Farmers under threat
DURING 1989 I was employed as a consultant by the Department of Primary Industries to research the opportunities for the export of food from North Queensland.
The resulting report is called “The Transport Storage and Handling of North Qld Perishables: A Situation Analysis”.
This report is still available in 19 university libraries around the nation.
I have, however, some bad news for those who wish to pick up this endeavour and progress it.
In 1989 there were 900 farmers in the Burdekin. Now there are 550.
The reason for this is the unattractive returns on farming as a business compounded by high costs for water, fuel and electricity. On top of this is the anti- agriculture, anti- irrigation, anti- business attitude of successive state governments.
To make the Bowen to Townsville axis the food hub of Australia and a great export centre for food, we must firstly remove all government and green impediments to growing food.
The Burdekin Dam needs to be raised to the designed Stage 2 level of 14.6m and the water channelled by either pipeline or canal as far south as Bowen and north into the Townsville Plain.
The cost of electricity is ridiculous and is pushed by the green demands for CO2 emissions reduction. This is a fraud and a nonsense with no scientific support whatsoever.
We need at least one coalfired HELE power station in North Queensland.
The cost of petrol and diesel bears no relation to the production and transport costs of the fuel.
Most of this cost is a government double taxation on fuel. This needs to go. GST is quite enough tax, thank you.
The idiotic VMA laws recently enacted make it illegal to knock down any trees, including introduced pests like Chinee apples and lantana.
These laws need some eight serious adjustments.
They are made by city- based “experts” who know absolutely nothing about farming and are, in fact, anti- farming greens.
Unless these impediments are removed and young farming families are encouraged to resume farming, there will simply be no food products to export.
CHRIS SQUELCH, South Townsville.