Banana industry wilts under stupidity
THIS has to be the greatest bit of theatre ever from a government department to keep sapping money out of the taxpayer. What is happening right in front of our eyes is unbelievable.
At the current rate of annihilation, it will take 500 years to wipe out Australia’s entire banana industry ( 13 plants every three years). There are bigger problems facing this industry such as litigation and imports.
I invested everything into this industry so I won’t sit back and watch it disappear because of the protocols set by people who have more degrees than a thermometer – but no common sense.
“Panama” is a nickname. The real name is “Fusarium Wilt T4”. Every plant from an avocado to a cucumber gets some form of wilt. All these other forms of wilt becomes the farmer’s problem, not the taxpayer’s.
The propaganda coming out of the ivory towers is unbelievable. They say it stays in the soil for 100 years. Show me the spot where they came up with that.
Then they come up with ideas such as putting up a barbed wire fence to stop a virus. Reptiles, rodents, marsupials, birds, pigs etc continue to do their daily thing because they couldn’t read all the signs ( imagine trying to get them to use the footwash when they move to the neighbour’s property).
This industry survives on someone else’s misfortune to make a dollar.
That’s instead of putting money into finding new markets, new products, new plants and mechanisation. The sad fact is most of the farmers believe in the educated idiots who still preach ancient ways of farming.
Heads should roll! After millions of dollars of taxpayer and farmers’ money has been spent – it is obvious the protocols set were never going to work. If it wasn’t so serious you would think it was a never- ending joke.
Elders and Landmark must be making an extraordinary amount of money for their shareholders because of the many products they are selling as a result of the procedures set by the bureaucrats.
If this wilt is so bad then how is it that the countries that already have it are producing “double” per acre than what we do in Australia?
The answer is simple. Kerosene. Spray the infected area periodically over a six- month period, then burn it. But that’d be too simple. I believe that the people raping this industry don’t want a cure.
If things don’t change quickly then this industry will disappear just like so many others.
I still believe there are hundreds of products, besides the fruit it produces, that can be made from the fibrous plant. If the plant is left undamaged, after the bunch has been removed, then it makes the remainder of the plant a valuable product.
There is no fibre that has the capabilities like this one. It is never ending, fireproof and very fast growing.
The only thing the farmers must do to bring about this big change is to time their paddocks into 100 days of harvesting. A cut every 10 days averages out at 10 per cent each time they get harvested. If the mechanical harvester can get 5 per cent of the bunches each time then it is viable.
The next time you look at a banana plant think of it as a brick in a wall of a house that won’t burn.
There is a future – a good one. But this stupidity must stop now. TOM JOHNSTON,
Tully.