Readings: Online seminar series

Here are the links for the seminar readings.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE VERSUS CORPORATE GREED SEMINAR

SEMINAR 1. PANDEMICS AND DESTRUCTIVE AGRIBUSINESS PRACTICES: THE SITUATION

READINGS [50 PAGES, 6 ARTICLES]
Readings online:
https://soilalliance.blogspot.com/2020/09/readings.html
\

Dilley, Steve (2004), “Family farms: The next endangered species?”, Australian Nuffield Farmer Scholar Report, 2004, pp.1-12.

Broughton, Alan (2020) “Capitalist greed and biodiversity loss is spawning new deadly diseases”,Green Left

Broughton, Alan & Garcia, Elena (2017) Sustainable Agriculture Versus Corporate Greed: pp. 5-10; Appendix 2, pp.73-82

Lumb, Mick, “Land degradation”. The Australian Collaboration,.

Pascoe, Bruce (2014) Dark Emu: Black Seeds – Agriculture or Accident?, Introduction, Ch. 1, & Ch.7.

Yaak Pabst, Rob Wallace (2020) Agribusiness kills: Capitalist agriculture and Covid-19: A deadly combination, Climate and Capitalism

Qualman, Darrin (2017), “Looking into an abyss — with no water”

DISCUSSION POINTS

1. What were First Nation farming practises before British invasion? What form of property ownership were they based upon? (Pascoe)

2. What farming practices did colonial Britain impose upon Australia? What form of property ownership was it based upon? (Pascoe, Lumb, Broughton, Garcia,)

3. Are corporate agricultural practices to blame for the COVID19 crisis and HIV? (Broughton, Wallace) What are the root causes of pandemics such as MERS, SARS, COVID19?(Broughton, Wallace)

4. Why should farmer welfare matter to activists? (Dilley, Broughton, Garcia)

5. Who controls most Australian farm production? Small family farmers or big corporations? (Qualman, Broughton, Garcia)

6. What are the causes of high farm debt? Is there a way out? (Qualman, Broughton, Garcia)

7. What makes farming so risky? (Broughton, Garcia) and why don’t more farmers give up?(Qualman, Broughton, Garcia)?

8. What affects farming terms of trade? (Lumb, Dilley)

SEMINAR 2. THE DROUGHT CRISIS AND PRIVATISATION OF WATER IN AUSTRALIA



READINGS [5 ARTICLES]

Carpenter.Tracey (2019) “Looking into an abyss — with no water”, Green Left Weekly 

 

Garcia, Elena (2019), “Rivers in crisis: Amid drought, corporations are buying up Australia’s water,” Green Left Weekly

Garcia, Elena (2019) “Rivers in crisis: Killing rivers for mines and irrigators”Green Left Weekly

Mallen-Cooper, Martin (2018) “Murray Darling Basin drought myth disservice to environmental progress” The Land

Sheldon, Fran (2019) “The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought”,The Conversation

Wynter, Coral (2019) “WTO kills farmers: In memory of Lee Kyung Hae”Green Left Weekly

DISCUSSION POINTS

1. How do the natural systems of the Murray-Darling Basin work? (Sheldon, Carpenter)
2. Did the Murray-Darling run dry before irrigation started (historical and the state disputes over irrigation allocations background to Section 100 of the Constitution)?(Mallen-Cooper)
3. How important is protecting our artesian basins and what is the major threat? (Wynter, Garcia, Mallen-Cooper)
4. When were water rights separated from being tied to land, and why? Who benefits? (Garcia)
5. How is the Murray-Darling Plan supposed to work? Why isn't it working? (Carpenter)

SEMINAR 3. THE CAUSES OF THE LAND, FARMING AND PANDEMIC CRISES

READINGS [47 PAGES, 3 ARTICLES, 1 video]

Broughton, Alan & Garcia, Elena (2017) Sustainable Agriculture Versus Corporate Greed: pp.11-42; Appendix 1, pp.55-71.

