Rethinking Australian agriculture - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 27: Food Chain
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Rick Kemp
OVER TIME, AUSTRALIANS have developed a set of cultural values aided and abetted by the tyranny of isolation and hardship. To ensure commercial interests were served, a romance of disadvantage was cultivated so effectively that it is now part of what is claimed to be Australian, embedded so deeply in the national psyche that it borders on treasonous to even question it. As a result, we now have a culture that fails to come to grips with the environment in which it operates and one that is largely unaware of the damage it is doing to the biosphere we share. There is a culture of beating the odds as a way of coping with seasonal adversity such as droughts and floods. Coping with climate change has been reduced to a series of probabilities, fed into computers in the modern quest to beat the odds.
This inhibiting culture is, essentially, parochial, inward looking and narrowly pragmatic. Heavily absorbed in its immediate surroundings, it becomes highly defensive of those surroundings. Outsiders are treated with suspicion and seen as intruders to be warded off. To use the food chain analogy, they represent the first link and are not much interested in the rest of the chain. Those at the other end of the chain (city dwellers) are treated as belonging to another race and are the butt of provincial humour. The inward thinking is often a product of isolation, preoccupation with the local surroundings and concentration on self survival in extreme conditions. Such thinking has little time or room to embrace wider ideas.
Despite the emergence of some key women in organisations such as the Country Women's Association (CWA), the culture is heavily male dominated with clear roles and expectations of the sexes. Change or open mindedness is more likely to come from women who seem to have a better handle on global thinking – maybe it is because they have to live in the circumstances. Girls are more likely to be accepted if they behave and act like blokes especially if they share the characteristics of irresponsible behaviour and risk taking.
While there is some evidence of a changed culture in some parts of agriculture, here is a suggestion for a system based on a changed thinking. This would need to at least have the following features to overcome the perception of operating in isolation as created by the current linear thinking. It needs to be accepted that the farmer operates as part of a larger picture. One in which the larger picture impacts on the farmer and the farmer also impacts on the larger picture. Such a successful food production system would need to be thinking of and using the following:
- Be a business and interact dynamically with the market/economic system. The food supply system needs to generate income to justify the investment of capital, expertise and time or these would be better placed in pursuits elsewhere in the economy. It needs to be directly connected to and respond to the market and its signals. To participate, reliability of supply and product quality is critical to its operation. There is no place for beating the odds.
- Be technically savvy. This is crucial to being able to respond to present and future market signals. Included here is the careful selection of the type of technology so it meets the strategic plans of the operation, not just simply process more and more raw data. The selected technology should enhance, not confuse or hide, critical features of the underlying system or simply further valid current taken as givens.
- Operate in a socially responsible manner. Despite the replacement of human input with technology, there is a need to look at how humans function in the system, not reducing humans to the dirty, demeaning and dangerous components of the system.
- Not degrade the biosphere in which it operates. Our food production system should not consume the landscape and reduce the biodiversity we have inherited simply to feed one species that places itself at the top of the food pyramid. We have a stewardship role to the rest of that pyramid.
- Have a legally enforceable land classification system to support and protect prime food producing land. ‘The soil is your asset' was a phrase used in the 1950s to promote the push for soil conservation. This is just as relevant today. Food producing soils need to be identified and protected in a similar way that natural heritage areas have been treated. After all, it is for our survival into the future.
- Manage its risks. Working in agricultural production, of which food production is a major part, has a poor record in terms of occupational health and safety. Many of these risks are associated with machinery used to substitute labour where individuals are often working in isolation. Couple this with the fatigue associated with time pressures around key operations (for example, harvesting) and a high risk situation is created. The short-cutting of safety procedures is a temptation.
- Be supported in the event of genuine exceptional circumstances, not just those contrived for political advantage. Food production in marginal areas needs to be reviewed and reassessed. Pleas for support are an easy option, compared to facing the structural reality. The taxpayer should not be underwriting risky private enterprises with little long term chance of success.
- Have farmers directly engaged in a new smart research model as part of their life-long learning. Central to this should be a genuine specialist agricultural tertiary institution, not a patchwork of institutions scattered across the country side funded by commercial interests for the purpose of carrying out their commercial research. We need Australian developed research solutions to Australian conditions, not off-the-shelf solutions purchased from the global market. We need to confront and solve our own problems specific to our circumstances.