By Chris Spindler
May 24 was a day when the country came to the city. High winds picked up some 22 million tonnes of topsoil every six hours from the drought-stricken regions of South Australia and deposited a good portion of it over urban Adelaide. It was a particularly dirty reminder of the plight of the rural environment and communities.
Just to replace the nutrients will cost about $2 per tonne of lost soil. This is over $40 million even before considering the loss of production for this year and for the next 50 years — the estimated time of regeneration of the topsoil.
One rural commentator described it as "a very insidious way of worsening the income problem for farmers" because there is no real way of quantifying the lost production over the next decades.
In recent years Australia's agriculture sector has gone through unparalleled restructuring, which has brought intense economic pressure to bear on farmers, particularly small farmers, who then have few options other than to employ unsustainable farming practices in an effort to eke out a living.
For example, reduction of the time between crop rotations in an attempt to make financial ends meet is common. This increases soil loss and makes the topsoil more vulnerable to events such as the recent windstorm.
As well, extra tilling has been taking place because methods which allow stubble to remain in the fields require more costly machinery and herbicides to make sowing of the next crop possible. This extra tilling again makes the land more susceptible to damage.
Agribusiness has been the beneficiary of this restructuring. In the late 1980s and 1990s, while one-third of all farmers were losing money, agribusinesses were recording record profits.
Agribusiness
Agribusiness first established its dominance in agriculture in the non-production area. Only 10% of the value of agricultural products represents "on-farm" activity. The other 90% is divided between the input costs (fertilisers, seed, machinery) and output processes (processing, packaging, advertising). These are often dominated by the same company.
Once in control of inputs and outputs, agribusiness drastically inflated prices. Overall farm input costs increased by 375% between 1972 and 1987. In the same period, agricultural output increased by 27% while the value of that output increased by only 4%.
The spread of mechanisation and expensive technology into the rural sector has put enormous debt pressure on the family farm as it tries to keep up with advancing technology at a time of falling returns. Total farm debt has almost doubled in 20 years, from $10.7 billion to close to $20 billion now.
The strain of debt shows in the falling number of farmers. By 2010 only some 70,000 of the 170,000 agricultural producers will survive. The bottom 25% of producers are in immediate danger of being "structurally adjusted" out of agriculture altogether.
For those who try to carry on, life is getting harder. Family support breaks up as young people leave the country in search of work. The average age of farmers is currently 57.
More and more women are involved in agricultural labour and management tasks, as well as domestic and community work.
Rural families experience relatively high levels of stress-related illnesses such as hypertension, heart attacks, asthma, ulcers and alcohol abuse. Domestic violence and suicide are on the increase.
As farmers leave the land, rural communities shrink, becoming targets for government cutbacks in health, education and other services. In an eight-year period 100,000 non-farm workers left rural areas as 19,000 farms closed down.
Contract farming
Agribusiness has also been expanding into the production side of agriculture through a system of contract farming which is having disastrous impacts on the environment, consumers and farmers.
Contract farming is supposedly an equal agreement between the farmer and the distributor — Edgell, Heinz etc. Under contract, these companies require the farmer to plant a specified crop, at a specified time, with specified fertilisers, pesticides and methods.
All directions from the companies must be obeyed or the contract is off. In return the farmer is supposed to get an agreed payment based on quality and quantity.
The companies, however can use a built-up dependence to demand a drop in price.
Increasing degradation
Environmental degradation is a consequence of economic and social problems.
Over the years, land practices have badly degraded over half of the country's farmland. Clearing of the land has increased erosion. Growing heavy grains and running cattle and heavy tilling mean losing about 5 mm per year or 50 tonnes per hectare of topsoil — which removes nutrients and decreases yields.
Tree cover removal and irrigation bring salts from dissolving rock beds to the surface, making it impossible to grow crops on that soil. This also affects river systems and drinking water supplies downstream. Some 1.3 million tonnes of salt flow through the Murray River each year; in some dry seasons, the salt level in the drinking water in Adelaide is higher than the levels recommended by the World Health Organisation.
In 40 years, areas of the Murray Darling Basin will not be able to sustain fruit trees (one of the major industries in the area) because of salinity. It is estimated that productivity losses due to salinity are $100 million per year.
Decreasing yields leads to increased use of fertilisers and consequent pollution of waterways. The blue green algae bloom along the Darling River in 1991 was mainly due to the amount of phosphorus from fertilisers entering the waterways.
Virtually every river in the southern two-thirds of the continent is suffering from removal of water for city use, sand mining, nutrient and fertiliser inflows and organic waste.
For a farmer, chemical fertilisers and other current agricultural practices are necessary on an individual level to boost production, but the full implications of such practices can be recognised only on a social scale.
It's only then that we see how unsustainable the agricultural practices are.
The CSIRO estimates that 500,000 hectares of wheat land have only 50 years of productive life left because of soil loss, and the sheep carrying capacity in western NSW is already down by half.
Seventy per cent of farmers realise that there are problems with the land but are caught on an economic treadmill. In fact, usage of chemicals continues to increase. Last year 85% of farmers used herbicides and insecticides, and 90% used fungicides, often at the insistence of contracts with agribusiness.
Solutions?
Governments, Labor or Liberal, offer little help.
For example, there are tax concessions for certain types of landcare — but these of course are available only to those who pay tax.
There is also funding for scientists and technicians who "educate" farmers on land use. Some of the practices recommended have actually proven more harmful than helpful — for example, the clearing of shrubbery.
Some states actually enforce land degradation penalties. That is, the cost of land degradation is recoverable against the individual farmer. Yet land degradation is often a process that has started well beyond any individual farmer's property.
Such "solutions" miss the mark by blaming the individual farmer, who has to be cajoled, educated or penalised.
Any solution for the environmental crisis on the land must include solid scientific research into sustainable farming practices. Equally importantly, it must take on board the economic and social concerns of the rural population as a matter of priority. This is the only way to remove the built-in pressures to degrade the countryside.
In immediate terms, there should be a cancellation of debts or at least an end to the forced sale of farms. Farmers should be guaranteed a minimum income. And there should be a guaranteed price for produce.
There can be no solution to the environmental crisis on the land under the current economic system. The power of agribusiness and the banks over the working farmer must be broken if there is be any chance to adopt sustainable farming methods.