Mallee,
How are things going for you?
I see this report:
Farmers brace for decade-low wheat harvest
Daniel Lewis Regional Reporter
October 27, 2007
THE forecast size of the NSW grain crop has been cut by a further 40 per cent due to dry, hot and windy weather this month and last month.
The NSW Grain Report, published yesterday by the Department of Primary Industries, is predicting a harvest in coming months of just 2.8 million tonnes, compared with a mid-September estimate of 4.67 million tonnes.
It means the 2007-08 harvest is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade.
On the back of good rain and optimism about the drought breaking, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, in its June crop report, said NSW was looking at a record grain harvest of 11.44 million tonnes.
But yesterday's NSW report said: "Yield prospects for all crops have continued to deteriorate, with virtually no effective rainfall recorded during September and October. Estimated winter crop area to be harvested is 2.68 million hectares. About 3.12 million tonnes was harvested from 2.62 million hectares in 2006."
In the past year the price of wheat has more than doubled, to reach new highs, and this week the UN published a report that said the planet's water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in "inexorable decline".
It warned that the world's population of 6.75 billion "has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available" and climate change "may threaten humanity's very survival".
Within a decade many NSW farmers will only be getting half their income from traditional agricultural sources, with the rest coming from carbon credits, green power generation and environmental stewardship payments, the state's Natural Resources Commissioner says.
John Williams will tell a landscape conference in Tamworth today that the farm of the future will be as much about conservation as it will be about growing food and fibre.
He predicts farmers will also have to change their agricultural product mix because of climate change. Farmers would be growing more drought-tolerant natives such as blue mallee for biofuels.
Dr Williams said these shifts in farming "will certainly happen in the next five to 10 years".
Farmers would be better placed to stay on the land and cope with climate change, he said, because they would have diverse income streams that were more resilient to a hotter, drier climate.
They would be paid by power utilities, polluting manufacturers and water companies for hosting wind farm turbines, locking carbon in native vegetation and preserving wetlands.
Dr Williams said the farm of the future would need a trading scheme that ensured the price of carbon was at least $25 a tonne.
Land also needed to be properly managed to ensure conservation, and governments should be paying farmers for environmental services, he said.
"You can't just have people walking off [the land]."
Dr Williams stressed farmers were already managing the landscape much better.
"I think [agriculture] has got a good future provided we don't sit on our hands any longer."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/farmers-brace-for-decadelow-wheat-harvest/2007/10/26/1192941339440.html
How are things going for you?
I see this report:
Farmers brace for decade-low wheat harvest
Daniel Lewis Regional Reporter
October 27, 2007
THE forecast size of the NSW grain crop has been cut by a further 40 per cent due to dry, hot and windy weather this month and last month.
The NSW Grain Report, published yesterday by the Department of Primary Industries, is predicting a harvest in coming months of just 2.8 million tonnes, compared with a mid-September estimate of 4.67 million tonnes.
It means the 2007-08 harvest is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade.
On the back of good rain and optimism about the drought breaking, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, in its June crop report, said NSW was looking at a record grain harvest of 11.44 million tonnes.
But yesterday's NSW report said: "Yield prospects for all crops have continued to deteriorate, with virtually no effective rainfall recorded during September and October. Estimated winter crop area to be harvested is 2.68 million hectares. About 3.12 million tonnes was harvested from 2.62 million hectares in 2006."
In the past year the price of wheat has more than doubled, to reach new highs, and this week the UN published a report that said the planet's water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in "inexorable decline".
It warned that the world's population of 6.75 billion "has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available" and climate change "may threaten humanity's very survival".
Within a decade many NSW farmers will only be getting half their income from traditional agricultural sources, with the rest coming from carbon credits, green power generation and environmental stewardship payments, the state's Natural Resources Commissioner says.
John Williams will tell a landscape conference in Tamworth today that the farm of the future will be as much about conservation as it will be about growing food and fibre.
He predicts farmers will also have to change their agricultural product mix because of climate change. Farmers would be growing more drought-tolerant natives such as blue mallee for biofuels.
Dr Williams said these shifts in farming "will certainly happen in the next five to 10 years".
Farmers would be better placed to stay on the land and cope with climate change, he said, because they would have diverse income streams that were more resilient to a hotter, drier climate.
They would be paid by power utilities, polluting manufacturers and water companies for hosting wind farm turbines, locking carbon in native vegetation and preserving wetlands.
Dr Williams said the farm of the future would need a trading scheme that ensured the price of carbon was at least $25 a tonne.
Land also needed to be properly managed to ensure conservation, and governments should be paying farmers for environmental services, he said.
"You can't just have people walking off [the land]."
Dr Williams stressed farmers were already managing the landscape much better.
"I think [agriculture] has got a good future provided we don't sit on our hands any longer."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/farmers-brace-for-decadelow-wheat-harvest/2007/10/26/1192941339440.html
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