Bonzer Words!: The Future Of Farming In Australia
Dorothy Moffitt makes an informed and profound recommendation for future food production in Australia.
My father had a soldier settlement block after World War 1 on the cold Monaro plains of NSW. I remember him ploughing with his Clydesdale horse team to grow the cereal crops to feed the horses and house cows. His main crop was sheep. The income from the annual shearing had to last all the year. We did not have a shearing shed and my sisters and I had to help walk the sheep to a neighbour's farm for this annual operation. We survived the great depression with mother's abundant vegetable garden, our own mutton and veal, milk and butter, and help from more affluent relatives.
After World War 2 my father bought a Ferguson tractor and grew potatoes to supplement his income from the sheep. The horses could now be retired. When my father retired at 80, a relative took over the farm and sold it to a company planting pine forests. Many other farms have been planted as well.
My husband came from a line of dairy farmers who originally produced cream for butter. The family members had to leave school at 14 to help hand-milk the cows.
My husband was the only one to have some high school education. School buses were only started at this time.
His family bought a coastal farm, which supplied whole milk for cheese-making. At one time the farm also packaged milk and cream for a local dairy supplier, until taken over by a big company.
Mechanisation of farms only came in as a wartime measure in World War 2, when so many young men left to join the armed services. Our dairy farm did not get electricity until 1954, which not only drove the milking machines, but provided refrigeration and household helps. Also pumps to provide creek water for the dairy and garden.
When my husband retired, our son sold the farm, and it is now a beef farm owned by a new Australian. There are now only three family dairy farms left in the district.
This son is the only one of the family to continue in the dairy industry. He has worked in large rotorlactor dairies owned by big companies, which seem to be the way to go for the dairy industry. He has also worked on an irrigated farm, which helped drain the Murray/Darling system to keep the bone-dry land producing.
The first people in this country were hunter-gatherers and knew the land better than the white settlers from wetter, greener England and Europe. When these new settlers tried to emulate the ways of their homelands on this harsh arid country, they caused the soil to blow away with over-cultivating for cereal crops. Their hard-hoofed animal's feet have compacted the soil, unlike the softer hoofs of the indigenous animals. Their manure did not have natural insects to recycle their dung. Some farmers have imported dung beetles to remedy this problem. Cutting down the trees caused the water table to rise, causing salination, losing enormous areas of country to salt, particularly in Western and South Australia.
A farmer in Victoria has worked out a scheme to give back to the land instead of taking out all the time and destroying the fertility. Instead of cereal crops, which deplete the soil, he grows lucerne which puts nitrogen into the soil. He also plants more indigenous trees to lower the water table and lower the saline content of the soil.
Battery hens and pigs and feedlot cattle are not natural. Someone else has to grow their feed, rather than the animals finding their own.
The multinational food companies are buying cheaper food crops from overseas countries with a lower wage level, and driving out Australia's food producing farmers. Entrepreneurs like Dick Smith are trying to stave off the trend, but cannot win without people power.
Global warming by burning fossil fuels is also causing droughts. Alternative wind and solar power is free for the harnessing.
I think the way to go in the future is for individuals to grow their own fruit and vegetables in their back yards as we do. Recycling all natural material builds up the soil and makes it more productive. Our neighbours have chooks. We are now allowed to install home rainwater tanks to preserve our rainfall and prevent the loss of water from our depleted dams.
We may go full cycle and learn from our indigenous Australians, and become hunter-gatherers.
© Dorothy Moffitt
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Dorothy writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
