Rural recession

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its pissin down rain here at the moment. Mind you its coming down that hard it will just run off the land, into the gutters and down the drain.
 
yeah I know ...it's bloody stopped now! I see Tolland has made the front page of the advertiser again today
 
Yeah, sun was out by about 7.30am.

I thought it was the brawl at the Turvey tavern but the Tolland one looks like a doosy. I heard it on Friday night.
In defence of the coppers , the radio really gave no indication of the severity of the situation. All it said was there were gate crashers of about 20 kids and the owner would like them moved on.
For the amount of crime we have there are only 5 cars that patrol the whole of Wagga.
 
yeah I'm with you earl- the police's hands are tied alot of the time and then the magistrates end up letting most of the little bastards off anyway so what can you do
 
Been too scared to set foot in my little lions' den hey CW?
Not too scared - too busy. I am currently working with my successor and starting an 8 week handover. Plus I have a function for 600 in a fortnight, and a lot of other things that need to be done, not to mention moving house in about 9 or 10 weeks. I have a new job next year.'

I will be pretty scarce for a while is my guess.
 
In bathurst I noticed the locals run their sprinklers over the lawns and part of the road. No restrictions.

Is it the same in Dubbo Mata?
 
Bathurst is one of few councils who dont have restrictions. our water supply is 76% full.

Good thing too, I bought a new house 2 months ago and gettinfg turf up in restrictions would have been impossible.

Only idiots run it across the road Byso, but you are unfortunately correct.
 
Have you bought your turf yet Fro?

Byso - urban use of water is small fry when compared with the water required to irrigate a crop. Dubbo's annual use would constitute less than 1% of Burrendong Dam, whereas the irrigators need it to be 25% full right now to have any confidence about the year ahead.
 
yeah it was part of the purchase Matas, looks good now but I'd hate to think what our excess water rates are going to be this year :)
 
The water debate is a real silly one at the moment. Whilst Sydney water are running restrictions on sprinklers and articles like yesterday's one on showers, certain industries are using megalitres in outdated practice and that is where about 80% of the water goes. It is a debate we need to have as they are not being asked to use less.
 
CW you surprise me, most city slickers think watering their lawns one time less a week wil solve the problem :)

What has been allowed to happen with the Darling is criminal, QLD have the attitude that 1 drop getting to NSW is a wasted drop for them, and NSW thinks the same with SA, with the result being that it has basically stopped at a lot of places downstream.
 
Quite frankly I feel the state gov't has used all this as a good excuse to raise water rates.

But still haven't come up with any solutions.
 
For some reason I find it very difficult to have much sympathy for one particular farming family in Bourke (not the poor souls profiled on last night's 60 minutes).
 
For some reason I find it very difficult to have much sympathy for one particular farming family in Bourke (not the poor souls profiled on last night's 60 minutes).
Last nights programm was a real eye opener , and i live in the country. You could really feel for the Burke family and the family form Junee , who had to sell sheep at $4 each, when 3 months ago it was $28 each.

Where i work was one of those industries using a **** load of water. We have now scaled back our usage and have found ways to re-capture the water and re-use. I think we measure our savings in mega litres.
 
Yeah, I know the Mansells and their situation is far more dire than they let on last night. There is a fortune to be made by anyone brave enough to buy sheep at $4 a head and strip fedd them on irrigated pasture.

hmmmmmmmm.............................

BRB
 
I've pulled this from the October edition of Regional Business magazine. Says it well methinks.

Selling the farm to pay ...........

It’s interesting to see that there are moves afoot to throw some incentives the way of Australia’s rapidly ageing farming population in a last gasp attempt to keep the bush’s youth from drifting towards the easy dollars on offer in the office blocks of our nation’s cities.

The rationale seems to be that we can bribe a few of rural Australia’s brightest and best to hang around and take over the old man’s farm when he drops off the twig. After all, the nation will be in something of a pickle if it loses the ability to feed itself!

However, I rather suspect that our brightest and best are smart enough to know the real reasons why farmers are parking their tractors and walking off the land in droves. The problem is not so much the drought or the hardness of the work (farmers are no shirkers).

The real reason our rural sector is becoming increasingly disillusioned and ‘unprofitable’ is because it is literally and figuratively at the bottom of the food chain.

I supervised a vegetable packing facility for several years and have an intimate knowledge of the machinations of the fruit and vegetable industry, particularly the middle men and the corporates that monopolise the retail sector.

I’m sure the publishers of Regional Business are not putting their hand up for a defamation suit – which is exactly what they’d get if I took the time to catalogue some of the blatant abuses that occur on a daily basis in the food and vegetable industry.

And therein lies the problem. All power is held by those at the pointy end of the food supply chain and it will take a brave person indeed to come out and expose the truth of what is happening. It will make the tobacco companies from movies such as The Insider look like choir boys!

However, we shouldn’t mistake silence for satisfaction. All the Australian rural sector is asking for is a fair day’s pay for an honest day’s work. We’re not getting it, and we know it.

The government is wasting our money unless they use it to muscle up to the rapacious heavyweights dominating and manipulating the process that delivers a vital commodity from the farm gate to the dinner table.

A proper audit of the metropolitan fruit and vegetable markets and some teeth given to the Australian Competition and Consumer Council (ACCC) would be a good start.

Message to Canberra. Throwing a few million dollars at the symptom of a disease is not going to fix it. If the Australian authorities are serious about doing something to give the man on the land a fair go they need to make some immediate and drastic changes to the way we receive our food.

Message to farmers. Don’t hold your breath! I’ll hazard a guess that Canberra receives a rich inflow of political donations from the bank accounts of quite a few overseas tax havens.
 
I think I know where this is headed. Unfortunately the same goes for the manufacturing sector such as clothes, footware, manchester, furniture, probably building supplies and I could go on. At the top of the chain are retail outlets that have shrunk by take-overs and use their almost monopoly buying power to squeeze every supplier below. This results in rationalisation of the supply chain, but definitely not always in a positive fashion.
 
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