Yesterday the ABS released a supplementary piece of analysis to the recent Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport report into Climate Change and the Australian Agricultural Sector. This ABS analysis focuses on the views of farm managers on climate change and it’s effects on their business.
Some of the findings are interesting – actually, the whole report is pretty interesting for anyone that way inclined and is worth a read. The thing that stood out was the responses of farm managers to three questions. Firstly, whether farmers believe that climate has changed, secondly whether that change has affected their particular farm holdings, and thirdly, whether that climate change has forced farmers to change their management practices.
These surveys were undertaken by the ABS during 2006/7 and ran from a total sample of around 150,000 – pretty large by any yardstick.
What the new analysis found however was that agricultural business “Owner/Operators” were 20% less likely to believe that the climate affecting their farm holding had changed compared to managers of farms without ownership skin in the game.To quote the ABS:
To put this another way, land managers who did not own the business were 1.26 times more likely than owner/operators to perceive that climate affecting the holding had changed.
Another piece of data to come out was the effects that were perceived to have occurred as a consequence of climate change.
Of all industries, the ABS says:
Agricultural industries with a high percentage of businesses reporting that they considered the climate affecting their holding had changed were citrus fruit growing (81.0%), apple and pear growing (77.3%), rice growing (74.7%), and dairy cattle farming (73.5%). In contrast, 41.5% of sugar cane growers considered the climate affecting their holding had changed.
Similarly, the ABS asked what the impact of these changes were on farm holdings.
So far, the majority of the impacts from climate change are overwhelmingly seen to be negative. What is interesting about this politically is the National Party line on climate change. One wonders just how close the Nats are to the beliefs of the actual farming communities that the National Party allegedly represents.
17 Comments
Hi Possum. Thanks for the summary. The ABS seem to know how to run a good survey. Labor should be pursuing agricultural votes with all zeal.
Yep, nice to see my experiences and anecdotal observations confirmed.
I have a fairly wide range of contacts with cockies here in SA and they almost unanimously know and assert that climate change is affecting their business.
Often have climate figures collected by locals to show the change.
I’ve commented elsewhere that there is an anomaly between what the cockies on the ground and the high fliers in the party hierachy say.
Something has to give in the near future.
I’m confused by the second last plot. It seems to show in Vic that 90% think there is a decrease in production, but also 15% an increase.
Good to see some figures showing the perception amongst farmers. The change in rainfall is particularly strong. I’m not old enough to remember if farmers have always said that this drought is worse/longer than any others. My uncle says farming there are more bad years than good, but in the 1 in 7 really good years you make enough money to survive the rest.
EP, I just checked the numbers from the report and they’re correct.
I’d imagine it comes from both effects happening to some holdings, where some crops or products are perceived to decrease while other crops or products are perceived to increase.
I live with a Victorian farmer and I am not surprised. She ( shock) will not be voting national any time soon and is pretty pissed of the the VFF for carry on instead of facing up to reality.
This was the response from the VFF on a study linking drought and climate change:
The Victorian Farmers Federation new president, Andrew Broad, said he would not speculate about whether there was a connection between drought and climate change.
“I have a healthy scepticism for scientists,” he said. “But I will say that the doomsday people in climate change are robbing people of hope at a time when that’s all they’ve got left.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/study-links-drought-with-rising-emissions-20090815-elpf.html
I suspect the Nats and Farmers Federations are a long way behind farmers on the ground on this- it’s a shame that farmers weren’t asked what they thought the cause of the climate change was.
Thanks for talking about this survey, Possum. Interesting that the state with less than 50% of farmers reporting observing climate change or its impact is the Northern Territory (arid/monsoonal), and the industry reporting the least impact of climate change is sugar cane (tropical/sub-tropical). I’d suggest it looks like highly consistent support for farmers seeing climate change as an issue, aside from those in situations where there are strong and consistent prevailing annual weather patterns.
Intriguing. These figures may reflect the decade of drought across most of agricultural Australia. I’m not sure how the question was understood by the respondents (or how it was phrased). Farmers I know do indeed say the climate has changed, but they usually deny AGW. To farmers, “climate change” is all about rainfall. Less of it. If the old “average” rain returns, concern will vanish. Politically, I doubt if farmers, the FFs and the Nats are really far apart on all this. If farmers can make a quid on ETS or whatever, they’ll be in like Flynn, whether they are AGW believers or not.
I’m not surprised that managers are more likely to see climate change than owners.
To deal with external changes costs owners money, often in the form of paying a manager to come up with better systems. So for owners, climate change represents a cost, and for managers it represents income opportunities and job security.
Where I am, the short-term trend has been towards more rain, and more storms, so we grow more, but lose more. Given that we’re coming out of a drought, though, it’s a bit hard to distinguish between the normal wet-dry cycle, effects of non-anthropogenic warming, and any effects of AGW. In any case small sets of local data are pretty useless on their own.
Frank Campbell wrote:
If farmers can make a quid on ETS or whatever, they’ll be in like Flynn, whether they are AGW believers or not.
Which is how an ETS is designed to work: you put a price on emissions, and let the market take care of the rest.
As for perceived negative effects outnumbering perceived positive effects amongst the farming community, people would be well advised to re-read John O’Brien’s Said Hanrahan. A control data set for the overall pessimism/optimism of the sample would be useful.