Carlsen, Laura (2003), “WTO kills farmers: In memory of Lee Kyung Hae”, Countercurrents, September 16th 2003
Derrick, Jensen (2009) Forget Shorter Showers, Why personal change does not equal political change

Kolhatkar, Sonali (2015), “If trade is war, it’s time we fought back”, Truthdig, 21/5/2015
 

Nason, James (2020), “From claypan to green feed: carbon flows in action”, Beef Central October 19 2020

Smith, Jeffrey (2010), “Monsanto: The world’s poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit”,Natural News

Wallace, Rob (2020), 17 minutes Youtube presentation Rob Wallace, From agribusiness to agroecology: Escaping the market of Dr. Moreau

DISCUSSION POINTS

1. Is there a contradiction between ever increasing productivity and profitability? (Broughton, Garcia, Kolhatkar)
2. Why do governments prioritise high production?(Broughton, Garcia, Kolhatkar, Smith)
3. What does efficiency mean?(Broughton, Garcia, Carlsen, Kolhatkar)
4. Who gains from free trade agreements? (Broughton, Garcia, Kolhatkar)
5. How does the corporatisation of natural resources (land, water) dispossess people and small farmers? How does this exacerbate the spread of disease, hunger and a toxifying of our natural systems? Has this led to the emergence of pandemics? (Wallace)
6. How does foreign aid decrease food security? Why are people hungry in a world of agricultural overproduction? (Broughton, Garcia, Smith)
7. What are the invisible costs and impacts of industrial food production? (Broughton, Garcia, Kolhatkar, Smith, Nason)
8. How can research and development be put into the service of agro-ecology? (Broughton, Garcia, Kolhatkar, Smith)

Sustainable Agriculture versus Corporate Greed: A four-part Seminar Series

This four-part seminar series will address:

The cause of pandemics, droughts, soil erosion and land and river system degradation. The destructive practices of mining and agribusiness. The battles for First Nations custodianship of land, campaigns for food sovereignty, environmental flows for water management and sustainable and regenerative farming.

It will tackle these questions:

What are the causes of COVID19 and other deadly pandemics? Why is Australia and other countries suffering more debilitating droughts? Why have First Nations expertise in land management been ignored? What are the effects of coal and coal seam gas mining on our natural environment? Is combating world poverty aided by capitalist agribusiness practices? What solutions exist in regenerative agriculture for pandemics, droughts and the poisoning of our water supply? What role could First Nations traditional practises play in these solutions? This four-part seminar series will examine these burning queries.

The Locust Plague

Rebuilding resilient communities amid climate-induced drought and bushfires

The federal government is pouring billions of dollars into its attempts to deal with the worst impacts of a climate crisis it prefers to ignore. But this money will never achieve its stated aim nor reach those who need it most.

The federal Coalition government’s Drought Response, Resilience and Preparedness Plan, released in November last year, sets out its proposal for dealing with the most severe drought in living memory — one that has been made worse by the climate crisis.

The government is offering $50 million for an On-farm Emergency Water Infrastructure Rebate Scheme to improve on-farm water management and $36.9 million over five years “to improve water security and drought resilience in the Great Artesian Basin through increasing artesian pressure and reducing wastage”.

The plan also proposes to spend about $3.5 billion on a national water infrastructure plan that will take even more water out of river systems.

Meanwhile, after initially denying the recent East Coast bushfire catastrophe was anything out of the ordinary, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has set up a National Bushfire Recovery Agency.

The agency is set to receive $2 billion, which comes on top of the more than $100 million in disaster recovery payments and allowances that have already been disbursed.

Read more...>

Eyewitness: East Gippsland burns

East Gippsland is one region among many affected by disastrous bushfires. Three quarters of it — stretching about 250 km from west to east and 150 km from south to north — has been burned as I write this: about 700,000 hectares.

The last two years have been dry with 2019 being the driest on record, with less than half average rainfall. Fires started by lightning strikes last November 21. Despite the efforts of professional fire crews, the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and water bombers, the fires continued and expanded in bursts. Much of the terrain was inaccessible.

On December 30, at 44° Celsius, they raced out of the forests and devastated communities, including mine at Sarsfield, 12 km from Bairnsdale. They left our mud brick house but little else, including our grandsons’ cabin and most of their possessions. Dozens of houses were lost in Sarsfield and neighbouring Clifton Creek.

We had six weeks of warning and expected to be hit, so we evacuated in time with what we particularly did not want to lose. Many people had friends or relatives in Bairnsdale to go to. We used the Organic Centre. A relief centre was set up by the shire, then an additional one as evacuee numbers mounted.

Read more...>

Nationals betray the bush — again

Among the death and destruction left in their wake, one can observe some positives that have come from the devastating bushfires that ripped through New South Wales and Queensland.

One is that the conservative taboo on linking bushfire intensity and frequency to the climate crisis has been broken. The other is that the National Party has well and truly revealed itself to be no friend of regional Australia.

