Sustainable Food Supply, the Murray/Darling Irrigation Dedate.

Crop preparation in the irrigation area.

There is a certain degree of irony in the current Murray/Darling River irrigation debate. Here we are with wide spread flooding across N.S.W., while the irrigation centre of Griffith is in the middle of a flood crises, while the debate goes on over the size of irrigation water rights cuts. I don't see myself in any way hostile to environmental issues, but the dramatic suggested cuts 37%  to irrigation water for Australia's food bowl, needs far closer examination from  both the Federal Government and the  conservation movement. Every thing in this world can not necessarily be reduced to black and white.

As an original pioneer settler in the Coleambally Irrigation Area, I feel obliged to to a certain extent the deep concerns of irrigation farmers. The debate seems to be following the usual blinkered course of the conservation movement, all farmers are villains, and the current state of the Murray River is due to farmers taking out too much water. It is all very well for arm chair urban critics, to point the finger at irrigation farming, but we are not talking about over watering the lawn, but Australia food bowl. Most of the criticism is both ill informed and even insulting to the farmers concerned. Most farmers,I have known over some fifty years, consider themselves as custodian of their land, land to be passed on from one generation to the next.

The suggested cuts of some 37%  to water allocation borders on the unbelievable. We are talking about cuts to the areas that supply some 40% of this country's food. Do we intend to import all our food from China, along with everything else? The Coleambally Irrigation Area of which I have personal experience, was developed by a group very hard working Australians. People who were prepared to go and live in this remote part of the country, hundreds of miles from any city in central N.S.W.  Many lived and brought up their families in an enclosed section of  machinery sheds, often for many years. Nearly ever month, some one would be killed in a farm accident, generally due to fatigue from their 16 to 18 hour working days. I doubt many of our urban critics would put up with such conditions for one moment.

Recent improved irrigation techniques have been introduced over the years, from trickle irrigation to laser grading of land for rice cultivation. The Australian Conservation Foundation uses grossly incorrect date about water usage in the Murray-Darling farming areas. Rather than cutting blindly, a study should be carried out to protect the most fertile and productive areas of our farmland, like any property certain sections grow better crops than other parts of the same property. Why would you cull the most productive farmland in Australia. We need to restucture our farming industry, most people don't seem to realize or don't care about the fact, that over the last ten years, Australia has reduced its productive agricultural land by some 25%, due to urban sprawl. This is an urgent matter, of concern to everyone who calls this country home.  It is up to us to make sure that this country remains self sufficient as a  food producer. There is no hard position in the matters our existence, comprise is required from all interested parties.