Posted by Billy on July 30, 2010, 12:24 pm
Good read Ross. Thank you. There must be a series of dams to store the
rains, so that a farmer can tell whether it is a good year for annuals
or not.
Front page of the local paper heralds the planets human population as
reaching the 7 billion level. There is certain to be tension between
resources and needs.
To me it just seems so bloody damn stupid that we have supported these
profane wars, which cause people to hate us, when a fraction of the
money would have given clean water and sanitation to the worlds
underprivileged (previously colonized), and they would have loved us.
> On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:42:16 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" wrote:
>
> >[...] So we have the absurdities of
> >growing rice and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful)
> >irrigation and more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is
> >actually available except in flood years.
>
> Agreed for cotton given the overproduction of it and its thirst
> comparable to other fibre plants (e.g. hemp). Rice (and maize grown in
> the same general area) is a little different, I reckon. Or at least, it
> has the potential to be so, given an assumption of a fair price for
> irrigation water. This is because it can be planted opportunistically,
> e.g. when there's good flows in the rivers, and just not planted when
> there isn't.
>
> Contrast that with all the MIS-backed plantations of fruit and nut
> trees, and grape vines, along the Murray-Darling system -- trees that
> require water to keep them going and thus demand water even when there
> is a drought. That was one of the big issues during the latest drought,
> with lots of water bought up by (tax avoiding) MIS plantations and
> little remaining for anyone else, leading to lots of fruit trees being
> grubbed out or bulldozed.
>
> Malcolm Turnbull (yes, him!) covered this quite well (for a mainstream
> politician) on Insiders some time back:
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2007/s1856319.htm
>
> [...]
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Does the plan adequately address the obvious issue that
> Australian farmers are growing crops in the wrong places?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that's not actually true, Barrie. In fact, that
> statement is obviously wrong. Let me explain. Everybody says that the
> conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't grow rice in Australia, you
> shouldn't grow cotton. Now, there are areas where there is over-
> allocation and there are areas where cotton is grown and rice is grown
> that there are -- it's no doubt over-allocation. But if everybody grew
> fruit trees, or almonds or olives, grew permanent crops, which obviously
> have a higher yield per megalitre of water, we would be in a terrible
> jam because the key thing to understand about our rivers is that the
> flows are very volatile. And so if all of your plantings are permanent
> plantings how do you sustain them during the dry years? You need to have
> a mix of crops and you need to have annual crops so that when there's
> water around you plant them, and when there isn't you don't plant.
>
> You see, the problem we face in the basin at the moment is not with rice
> and cotton because it's not being planted because there isn't any water.
> The problem we face is keeping alive the permanent plantings, the
> horticulture which need to get a drink whether it's a dry year or a wet
> year.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: But isn't the problem that rice and cotton is grown in
> areas where there are water shortages, quite regularly?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: But that's well, OK, I'll start again. Because our
> water is volatile, because some years you get a lot of water and some
> years you don't get any, it's important to have annual crops that you
> can plant opportunistically when there is water, but you don't have to
> plant, you don't need to plant when there isn't any water. If all of our
> crops were horticulture, were permanent plantings, then in dry years we
> would have an even bigger problem than we do now.
>
> So you see, if you go to Deniliquin where they grow a lot of rice, there
> is very little rice being plant this had year, virtually none. Why is
> that? Because there isn't any water. You go down to Mildura where it's
> mostly horticulture. The same trees and vines are there, Barrie, in this
> very dry year as would be in a wet year and they will be struggling, if
> this coming season is as bad as the last one, to get enough water to
> keep those trees and vines alive. So annual crops are a very important
> part of the mix.
>
> You see, you've got to recognise that the key, sort of, feature of our
> river system is its variability. The range of the ratio between high
> flows and low flows on the Murray, over since records began, 100 odd
> years ago is 30 1. So you could get, in one year, 30 times more inflows
> than you got the year before. And that means you have to have an
> agricultural mix that meets that.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Well, at the risk of having you to start again, when
> Senator Bill Heffernan says that cotton and rice is better suited to the
> north where it does rain then he's on the wrong track?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Bill is right
> if I mean, I know - Bill Heffernan's a very good friend of mine, and I
> talk about water all the time. The point that Bill is making is there is
> a great deal of water availability in northern Australia and there are a
> number of crops, water intensive crops, that can be grown up there that
> where -- in circumstances or in situations where there isn't a lot of
> agriculture at the moment. Certainly we will have more agriculture in
> the north as time goes on because there's more water available there,
> but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have any annual crops in the Murray
> Darling Basin. Because if I get back to that fundamental point if --
> you'd really need to have a mix of crops and it's not for the government
> to tell farmers what crops to plant. I can tell you, farmers have enough
> trouble making the right decisions with all of their experience and
> insight. The idea that you'd have some central crop selection committee
> sitting in Canberra telling people what to grow is just too ludicrous
> for words.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah, I suppose not a question of forcing them but to
> encourage them.
