Farmers appear to have no qualms about attacking the government, but the raised fist turns into a cat’s paw when the time comes to criticise their largest customers, the retail giants.
READ MORESinking the Top End dams and food bowl plan
Andrew Campbell, director of the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods (RIEL) at Charles Darwin University, writes: Here we go again. The Coalition proposal to dam rivers in northern Australia to create a massive food bowl has been floated before, as have various schemes for harvesting water from what is perceived to be the over-watered [...]
READ MOREBig Coal vs. The People
The eyes of even the most hardened court observers glazed over as the seemingly endless mess of legal procedures dragged on. It wasn’t just unremarkable, it was outright dull – obscuring the profound struggle set to unfold. Monday was day one of a court case in the Brisbane Magistrates Court in which a group of [...]
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10 years of drought: one farmer tells her story
Vanessa Drendel, a farmer (primary producer of broadacre cereals, legumes and oil seeds) in the Wimmera writes: Recently I went through an old external hard drive and stumbled over a folder I’d called ‘Totally Screwed’. It contained images of my farm life from 2004-2009, nothing out of the ordinary really, except that most of them [...]
READ MOREFarmers getting older as their acreages decline
Land devoted to farming continues to decline, with 52% of Australia’s total land area now devoted to agriculture, a 4% decrease in the two years since 2007-08, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
READ MOREI’m a beef farmer and I support the live exports ban
Kathy Yannarakis, Victorian beef farmer and blogger at Farm Hub, writes: I’d like to make clear from the outset that my family’s beef farm is in Victoria, and so the current controversy around the live export trade to Indonesia, sparked by the recent Four Corners report, does not have a direct nor immediate impact on our farm [...]
READ MOREFarmers on Twitter: hashtags over harvesters
They might be more familiar with harvesters than hashtags, but a growing community of Australian farmers are embracing Twitter as a tool to communicate, particularly in light to the recent floods.
READ MOREMurray Murmurings: It’s no wonder rural people are angry
It’s not surprising that farmers, business people and community members are scared and angry about the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s plan. Water is everything in these communities, says Shepparton farmer David Furphy.
READ MOREFlash points on the road to Cancun
Phillip Ireland writes from the UN climate talks in China: War poetry was evoked on the floor of the main plenary at the UN climate negotiations this week. A European Union negotiator reflected upon the disastrous ‘Charge of the Light Brigade‘ against Russian artillery in 1854, which French army general Pierre Bosquet famously declared: C’est magnifique, mais [...]
READ MOREThe raging Murray-Darling debate: an overview
The debate over how to allocate water from the Murray Darling Basin is raging once again. Crikey intern Jane Vashti Ryan takes a look at the background, the players and the fight for the Murray Darling.
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