The desperate attempt by Nationals leader Michael McCormack to dismiss any reference to climate science as the preserve of "woke capital-city greenies" — in stark contradiction to the clearly expressed views of firefighting experts and people in the bush — marked a genuine turning point.

The frantic insistence by former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce that the Greens bear some responsibility for the fires, even though the Coalition has been in power for several years, both federally and in NSW, was truly unhinged.

Once upon a time, the National Party was characterised by its "rural socialism", a mixture of rural pork-barrelling and support for farmers. Those days have long since gone.

It now functions as a simple sidekick for the extension of the Liberals’ ruthless neoliberal agenda into the bush. The Nationals’ unconditional support for coal mining and billionaire cotton producers, at the expense of the Darling River ecosystem and downstream agricultural industries, is brutal proof that they represent agribusiness and fossil fuel capitalists, not family farmers.

Read more...>

NSW rivers crisis: A ‘perfect storm’ of drought, theft and corruption

“The problem is mismanagement of the Barwon-Darling rivers” activist Fleur Thompson told the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival bus tour, as it passed through the western New South Wales town of Bourke on September 30.

“The federal and state governments could step in anytime and fix it, but they don’t and won’t. To do that the governments would have to admit fault.”

Between September 28 and October 4, some 300 Indigenous and non-Indigenous people travelled through western NSW towns that have been badly affected by a lack of water in the rivers, as part of the corroboree organised by First Nations activist and artist Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth.

Discussing the causes of the lack of water, Thompson explained: “There is a water crisis. It is a perfect storm, which includes drought, water theft, mismanagement, political interference and corruption.

“It came about because the rules about irrigation and allocation of water in the river were changed by governments in 2012.”

Read more....>

Is NSW deliberating shutting down towns to mine underground?

“It seems that towns in western New South Wales are being shut down and nobody is listening,” local resident Mark Merritt told Green Left Weekly on the banks of a non-existent river.

Together with Susie Peake and Cath Eaglesham from Earthling Studios, Merritt attended an event organised on the Baaka River (the local Aboriginal name for the Darling River) as part of the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroborree Festival tour held between September 29 and October 4.

The tour was organised by Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth to expose the state of the Baaka.

Broken Hill’s water has always come from the Menindee Lakes, a gigantic lake system in the middle of a semi-arid desert that contains water bodies more than 15 kilometres wide.

In 1949, infrastructure works modified the lakes to act as huge water storages to mitigate flooding and hold water supplies for South Australia. A more than 30-kilometre long levy was built along the eastern bank of the Baaka to form a human-made lake, named Lake Wetherell, as an additional water storage to supply the townships of Menindee, Sunset Strip and Broken Hill.

In the past 60 years Broken Hill has never run out of water.

Read more...>

La Via Campesina: Burning the Amazon is a crime against humanity

La Via Campesina is a global social movement that unites 148 groups representing small farmers, peasants, rural workers and indigenous communities around the world.
It fights for food sovereignty and ecologically sustainable agriculture.
It released the following statement on August 24.
***

Over the past few days, peoples and governments from around the world have been witnessing the consequences of the recent and serious crimes committed against the Amazon rainforest.

The thick clouds of smoke that covered the southeast of Brazil, especially São Paulo, are a direct result of the dramatic increase of fires set in several parts of the forest and transition areas with the Cerrado tropical savanna.

It should be clear for society in Brazil, Latin America, and the world that this is not an isolated phenomenon. In fact, it is the result of a series of actions taken by agribusinesses and big miners since the beginning of the Jair Bolsonaro administration, which has been actively supporting and encouraging them.

After nearly two decades of reduction in deforestation, the country’s current president and his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, engaged in violent rhetoric against Brazilian environmental conservation legislation and mechanisms, while also increasingly targeting and criminalising those who have historically protected the Brazilian biomes — peasant families and indigenous peoples.

Read more...>

Darling River fish removal is no solution

Nature conservation groups have criticised the NSW Coalition government’s $10 million plan to remove threatened fish species from the Darling River in the state's south-west, following the disastrous fish kill last summer.

The plan involves relocating thousands of stranded native fish from drought-ravaged Menindee from September 9 in a two-week rescue mission, targeting pools that will not survive the summer.

Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said the rescue mission was part of the government’s strategy to create “a modern day’s Noah’s Ark” to protect native fish species. “This summer is going to be nothing short of fish Armageddon,” Marshall said.

The fish will be stunned and scooped up into boats with special climate-controlled containers. They will then be taken to a section of the Lower Darling which fishery experts say will offer better quality habitat and long-term water security for the fish.

Read more...>