The Latest ECOS magazine has an article about how the climate has changed with the loss of trees. The is no doubt about climate change happening – it is just that many farmers on EP won’t accept it as anything other than a longer than usual “cycle” that will, in time, return us to “normal”, particularly rainfall. The real issue about Agriculture and Climate change is that many farmers refuse to see it as an issue of some urgency, and their respective Farming Federations are all out to ensure they are NOT included in any carbon emission scheme. What they do not realisse is that the sooner they get involved, the sooner they can be paid for carbon sequestration on their land. In time, this should lead many of them to realise that our present farming practices with its dependence on non-renewable fuels, artificial fertilizers, and inorganic chemicals is not the way to go.
Somewhat tangential perhaps, but I’d like to point out one of the big problems with the AGW ‘debate’ as it is carried out. Now, there is an assumption here in this article and comments that climate change has and/or will make drought in Australia worse and more frequent. Most of us think this is the case, because climate science has indicated that droughts are one of the things that warming will increase, and Australia is prone to drought.
However, there is no clear evidence that global warming is the cause of the extended dry over eastern Australia in the last decade or so. Now I’m not some crazy anti-science ranter, I’m fully convinced by the science case that has been made about AGW and the need for urgent significant action. But the debate is not helped by the widespread mis-information that is put around by well meaning people.
So, what is my source? Well I recently attended a talk by Prof. Matthew England, one of Australia’s top climate scientists (and by that I don’t mean a batsh-t insane retired geologist, he’s most definately on the side of the consensus view). In the talk England explained the specific modelling that has been done on climate systems that impact Australia and the influence of warming. There is very clear evidence that a system related to ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean is affected by warming is such a way as to cause a clear reduction in the rainfall around Perth (and incidentally to significantly increase rain in the Kimberleys). On the other hand, the modelling does not suggest that the predicted warming that will occur in the foreseable future will alter the Southern Oscillation system (El Nino…) in such a way as to cause significant increase in drought across eastern Australia. The current drought is still consistent with natural variation, and no modelling or other indicators suggest otherwise.
This seems counter to what we are told on a daily basis. The reason is that very well meaninig, but none the less mis-informed people are mixing the message and linking the current drought in eastern Australia to climate change, with the supposed backing of climate scientists. The frustration that this causes the hard working climate scientists was palpable in Matthew England’s talk. The real problem is that the drought could break, and could say be followed by a significantly wetter period. There is nothing in the science which demonstrates that global warming will make this less likely in the near future. What would this do for the credibility of climate science? The repuation of the climate science community would be in tatters, even though they have never made the claims so often attributed to them. This could kill any chance of community consensus on the need for action for decades to come.
The dangers of climate change to the globe and real and significant, but it doesn’t help the effort to bring in real action by wildly overstating the case, and assuming that linking any bad event to climate change will help the cause.
From the Exec.Summary Report of the CSIRO Murray Darling Basin Water Sustainability Report page 5:
” The south of the MDB was in severe drought from 1997 to 2006 …such conditions will become increasingly common……The impacts of climate change by 2030 are uncertain: however, surface water availability across the entire MDB is more likely to decline than increase…the median decline for the entire MDB is 11% -9% in the north of the MDB and 13% in the south….the relative impact of climate change on surface water use would be much greater in dry years…”
From the intro re the report itself:
“..is a world first for rigorous and detailed basin-scale assessment of the anticipated impacts of climate change …… represents the most comprehensive hydrologic modelling ever undertaken for the entire MDB…..”
You make a good point Bogdanovist, it’s all a confusion over climate and weather, and whether it’s the media or polls, nobody makes the distinction. The cockies, understandably, talk about their local weather, but somehow this is muddled with the broader GW issue. Of course, by the time we can ALL see our local weather has changed it will be way too late.
Boiling frog anyone?
Seems the Nationals know better than the punters.
Senator Joyce said he believed the Nationals were having increasing success in the Senate by being prepared to stick to their guns in the face of Liberal opposition. “It took a while but it was us who got people thinking about the problems with the government’s ETS plans,” he said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,1,25955131-601,00.html
Interesting polls. Would be more interesting to see what connection if any farmers make between policy responses currently on the table and capacity to alleviate these observed changes in climate if any. The key problem we face is that we may well end up with an ETS that transfers cash reward to farmers (hell every other industry sector seems to get a cash shower, particularly the polluters) but there is bugger all chance of it reducing emissions. Not because an ETS theoretically can’t, rather becasue Rudd and co have specifically designed this one so it won’t. I just wonder how many more years of finger pointing we have to go through about whose responsibility it is to cut emissions before someone actually does something. As for whether the current South Eastern dryness is AGW directly caused or simply a hint of what we are in for what’s the diff, all the models point to more dryness, all the science points that way so lets pull our finger out and do something. Hopefully enough famers will get wise enough to realise that with Nats in the Senate we’ll be paralysed on this for ever. Barnaby is a wingnut on this, the fact that he’s cheered on by the Australian isn’t actually a vindication-its just a comment on the sorry state of our political class and sections of the commentariat.
Oh by the way. The lake where I grew up has never been dry in the history of my family which goes back to around the 1870’s. Its dried up over Christmas and people were walking across it. Its not a future I’m so keen on trying out personally. We mightn’t be able to stop it true, but I’d rather have a red hot go than live in Barnaby world any day. Specific regional weather patterns will vary but the climate is warming and only nutcases and vested interests argue otherwise-as a vote of confidence they should all relocate to the high tide mark of a low lying pacific island. Would serve the twin purpose of focusin their minds and getting them the freak out of our faces.
In the meantime farmers along most of our south east should turn their minds to growing stuff sans H2O