Cut hysterics over farming
THIS year, Queensland edged ahead of NSW and Victoria as the most valuable agricultural state in the country.
Our primary production is worth about $20 billion a year and about one in seven jobs in Queensland is either partially or entirely supported by the food sector.
But for agriculture to continue to thrive and create jobs for Queenslanders, we need the right policy settings from governments.
The release of the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study, SLATS, has seen the hysteria and hyperbole around clearing land for agricultural production ramped up yet again by green groups such as the Wilderness Society.
Farmers need to manage vegetation to sustainably produce food for dinner tables in Queensland, Australia and across the world, yet election after election, we are attacked over how we produce this food.
Despite the tired old analogies about how many football fields are cleared every minute, the facts are that just 0.23 per cent of the total land area of Queensland was cleared in 2015-16. That’s right, less than one quarter of 1 per cent. And two-thirds of that was to manage regrowth.
Claims of “deforestation” are misleading as the vegetation management debate has absolutely nothing to do with state forests and national parks and is more about how open woodlands are managed on private and leasehold properties.
The SLATS report fails to accurately measure how much vegetation has regrown – a flaw that the Queensland Government has acknowledged.
The Wilderness Society claimed vegetation management was the main cause for a loss of native wildlife, yet the Threatened Species Commissioner told ABC Radio National last week that “based on the science, the biggest threats in Australia to our wildlife aren’t land clearing”, but feral cats, foxes and fire.
Farmers love and care for their land and know how to manage it re- sponsibly. Most farmers are true environmentalists who are directly engaged in conservation activities, such as biodiversity projects, nature refuges, tree planting and the voluntary retention of vegetation that could be cleared.
More than 2000 producers statewide managing more than 28 million hectares of land have adopted the Grazing BMP (Best Management Practices) program to benchmark their business against the best industry standards using the best available science.
Farmers are sick and tired of vegetation management laws being used as a political football. Since 1999, there have been 38 amendments to the laws, with most changes making it harder for farmers to do our job of producing high-quality food and fibre. Enough is enough. Cut the hysteria and selective use of statistics, and look at how we can all work together to ensure good outcomes for both the environment and primary producers. The future of Queensland and the viability of our regional and rural areas depend on it.
Grant Maudsley is AgForce’s general president and a Mitchell beef and grains producer