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: Barrie, the world, the market encourages them. Farmers
> change their crop decisions all the time. They react to markets. You
> know, the do you really think that a group of politicians and
> bureaucrats are better able to determine what to grow than farmers,
> people who've spent their whole lives working on it, who've got access
> to all of the science and meteorological information? I mean, come on,
> really, this is a it's a crazy idea.
>
> You've got to let farmers make their decisions, let water trade, let the
> market sort it ought, and have a mix of crops that reflects the
> variability of our weather.
>
> We live in Australia, we don't live you know, we live in Australia, we
> are the lands of droughts and flooding rains. We get bad droughts, then
> we get floods and you've got to have water management practices and
> agricultural practices that reflect that and if you don't you'll get
> into a great deal more trouble than even the problems we have at the
> moment, believe me.
>
> [... continued]
>
> >The sooner this water is given a
> >sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.
> >[...]
>
> That, and removing the silly tax subsidies affored to MIS, which greatly
> distort the agriculture scene by encouraging corporations to establish
> land, water and nutrient hungry plantations that have little to no
> chance of turning a profit in their own right and exist simply as tax
> scams for the filthy rich (and those who'd like to be).
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2010/07/201072816515308172.html
Posted by Ross McKay on July 31, 2010, 3:47 am
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:24:48 -0700, Billy wrote:
>Good read Ross. Thank you. There must be a series of dams to store the
>rains, so that a farmer can tell whether it is a good year for annuals
>or not.
There is a complex arrangement of water catchment authorities that
monitor rainfall, plus local and state authorities that monitor river
flows. The information they gather helps formulate whether the already-
sold water allocations can actually be "delivered" to the irrigators.
Overselling allocations (especially to tax-avoidance-based MIS
plantations) has meant that irrigators who did the "right thing" and put
off drawing on their allocations until later in the season actually got
no water, and thus had paid for an abundance of nothing.
The current fiasco^H^H^H^H^H^H government effort is an attempt to
establish water allocations based more on actually how much water is
likely to flow, and allowing for some to come out at the ends of the
system too.
>Front page of the local paper heralds the planets human population as
>reaching the 7 billion level. There is certain to be tension between
>resources and needs.
>To me it just seems so bloody damn stupid that we have supported these
>profane wars, which cause people to hate us, when a fraction of the
>money would have given clean water and sanitation to the worlds
>underprivileged (previously colonized), and they would have loved us.
But the OECD world needs to secure the oil and the gas pipelines! I
mean, bring peace and democracy to the middle east and expunge terrorism
from the planet!
--
Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" - Wizard of Oz
Posted by Billy on July 31, 2010, 1:11 pm
> On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:24:48 -0700, Billy wrote:
>
> >Good read Ross. Thank you. There must be a series of dams to store the
> >rains, so that a farmer can tell whether it is a good year for annuals
> >or not.
>
> There is a complex arrangement of water catchment authorities that
> monitor rainfall, plus local and state authorities that monitor river
> flows. The information they gather helps formulate whether the already-
> sold water allocations can actually be "delivered" to the irrigators.
> Overselling allocations (especially to tax-avoidance-based MIS
> plantations) has meant that irrigators who did the "right thing" and put
> off drawing on their allocations until later in the season actually got
> no water, and thus had paid for an abundance of nothing.
>
> The current fiasco^H^H^H^H^H^H government effort is an attempt to
> establish water allocations based more on actually how much water is
> likely to flow, and allowing for some to come out at the ends of the
> system too.
>
> >Front page of the local paper heralds the planets human population as
> >reaching the 7 billion level. There is certain to be tension between
> >resources and needs.
> >
> >To me it just seems so bloody damn stupid that we have supported these
> >profane wars, which cause people to hate us, when a fraction of the
> >money would have given clean water and sanitation to the worlds
> >underprivileged (previously colonized), and they would have loved us.
