Submitted by rickeyre on
(This item is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2010, whose topic this year is "Water".)
Australia is being confronted with a national dilemma which has a major impact on its society and the environment, and it will take a huge amount of wisdom, courage, co-operation and, yes, pain to reach a stable outcome.
Submitted by rickeyre on
Australia has been a leading exporter of rice, supposedly feeding up to 40 million people worldwide. But decades of mismanagement of water allocations in the Murray-Darling river basin, exacerbated by the recent drought, has hit rice crops hard, despite the fact that Australian farmers have taken huge leaps in improving water efficiency in rice production.
But there's another problem. They can grow grapes on their land, using less water and making money from the booming wine industry. Yes, the hungry of the world risk playing second fiddle to middle-class Aussie tipplers.
Al Jazeera English visited the Riverina district of New South Wales for this report, which aired on April 23:
Submitted by rickeyre on
Buyers came away the big winners at the supreme bull sale in Brunswick, WA last Thursday.
A big run of 160 bulls went under the hammer, to sell to $8000 with an average of $3704.
A total of 46 studs offered bulls, with an outstanding line-up from 11 breeds.
The $8000 top price tag was paid for a magnificent Blonde d’Aquitaine from Gerald Bergsma’s Amaroo stud, Mundijong, WA.
A compact 720kg, this June 2006-drop youngster's length, depth, muscle, impressive butt profile and temperament attracted attention from all sides of the shed.
Submitted by rickeyre on
DAKAR, 27 July 2007 (IRIN) - Food imports are keeping Sierra Leone from realising agricultural self-sufficiency and meeting the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating hunger by 2015, experts say. In a country where 80 percent of food is imported, mostly from the USA and Europe, the local agricultural industry is feeble and local farmers struggle to compete.
The report http://www.i
Submitted by rickeyre on
Submitted by rickeyre on
"...if it doesn't rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the [Murray-Darling] Basin."
- John Winston Howard, press conference, 19.4.07
It would be easy to see this as another example of the PM playing politics and thus response with the line Howard to Farmers: Drop Dead. But it's a problem much more genuine and more serious than that.
Submitted by rickeyre on
For today (January 23), Woolworths Limited (ASX:WOW) have stated that they will donate the day's profits from their Woolworths and Safeway supermarkets across Australia to the Country Women's Association of Australia for "distribution to farming families in need across Australia and research into sustainable farming practices".
