Food and Fibre

We can't expect people on their weekly race through the supermarket to stop and contemplate the production history of carrots, broccoli or yoghurt. 
A new beach towel will not conjur up visions of cotton fields. 
However, food does NOT miraculously appear on the supermarket shelf and fabric does not magically appear at the sewing machines of fashion houses?
Producers are not the ever complaining farmers. We are hard working people who PROVIDE what you NEED to satisfy your most important BASIC HUMAN NEEDS.
We do jobs, that a substantial part of urban society won't even consider in their wildest nightmares.
We deal with circumstances, be it climatic, economical or political that are unimaginable for most of urban society.
We don't just willy nilly spray our crops or treat our animals with harmful chemicals and we most definitely do not treat our land and the environment in general with disrespect.
We take pride in looking after our land as well as the environment and selling the best produce we can. 
In every aspect of human society there will always be some "bad apples in the basket" but you would be very gullible were you to believe that just because the worst makes a good story on TV, it could ever be considered the norm.
We love and respect our animals and certainly don't want to see them mistreated once they leave our farm. 
However, all food, be it animal or vegetable, has to be taken from nature and therefore dies in one way or another, before it can be food.
Whatever your choice in food or clothing; what you eat and what you wear needs land and water to grow and ultimately has to die before it can be used and/or consumed.
One more important fact to consider is that farmers DO NOT have the luxury of a weekly pay check. Most farmers work their hearts out all year round and get paid ONLY when they sell their produce.
This means a fruit and/or vegetable farmer (as well as cotton producer) has one (if he/she is lucky, two) harvest(s) a year. If inclement weather such as a cyclone or flood hits there is a high likelyhood that a whole year's work goes down the drain, so to speak, and there is no paycheck. 
ZERO - NOTHING - ZIPPO. 
Our animal herds live their lives as close as possible to natural circumstances. Natural size herds in large paddocks. But when drought or floods hit it can wipe out many years of careful breed selection and often up to 100 % of any year's saleable animals in no time at all.
Australia has managed to populate the most fertile areas along the east coast to the extent that most of it is covered by concrete jungle. Food and fibre production has therefore had to move west into less productive areas. Nevertheless we still produce high quality world class food and fibre.
We do NOT operate on what the government so persistently calls, a level playing field. 
We deal with harsh climate, huge distances to market, a lack of infrastructure and close to ZERO market protection.
By protection I mean the exclusion of imports from countries with negligeable wage costs and very little regulations with respect to chemically clean, environmentally safe and/or humane food production.
On top of that, most companies dealing with the trade steps between us, the food producers, and you, the consumers, are owned by foreign interest (large supermarket chains and meatworks) and there are VERY FEW of them so that competition is minimal. 
They can squeeze the producer to the point of often paying less than production costs and the consumer on the other hand to the point of charging you, the consumer, to the maximum.

Before you think, why do farmers choose to live under such difficult circumstances? Why can't we just import what we need from overseas? 
I would like you to consider one other point.

THE two most important reasons why Europe subsidises farmers is on the one hand that farmers are a very important link in land conservation and on the other hand that after past experiences of food dependency to the point of large scale starvation through wars no European country wants to risk being in that position ever again.
We in Australia are currently in the fortunate position of peace and freedom, relative affluence, and (relative) political independence. Should we ever forfeit the independence with respect to our basic human needs our freedom and independence will be threatened every second of our life and even more so, our children's lives.

We all were shocked by what we saw about the horrific methods of cattle slaughter portrayed but anyone with any sense can see that this was the exception and not the rule.
It is so easy to halt cattle exports with one stroke of the pen. 
However, doing this excludes us from the reform process in those countries which will greatly slow down changes towards more humane sloughter methods.
At the same time it wipes out the livelyhood of cattle graziers all through the arid North and West of Australia. These graziers mostly depend totally on the export market as their arid land does not sustain cattle to slaughter weight at an age accepted by meatworks for an economically viable price.
Just to explain, export cattle mostly weigh between 280 and 350 kilogram live weight; slaughter cattle weigh anything from 450 kilogram upward.
In 2009 we exported just over 950 000 head of live cattle.

Anyone knows that selling your product value added raises the economical value. However, there are a number of issues that make this impossible with meat exports at the moment. Firstly, to value add in Australia, it would be necessary to build a substantial number of feedlots and subsequently build enough meatworks in Australia to export it either chilled or frozen. This would create a huge number of jobs and keep most of the profits in Australia and that would certainly be the ideal solution. But most of our live export markets are developing countries where two important aspects come into play.
If you compare labour costs you will find that feedlot workers in those countries are paid around ONE Dollar a day; compare that to Australian labour costs and the fact that Australia operates far from the international "level playing field". So value adding meat in Australia would only be possible with serious tax incentive consideration by our state and federal governments as well as innovative thinking with respect to water.
The second aspect to consider is, that a large part of the community in the countries that are our live export market live without power and without refridgeration. They do their shopping from day to day, so neither the necessary infrastructure for the longterm storage of any produce or the continious flow of transport is currently available.

At the same time that our government halts cattle export for obvious and highly visible reasons it allows more and more fruit and vegetable imports from countries where whole species threatening plant deseases are rife and the lack of regulation and control makes it impossible to ascertain environmental sustainability and chemically safe food production. So you might be eating chemically treated imported fruit and/or vegetables from farms where child labour and generally inhumane treatment of workers is the norm. 
Out of sight and out of mind springs to mind!

And now that the export ban has been lifted, please don't for a single second think that this is the end of it. Not only has our standing as a dependable supplier been reduced to practically ZERO in all of our Live Export Markets, not just in Indonesia,  but around 40% of our export income has been wiped out. So all those producers who depend on live export for their income have lost 40% of their income PLUS now have to deal with the added cost of getting their business going again. So maybe you should, for the next 12 months, take 40% percent of your net weekly income and donate it to charity and then see how you would get on with your life with your available funds reduced in such a way.

Food production including livestock is necessary and will be even more so in the future as world population is set to double within the next 40 years.
Australia is in the lucky positioin of being amongst a select number of countries where expansion is still possible. If we play our cards right Australia could be among a very select small number of countries that will become the main food producers of the future. 

With some innovative thinking and some realistic compromises the sky is the limit. 

I cannot help but think of the early days of food production in Israel. With innovation and persistence a barren landscape was turned into a super productive food bowl. Look at Las Vegas in the U.S. (not that a gambling metropolis in the desert is anything to aspire to, but it shows a good example for the water issue). From nothing a huge industry was created and one of the most important aspects of both success stories was the "outside the square" thinking about water.
It is quite clear that we will have to treat our most precious commodity "water" with much more care and respect in future but before urban society blames every water related issue on the farming community cities should stop and think about how many gigaliters of clean drinking water are flushed down their toilets every day. It is so easy to cry fowl as long as the changes don't affect your own easy and convenient life style.

When we in Australia change from a society of "it can't be done" and "that's never been done before" to "let's find a way" and "let's do it" we will be able to be one of the, if not THE most important food and fibre producers in the world while respecting, enjoying and enhancing our natural environment.