A timely article to remind we citizens, lazing about in our comfort zones, that ecological sustainablility is poorly practised in Australia. Thank you Geoff Russell.

The most extensive land use in Australia is livestock grazing in arid and semi-arid regions and covers 430 million hectares or 56 percent of Australia. In total, agricultural land is 473 million hectares but we must also add to livestock grazing, the additional crops grown for stock when our native pastures are stripped of vegetation.

Moderate to major change in hydrological conditions , including changes in infiltration and run-off due to soil modification by extensive cultivation, are also caused mainly by intensive livestock grazing on developed pastures.

Some 79% of Australia’s live sheep exports are from Western Australia, however, WA is now losing the equivalent of 19 football fields per day to salinity (EPA SOE) yet the meat and livestock industry representatives accompanied by Minister, Tony Burke, travel overseas endeavouring to coerce additional countries to buy live exports from these arid lands, thus growing even more non-value adding hoofed animals.

I have pondered many times whether our body politic is swamped with chancers, second raters, snake oil salesmen or buffoons.

The Centre for Rural Social Research, recently advised: “WA has not enforced ecologically sustainable productivity on the management of its publicly-owned rangelands.

"Whereas the land-use managers - whether of pastoral leases or agricultural freehold - are culpable for the resource degradation they tolerate or have caused, society is culpable for allowing those who have over-cropped, over-grazed, over-cleared and are continuing to do so.

"The common public good seems to have been neglected by government in favour of private landed property ownership. The plea of government ignorance could once have been sustained, but certainly not at any time during this last quarter century at least.”

Yet we consume more meat than ever and now suffer more cancers than ever. Animals for human consumption are cruelly pumped with antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, with impunity, without regard for the human and animal health impacts and zoonotic diseases are rampant.

We will indeed have to learn the hard way.

Geoff, one of the complaints that I have is that many greeny
academics on this topic, are throwing all livestock and meat
production, into the same pot.

I think you need to separate free range livestock grazing
from factory farmed animals, there is a huge difference!

Grazing livestock can be done well or it can be done badly.
Overtocking causes problems, not grazing sustainably in
the first place.

Now what we know is that if grasslands are left to themselves
and grow without any kind of grazing, the fuel load increases,
next you have a hot summer, a bit of lightning and woosh,
the whole lot burns. How much CO2 is released in these
grass fires and how many local species are wiped out by
the fires?

Please don't just throw all meat production into the same
hat, for factory farming and sustainable grazing are
simply not the same and their effect on the environment
would be quite different.

Interesing .. I'm out of my field here but will offer some observations of some of the local indigenous Islamic Indos.

1. They live @ subsistence levels (<less than $AU5 per day)
2. Predominately Blood type O
3. Diet consists of fresh fruit straight from the trees, fresh veg straight from the fields and if the rice is more than 7 days old they complain.
4. Only eat meat on Holy days when the local rich dude (who owns the rice factory) has some goats slaughtered and hands it out to every one that can't afford it pursuant to religious custom.
5. Fish (what we'd call bait fish) is readily available.
[A meal mostly consists of rice, veg & hot spice with fruit + ice for desert - Aqua, Coffee & Fruit Juice(chopped up and blended)]

6. There are a LOT of antique people - those who are over 90+ yrs old and in good nick.
(One fact book put Indo life expectancy at an avg of about 65yrs. I wld assume city slum dwellers actually form a big group at one end of the bell curve and die much younger)
7. These people live "organically" on the PooWee river system.
8. They have very little access to modern medicine.

9. The males are terribly addicted to nicoteine but they almost never drink booze.
(Well, the rare one on the sly with me out the back but don't tell anyone.)
10. Regular daily exercise
11. Virtually no one dies from being fat or lonely.
12. Wk day goes from Sun up till mid avo, hit the river for a bath and then sing some prayers.
13. They have an extreme aversion to stress and are very, very easy going relaxed people for the most part, generally speaking.
14. My *BeLuved* says W.A. food generally is stale & tastes like the proverbial and the water tastes like p!ss.

BIASED CONCLUSION: The Australian "supermarket" model is NOT conducive to optimal health and well being.

;-)

Whilst not medically qualified, I hand out over the counter pharms from the up town apothecary and look 4ward 2 doing some courses with St John.

In return, I receive an ongoing plentiful supply of fresh produce delivered to the door.

Oh by the way, another important part of the Indo secret 2 success - daily massage - everyone is into it and everyone loves it.
;-)

Seems to assist in a good nights sleep/rejuve.

Interesting article about the most crucial item of them all-- how to feed us all.
I find the woke of Michael Pollan quite useful, particularly as he shows that dominant food production system is very much related to all the other imporatant aspects of our modern techocratic society.

Michaels book IN DEFENSE OF FOOD is a good place to start.

Plus he recently published an open letter titled: DEAR MR PRESIDENT FOOD FOOD FOOD. A letter which raised all the issues re the current food production system(s) in the USA.

Although it was written in the context of the USA Presidential election and USA "culture" altogether it has relevance to both Australia and the entire planet.

Plus if anyone thinks that Monsanto etc should be given the power to determine our food future(s) why not check out a DVD titled THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO by Marie-Monique Robin.

Back in the 90's Jeremy Rifkin wrote a superb critique of the Beef production industry titled Beyond Beef.

There has been massive amounts of research done on the topic of food, diet and nutrition in recent decades, including the emerging new topic of raw food.

Some of the leading edge research is summarised in the work of Douglas Graham, particularly in his book The 80/10/10 Diet

And by David Wolfe via his book The Sunfood Diet Success System.

Plus The Green Gorilla by Adi Da

Just some feedback to the organisers of this event. We got tickets and got there early as the "interactive" display was being plugged pretty heavily in the ads. When we arrived, there simply wasnt room to fit all the vendors stalls and the gusts and what you ended up being a part of was a shuffling herd in one direction. It was hot with the mass of people and completely embarassing to be there to tell you the truth. I think you need to have the interactive display after the talk or have it somewhere where there is room to accommodate people without herding them. You can open the interactive display before the end (not the start) so those without tickets can benefit from that too. Having said this, the talk was pretty good.