Oi Freediver, could you tell us a little more about how much money farmers get? How widespread is this practice here?

freediver wrote on Sep 1^st, 2010 at 9:28pm:



Uhuh.....And if ALL the farmers lose their farms......who will there be to GROW the food???
Bankers????

Interesting discussion, and I liked JA's canal ideas, sort of a venice of the south, we could have the cash handouts delivered straight to the farm gate via gondolier.

I am a city boy, married to a farm girl, and farmers are dumb, self serving and incompetent.
Woah, that is pretty harsh.
I know, and it is pretty sad too, and all the cretins that complain about the bank taking the farm, know very well that the next door neighbour took the farm, not the bank, because he saw sooner than you, that you have to farm large scale or die out.
I remember sitting in my father in laws house watching Landline after sunday lunch one day, when the milk deregulation hooha was going on.
There was this QLD dairy farmer complaining that he already milked 70 cows a day, and could not make a living, my father in law laughed, he and his sister milked more than 70 a day by hand when they were young, at the time they were doing almost 700 in a rotary.
So the "real" dairy farmer laughed at what he considered a pretend dairy farmer, there was no great camaraderie of the bush going on, just one totally inefficient small businessman whingeing that he did not know how to run his business, and suggesting that we all pay him instead.

There was one issue that JA raised that is interesting, and that is where farmland becomes too valuable to farm, and ends up under tar and concrete instead, but that is the free market for you.

Wouldn't Parramatta River look nice if both sides were done up nice and Gondolas drifted from side to side down past Auburn or somewhere? 

Canals:
Open to the elements for the benefit of Flora and Fauna.
Open to a boy with a bucket of water and a Farmer with acres of crop to water.
Open to cool the immediate area and collectively lower the temp in a harsh interior.
Open to add moisture upon the land during the night.
Open to add moisture into the sky via evaporation during the night.
Open to give availabilty to greater populations inland and relieve the Coastal areas of high density populations.
Open to partition areas of land and prevent/control outbreaks of fire, pests and whatever else decides to cause a problem
Open to allow recreational activities along the waterways
Open to allow another form of transport that doesn't need maintenance like potholes and washouts.

...and thats just some.

Agree, there are a lot of Farmers out there that are just in it for the quick-fix of cash payouts.
I tend to only take serious, Farmers who aren't arrogant to take advice or work with Environmentalists and Conservationists amongst others who know the 'land' just as well as they do. Some Farmers are just parasites to the land. Pumping layer upon layer of chemicals upon the land and then yelling "Relief Package please!", when the soil goes sterile. These Farmers tend to jack up their 'Hard Yakka - Man of the Land' image just for the City people who don't know any better, not that its their fault.

Quote:


Enough to compensate for all the water lost to evaporation? Or just a tiny fraction?

I see Bob Katter is now trying to demand Australians pay more for their food for the benefit of farmers.

freediver wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 10:13pm:



Probably just a tiny fraction.....There was a discussion a few years back about covering the canals in summer to reduce evaporation...

Running canals down from QLD and through Northern NSW.....well I'd think some form of covering would be essential.....

All these crazy ideas about lakes and trees bringing in the rain have been well and truly debunked. It is a monumental waste, unless of course you have some magical source of water - but if you had that, the rain wouldn't seem quite so important.

Nothing else offered up? How about not wasting huge quantities of water on the dryest continent on earth? How about piping the water instead?