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Sustainable Agriculture- A Case Study for Australia
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Author: Tobi Nagy
Topic: Environment
Viewed: 48 time(s)
[ Not Rated Yet ]
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Introduction Australia is oldest continent on earth and has one
of the most fragile and least fertile soils. Other than
Antarctica, Australia is the driest continent on this planet,
with over 80% of our land arid and infertile. It has one of the
least understood ecological systems in the developed world and
there are new species of plants and animals discovered every
year in Australia. Yet for over 150 years we have been using
?European Style? farming techniques with little regard to the
fact that European soils are far more fertile and are often silt
based, providing fertile soils every year. Since the Second
World War, the state of agricultural decay has increased
dramatically with the ?Great Agricultural Push in Australia?, in
areas that were simply not suited for long-term agricultural
use. Mechanisation, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides as well
as push to standardise products in order to increase yields
(productivity) has led to extensive environmental catastrophes.
One example that clearly comes to mind is the vast lands in SW
Australia (East of Perth), where people were fooled to believe
that they could run agricultural operations over a long period
of time. Our land is still being deforested at a rapid rate
leading to high levels of salinity, over-grazed leading to
desertification and land degradation through bad soil management
techniques. Its water courses altered, dammed drained
straightened etc. Whilst 95% of Victorian rivers lie in some
state of decay, with fish breeding grounds lost, flows reduced,
swamps drained etc. Our water management practices have in the
past been inadequate. Just take a look at our open channel
irrigation systems, which stretch across a vast reach of
Australia. It loses a third of its volume through evaporation.
In 1983 during our last water restrictions the government
promised that once the Thompson and Dartmouth Dams were finished
that we would never have water restrictions again. Twenty years
later it?s happening again. What has happened to our vision?
These are just simple examples of where our ignorance and lack
of foresight has let us astray. There has been and still is an
irresponsible approach to water, soil and forestry management.
Today Australia faces many environmental issues of which the
most important are: 1.Water management 2.Land Degradation and
poor soil management 3.Deforestation 4.Overgrazing Yet very
little has been addressed. For over 100 years we couldn?t even
get Victoria South Australia and NSW to sign an agreement for a
management plan for the Murray River. These mistakes have led us
to a more contemporary approach to agriculture. No longer are
farmers just simply doing what ?their fathers did?. It simply
doesn?t work and is a time bomb ready to explode. The explosion
being total desertification and degradation of our land within
our lifetime! This has pushed us to a ?big picture? approach to
Agriculture, which has made us stop for a moment and think about
what we are doing. Over the last 30 years there has been a push
into sustainable agricultural practices leading us to better
resource management with a long-term view. Sustainable
Agriculture can be described as resource management based
agricultural system that minimises the impact of agriculture
produce and practices whilst providing a profitable output or
produce at minimal impact to the surrounding environment, both
short and long-term, whilst maximising biodiversity.
Biodiversity So what is so important about biodiversity?
Biodiversity gives us the ?quality of life? that enables us to
survive and enjoy life. Life?s wonderful choices! Many choices
provide many solutions especially in the random changing realm
of Darwin?s Natural Selection. We must maintain biodiversity if
the human species is to survive.
Farm Management Plan An integral part of any Sustainable
Agricultural venture is to have a Farm Management Plan. This
analyses all the resource to minimise inputs, and provides a
suitable output with view to long-term sustainability. Inputs
These inputs could be but are not limited to the following:
?Water ?Soil ?Fertilisers ?Seeds ?Chemicals including
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides ?Labour ?Machinery including
fuel
The Farm Management Plan should also incorporate a vision for
what you want to achieve, assess the inherent risks and provide
contingency plans to minimise all the exposure to risks as part
of the plan. It also provide solutions through an Integrated
Pest Management (IPM) Plan A Farm Management Plan should look at
all aspects of the current state of the venture and provide any
solutions, generally organic based, to rectify any inherent
problems occurring or to provide practices that will not lead to
long-term problems. Many of the problems in intensive
(monoculture) agriculture can be reversed if all the parameters
are understood. The problem in the past has been we have not
taken the time to analyse and understand our soils and
ecological systems that support us until it is too late. In the
past, (and still happening today) there has been a push by big
corporations, such as Monsanto, DuPont etc. to buy?buy?.buy
their agricultural products, whilst their consultants, provided
us with the wrong, often biased information leading us to make
bad choices over time. Whilst Sustainable Agriculture is the
right step in our approach to resource management we still have
a long way to go to change people?s habits and provide them with
a greater understanding of our ecological systems which is
blocked by our ignorance and apathy from distractions such as
terrorism, boat people and war on Iraq. The real issue is
resource management, which we alone must take control of and not
rely on external states or systems to determine our destiny or
freedom of choice.
About the author:
Tobi Nagy is a small business develoment consultant and a
specialist on developing sustainable systems. His website can be
found at http://www.sustainable-development.net
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