>
> But the OECD world needs to secure the oil and the gas pipelines! I
> mean, bring peace and democracy to the middle east and expunge terrorism
> from the planet!
Sadly, there seems to be a connection between the oil and gas pipelines,
and peace and democracy. None of the countries involved drew their own
borders (with the exception of Iran) which was done primarily by the
British, and to a lesser extent, the French, with an eye towards keeping
the new states unstable. At the request of Britain, the US overthrew the
democratcally elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran. We
really haven't been modeling the appropriate behavior for the Middle
East.
Then we have
<
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5077984.stm>
US 'biggest global peace threat'
----
Closely followed by Israel, and sadly, I find myself in agreement.
<http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?idP080>
<http://www.time.com/time/europe/gdml/peace2003.html>
To leave peace to market forces (which congers up neo-liberalism and
free markets) is insufficient. Either everyone gets a seat at the table,
or it is everyone for themselves, which I believe has got us to the
impasse that we face today in the Middle East.
Our agriculture is based on fossil fuel, which has peaked and the cost
of pesticides and fertilizer will rise. By 2050 topsoil will be a
memory, all the fossil water from aquifers will be gone, the oceans will
be fished out, and we will have hungry people in failed nuclear states.
Best thing we could do right now, would be to call off the wars, give
everyone seeds to plant, and offer every man $1000 (or more), if they
get a vasectomy.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2010/07/201072816515308172.html
Posted by Billy on July 30, 2010, 11:58 am
> Billy wrote:
> >
> > David, you still going to be able to grow a garden, after the
> > Americans buy up your water rights?
> >
>
> Yes
>
> > "Australia has privatized its water totally, and basically itıs now
> > for sale. And thereıs a big American investment firm thatıs actually
> > buying up water rights. It was supposed to be, originally, just to
> > get the farmers of the big farm conglomerates to share, to trade, but
> > now itıs all gone private and international, so theyıre hardly going
> > to support something that says that water, is a human right, when
> > theyıve commodified it and said itıs a market commodity."
> > <http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_acces
> > s>
>
> This is a complex issue. The rights to the water that falls on the
> catchment to public water supplies is broadly not for sale, the Government
> holds onto that by excluding most of it from being a tradeable commodity.
> In a city/suburban situation you can do whatever you like with the water
> that falls on your property (and the grey water you generate provided you
> don't poison people with it) but you cannot sell it.
>
> In the rural situation (which is me) every property owner has a "harvestable
> right". Roughly speaking you can impound and use 10% of the water that
> falls on your land but not from permanent waterways. Additionally you can
> extract from permanent waterways an unlimited amount for no cost for "bona
> fide domestic purposes". So I could use that to grow whatever I like
> provided it is not a commercial venture, this last constraint does in
> practice limit how much you can extract. Neither of these rights are
> saleable.
>
> In addition I own a water licence which permits me to extract a specified
> amount of water from permanent waterways per annum for a fairly nominal
> cost. This licence is saleable but only applies to the specified catchment
> so it is not possible to buy up water licences and use them wherever you
> like.
>
> It is essential for proper long term water management for water to be given
> a genuine and realistic value at least in commercial quantities. In the
> past it was pretty much free in all circumstances. What do people do with
> a resource that is "free"? They over use it. I think you are familiar with
> the phrase "the tragedy of the commons". So we have the absurdities of
> growing rice and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful)
> irrigation and more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is
> actually available except in flood years. The sooner this water is given a
> sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.
>
> As you can see the above quote is very misleading regarding the ownership of
> water in Australia. As for the motivation of the Gov to not want to vote
> for water as a basic right I have no clear idea but Oz does vote with
> America on many issues for reasons that may have nothing to do with the
> issue itself.
>
> David
It does appear misleading. I can only hope that they are wrong about the
following as well.
<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_acces
s>
At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do not
have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours of the
time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water for their
homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it affects 2.6
billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global population.
According to the report of the World Health Organization and of UNICEF
of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are [Still] Dying and
What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in developing countries
due to causes that can be prevented, such as diarrhea, which is caused
by contaminated water. This means that a child dies every
three-and-a-half seconds. . .
Brand new World Bank study says that the (water) demand is going to
exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. Itıs just a phenomenal
statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable. And
what this did was basically say that the United Nations has decided itıs
not going to let huge populations leave them behind as this crisis
unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these populations
without water and sanitation.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2010/07/201072816515308172.html
Posted by David Hare-Scott on July 30, 2010, 6:05 pm
Billy wrote:
>> Billy wrote:
>>>
>>> David, you still going to be able to grow a garden, after the
>>> Americans buy up your water rights?
