Friday, June 01, 2012

Giving away the Farm

A not insignificant area of high quality rangeland in Australia's north is being made available, or "produced", for intensive agricultural use.

There are many problems facing the developer/s of this land: Distance to markets, fauna pests, remote area logistics & consequent high costs, etc.

Mine Host has a familiarity with this patch of land. In total it is not a big area, as far as releases of agricultural land go. About a hundred thousand acres. But in high rainfall & tropical climate. Irrigated, it will be a food bowl.

There is nothing new in this release, except for journalists, who have come down with a case of "gee whiz" & are writing about it as if they have only just discovered Australia has an undeveloped north. (This will be because those journalists have only just discovered that Australia has a vast undeveloped north)

This patch of land has been earmarked for this release, more than 30 years ago, possibly longer. There are no surprises. The people who owned it, & everybody for at least a thousand mile radius has known of the impending land release, just not when it would happen.

Except journalists in the deep south. You know, the "informed & investigative" class.

The (current) federal government has been in negotiations with the government of Communist China, for "the chinese" to be allocated every last acre of this land release, for "the chinese" to farm as they see fit, and for "the chinese" to do as they wish with the resultant farm produce.

This is an outrage!

Mine Host has, for the past several weeks (long before [cough] journalists) "discovered" the event, been lobbying everybody he can pin down.

Mine Host is not without ears to bend, knowing lots of political heavy hitters from both major parties & also industry representative bodies.

This land must not, under any circumstances or conditions, be farmed by anybody but Australians, using practices approved by the relevant state Department of Primary Industries.

In the manner of all previous agricultural land releases, this land should be balloted to Australian farmers, conditional upon them (a) living on their allocated land, and (b) developing it as productive farmland.

Anything else will be as good as treason.

2 comments:

JeffS said...

Agreed. China is screwing up their own land -- no need for them to screw up yours.

Good luck!

Steve at the Pub said...

The govt is loudly defending their right to award the land to "the chinese", with a long list of reasons why the land should never go to (undeserving) young Australians.

Almost feels like some brown paper bags have changed hands.