THE Murray-Darling Basin is one of Australia’s richest agricultural regions. The same area as France and Spain combined, it produces A&dollar;10 billion (£4.7 billion) worth of produce a year, including fruit, vegetables, cotton and mutton. But the life of the area, which springs from the 19 rivers that flow into it, is under threat.
Earlier this month, four state governments and the national government banned farmers from taking more water than they do now. Their decision followed the release of a “water audit” of the area, which found that only 25 per cent of what flows into the basin ever reaches the sea. And demand for water is increasing. Without the moratorium, farmers would have taken another 14 per cent of the in-flow over the next 20 years (see Diagram). This could have been disastrous. Fish are already dying in the rivers, salinity is increasing, and blooms of toxic cyanobacteria are likely, says the report.
To the north and west of the basin are the rangelands – home to about 10 000 families, 19 million sheep and 6 million cattle. This area makes up some 60 per cent of Australia, and much of it is marginal land. The huge numbers of farm animals and wild horses, camels, goats and rabbits take a heavy toll. As vegetation is eaten or trampled, the thin soils are left exposed to wind and rain with devastating results. A study published in April recommends that farming should stop over vast tracts of this land before irreversible damage is done.
The water audit and the rangelands study are two of a string of recent reports that reveal how agriculture is killing the land and the native fauna and flora in many parts of Australia. They have raised the national debate over the future of agriculture and the best way to manage the land. While most Australians agree that action is needed to stop the destruction, the unanswered questions are what exactly should be done and who should foot the bill.
Agriculture is one of the mainstays of Australia’s economy. But ironically, the country is not well suited to the European styles of farming that are practised. “That Australia’s agriculture has been as productive as it has is a testament to Australians’ innovation, technical skill and determination over two centuries,” say government scientists in a paper prepared for a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Science Council last month. The country’s soils are thin – most are less than 10 centimetres deep – and contain little organic matter. The weather is not dependable either, often fluctuating between prolonged drought and severe flooding. Added to this, Australia’s native mammals have padded feet that do minimal damage to soil. By comparison, the hooves of imported animals are far more destructive.
Last month, the Australian government’s Biodiversity Unit released two reports that delivered some harsh lessons about the clearing of bush and woodland for farming. The first reveals that in the decade to 1993 Australia cleared an average of 500 000 hectares per year – the equivalent of two rugby pitches a minute. This is one of the worst records in the world. In 1990 Australia stripped 650 000 hectares, more than half the area cleared in the Amazon Basin.
The report also scotches a common belief that most of the clearing took place in the last century. In fact, as much land has been cleared in the past 50 years as in the preceding 150 years. And the clearing continues. Last year, permits were granted to clear more than 1 million hectares of Queensland, including 685 000 hectares of virgin bush.
The second report is an analysis of satellite images. It concludes that vegetation over nearly half the country has been “significantly or substantially disturbed”.
Land clearance has been costly in terms of environmental damage. Disruption of the water cycle in cleared areas has reduced the rainfall by as much as 14 per cent. Biodiversity has also suffered. A small carnivorous marsupial called the numbat, for example, used to be widespread. It is now confined to a few pockets of surviving vegetation in Western Australia. Similarly, only 30 000 hectares of the native bush brigalow, Acacia harpophylla, are left. It used to cover 6 million hectares. Hal Cogger from the Australian Museum in Sydney estimates that clearing scrub to make room for wheat, kills more than 85 per cent of the resident reptiles, such as goannas, skinks and pythons. This amounts to killing about 200 animals per hectare.
Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Committee estimates that burning wood from cleared forests accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide, or 156 million tonnes a year. And water tables are rising beneath cleared land. In the Western Australian wheat belt, estimates suggest that water is rising by up to 1 metre a year. The land is becoming waterlogged and unproductive or is being poisoned by salt, which is brought to the surface. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) reckons that 33 million hectares has been degraded by salination. The federal government estimates the loss in production from salinity at A&dollar;200 million a year.
According to Jason Alexandra of the ACF, this list of woes is evidence that Australia is depleting its resources by trading agricultural commodities for manufactured imports. In effect, it sells topsoil for technologies that will be worn out or redundant in a few years. The country needs to get away from the “colonial mentality” of exploiting resources and adopt agricultural practices suited to Australian conditions, he says.
Robert Hadler of the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) does not deny that there is a problem, but says that it is “illogical” to blame farmers. Until the early 1980s, farmers were given tax incentives to clear land because that was what people wanted. If farmers are given tax breaks to manage the land sustainably, they will do so. Hadler argues that the two reports on land clearance do not say anything which was not known before.
Graetz, who analysed the satellite photographs for the second land clearance report, argues that there is now better cooperation between Australian scientists, government officials and farmers than in the past. One example is the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, which Graetz says has forced four states – Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland – and the Australian Capital Territory to talk with one another. “They were forced to do the water audit and find out who is pumping the Darling and why it is not flowing as it should,” he says.
The problems of the rangelands are also being studied by a group of scientists, farmers, government officials and Aboriginal groups in an effort to draw up a national management strategy. One likely outcome is that sheep and cattle will be removed from some areas. In a report published in April, ecologists from the CSIRO recommend that a stewardship system should be set up. Instead of tending livestock, farmers who find it hard to make a living should be paid to conserve the land and protect it from feral animals, fire and other threats to the environment. Extra income could be generated by farming native animals such as emu and kangaroo.
The NFF advises farmers to treat native trees as potential crops. While they are growing, species such as the eucalypts help to reduce land degradation, and after felling the timber can be sold as hardwood. Farmers have also taken to growing native plants such as acacias, grevilleas and banksias around fields of grain crops. These “alley crops” act as windbreaks, prevent erosion, and retain moisture in the fields.
But the bugbear of all these conservation efforts is money. Landcare’s budget is A&dollar;110 million a year, of which only A&dollar;6 million goes to farmers. Neil Clark, an agricultural consultant from Bendigo in Victoria, says that farmers are not getting enough. “Farmers may want to make more efficient use of water and nutrients and embrace more sustainable practices, but it all costs money and they just don’t have the spare funds,” he says.