. So quit carping about the problems and get on with it.
Fourthly, the solution is not to sterilise land and kick people off: that simply devalused people, and is a surrender of our abilities. Things can be fixed, not abandoned.
Fifthly, cities are not for everyone. If you don't like that too bad. Similarly, open spaces and small communities are not for everyone either. As an aside, as a gay man the first time anyone harrassed me was when I moved to Sydney, the queerest city in Oz: in my home town of 2,800 no-one ever said anything. Ever.

On the whole, everyone, keep thinking and learn, discussion is a great thing.