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.