>>>
>>
>> Yes
>>
>>> "Australia has privatized its water totally, and basically itıs now
>>> for sale. And thereıs a big American investment firm thatıs actually
>>> buying up water rights. It was supposed to be, originally, just to
>>> get the farmers of the big farm conglomerates to share, to trade,
>>> but now itıs all gone private and international, so theyıre hardly
>>> going to support something that says that water, is a human right,
>>> when theyıve commodified it and said itıs a market commodity."
>>> <http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_acces
>>> s>
>>
>> This is a complex issue. The rights to the water that falls on the
>> catchment to public water supplies is broadly not for sale, the
>> Government holds onto that by excluding most of it from being a
>> tradeable commodity. In a city/suburban situation you can do
>> whatever you like with the water that falls on your property (and
>> the grey water you generate provided you don't poison people with
>> it) but you cannot sell it.
>>
>> In the rural situation (which is me) every property owner has a
>> "harvestable right". Roughly speaking you can impound and use 10%
>> of the water that falls on your land but not from permanent
>> waterways. Additionally you can extract from permanent waterways an
>> unlimited amount for no cost for "bona fide domestic purposes". So
>> I could use that to grow whatever I like provided it is not a
>> commercial venture, this last constraint does in practice limit how
>> much you can extract. Neither of these rights are saleable.
>>
>> In addition I own a water licence which permits me to extract a
>> specified amount of water from permanent waterways per annum for a
>> fairly nominal cost. This licence is saleable but only applies to
>> the specified catchment so it is not possible to buy up water
>> licences and use them wherever you like.
>>
>> It is essential for proper long term water management for water to
>> be given a genuine and realistic value at least in commercial
>> quantities. In the past it was pretty much free in all
>> circumstances. What do people do with a resource that is "free"?
>> They over use it. I think you are familiar with the phrase "the
>> tragedy of the commons". So we have the absurdities of growing rice
>> and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful) irrigation and
>> more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is actually
>> available except in flood years. The sooner this water is given a
>> sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.
>>
>> As you can see the above quote is very misleading regarding the
>> ownership of water in Australia. As for the motivation of the Gov
>> to not want to vote for water as a basic right I have no clear idea
>> but Oz does vote with America on many issues for reasons that may
>> have nothing to do with the issue itself.
>>
>> David
> It does appear misleading. I can only hope that they are wrong about
> the following as well.
> <http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_acces
> s>
> At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do
> not have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours
> of the time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water
> for their homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it
> affects 2.6 billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global
> population. According to the report of the World Health Organization
> and of UNICEF of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are
> [Still] Dying and What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in
> developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, such as
> diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This means that a
> child dies every three-and-a-half seconds. . .
> Brand new World Bank study says that the (water) demand is going to
> exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. Itıs just a phenomenal
> statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable.
> And what this did was basically say that the United Nations has
> decided itıs not going to let huge populations leave them behind as
> this crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these
> populations without water and sanitation.
I know less about this topic but I suspect that it is true.
David
XML site map
>
> >[...] So we have the absurdities of
> >growing rice and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful)
> >irrigation and more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is
> >actually available except in flood years.
>
> Agreed for cotton given the overproduction of it and its thirst
> comparable to other fibre plants (e.g. hemp). Rice (and maize grown in
> the same general area) is a little different, I reckon. Or at least, it
> has the potential to be so, given an assumption of a fair price for
> irrigation water. This is because it can be planted opportunistically,
> e.g. when there's good flows in the rivers, and just not planted when
> there isn't.
>
> Contrast that with all the MIS-backed plantations of fruit and nut
> trees, and grape vines, along the Murray-Darling system -- trees that
> require water to keep them going and thus demand water even when there
> is a drought. That was one of the big issues during the latest drought,
> with lots of water bought up by (tax avoiding) MIS plantations and
> little remaining for anyone else, leading to lots of fruit trees being
> grubbed out or bulldozed.
>
> Malcolm Turnbull (yes, him!) covered this quite well (for a mainstream
> politician) on Insiders some time back:
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2007/s1856319.htm
>
> [...]
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Does the plan adequately address the obvious issue that
> Australian farmers are growing crops in the wrong places?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that's not actually true, Barrie. In fact, that
> statement is obviously wrong. Let me explain. Everybody says that the
> conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't grow rice in Australia, you
> shouldn't grow cotton. Now, there are areas where there is over-
> allocation and there are areas where cotton is grown and rice is grown
> that there are -- it's no doubt over-allocation. But if everybody grew
> fruit trees, or almonds or olives, grew permanent crops, which obviously
> have a higher yield per megalitre of water, we would be in a terrible
> jam because the key thing to understand about our rivers is that the
> flows are very volatile. And so if all of your plantings are permanent
> plantings how do you sustain them during the dry years? You need to have
> a mix of crops and you need to have annual crops so that when there's
> water around you plant them, and when there isn't you don't plant.
>
> You see, the problem we face in the basin at the moment is not with rice
> and cotton because it's not being planted because there isn't any water.
> The problem we face is keeping alive the permanent plantings, the
> horticulture which need to get a drink whether it's a dry year or a wet
> year.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: But isn't the problem that rice and cotton is grown in
> areas where there are water shortages, quite regularly?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: But that's well, OK, I'll start again. Because our
> water is volatile, because some years you get a lot of water and some
> years you don't get any, it's important to have annual crops that you
> can plant opportunistically when there is water, but you don't have to
> plant, you don't need to plant when there isn't any water. If all of our
> crops were horticulture, were permanent plantings, then in dry years we
> would have an even bigger problem than we do now.
>
> So you see, if you go to Deniliquin where they grow a lot of rice, there
> is very little rice being plant this had year, virtually none. Why is
> that? Because there isn't any water. You go down to Mildura where it's
> mostly horticulture. The same trees and vines are there, Barrie, in this
> very dry year as would be in a wet year and they will be struggling, if
> this coming season is as bad as the last one, to get enough water to
> keep those trees and vines alive. So annual crops are a very important
> part of the mix.
>
> You see, you've got to recognise that the key, sort of, feature of our
> river system is its variability. The range of the ratio between high
> flows and low flows on the Murray, over since records began, 100 odd
> years ago is 30 1. So you could get, in one year, 30 times more inflows
> than you got the year before. And that means you have to have an
> agricultural mix that meets that.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Well, at the risk of having you to start again, when
> Senator Bill Heffernan says that cotton and rice is better suited to the
> north where it does rain then he's on the wrong track?
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Bill is right
> if I mean, I know - Bill Heffernan's a very good friend of mine, and I
> talk about water all the time. The point that Bill is making is there is
> a great deal of water availability in northern Australia and there are a
> number of crops, water intensive crops, that can be grown up there that
> where -- in circumstances or in situations where there isn't a lot of
> agriculture at the moment. Certainly we will have more agriculture in
> the north as time goes on because there's more water available there,
> but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have any annual crops in the Murray
> Darling Basin. Because if I get back to that fundamental point if --
> you'd really need to have a mix of crops and it's not for the government
> to tell farmers what crops to plant. I can tell you, farmers have enough
> trouble making the right decisions with all of their experience and
> insight. The idea that you'd have some central crop selection committee
> sitting in Canberra telling people what to grow is just too ludicrous
> for words.
>
> BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah, I suppose not a question of forcing them but to
> encourage them.
>
> MALCOLM TURNBULL: Barrie, the world, the market encourages them. Farmers
> change their crop decisions all the time. They react to markets. You
> know, the do you really think that a group of politicians and
> bureaucrats are better able to determine what to grow than farmers,
> people who've spent their whole lives working on it, who've got access
> to all of the science and meteorological information? I mean, come on,
> really, this is a it's a crazy idea.
>
> You've got to let farmers make their decisions, let water trade, let the
> market sort it ought, and have a mix of crops that reflects the
> variability of our weather.
>
> We live in Australia, we don't live you know, we live in Australia, we
> are the lands of droughts and flooding rains. We get bad droughts, then
> we get floods and you've got to have water management practices and
> agricultural practices that reflect that and if you don't you'll get
> into a great deal more trouble than even the problems we have at the
> moment, believe me.
>
> [... continued]
>
> >The sooner this water is given a
> >sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.
> >[...]
>
> That, and removing the silly tax subsidies affored to MIS, which greatly
> distort the agriculture scene by encouraging corporations to establish
> land, water and nutrient hungry plantations that have little to no
> chance of turning a profit in their own right and exist simply as tax
> scams for the filthy rich (and those who'd like to be).
--