NSW cabinet national parks trade-off with shooters party for lottery privatisation delayed

Hi Tigerquoll, Yes, part of my issue is the poor margin the farmer makes per head compared with the ultimate retail kilo price paid for by the consumers. Retail oligopoly and market dominance is indeed a serious problem undermining Australian retail (not just for meat). Most costs, e.g. land-costs, taxes, water costs, feed costs, fertiliser costs, and taxes, are exorbitant and have grown beyond the control of many primary producers and have also raised the cost of manufacturing and land for housing, interest rates, fees for services and things like schools, etc (which impact back on farmers). The market, to which we are all now bound, is manipulated by the big players - corporate transport, corporate retail, corporate agriculture, corporate banks etc. We are bound to this market, now international, by the need to pay taxes and fulfill commercial standards. It is now very difficult for a farmer to take control and sell locally, thus avoiding the costs to him of the profit margins required by transport, middlemen and retailers. Where once you could run cattle or grow crops to feed a family, with a little over for some basic schooling, you now have to make a far greater profit. But the costs of that profit are huge (petroleum, machinery, fertiliser, veterinary, supplementary feed, even grain feed, various licenses, plus water - which people used not to pay for if they had it on the property), rates (which increase as the city encroaches -, loans on land and plant etc.). Most farmers have to take out loans with interest rates increased partly by the competition for money caused by faster higher returns in speculative industries, such as property development. To keep up with these payments farmers try to practise economies of scale, pushing their properties and their animals and soils past their viable limit. Which means that when drought or flood or pestilence or a drop in market prices for their 'primary product' happens, they get more and more behind. In fact we have seen, until recently, a continuous trend in lower prices for food - at least when purchased in first world currencies. Any increases have tended to be marshalled by the secondary and retail industries, because those industries are corporatised (organised internationally with huge capital bases) and able to move around the world or interstate cherry-picking prices. The farmer has no such power. Big agribusiness has that power, but big agribusiness is the same business as supermarkets, major press and transport ... all one big system of affiliations. So this means that, no matter what the farmer does, his prices will fall. On occasions there will be a good year, but due to debt and a tiny margin for profit, the farmer who is not part of big agribusiness, eventually loses; his soil is destroyed; he has to sell his water to pay costs, then cannot operate without water; or he has to sell his farm. During this process the animals, subject to a variety of processes to make them grow faster with less or unusual food, to stuff more into paddocks, or fatten them standing in pens, to be slaughtered earlier, to be milked even harder (skeletons collapse in cows only a few years old when they are frequently milked); etc etc. This can also be described as 'overshoot' of carrying capacity on that farm. Multiplied by many farmers, it becomes overshoot of a region's or a country's carrying capacity, with the indicators in the ruined soils, the disaggregated water, the loss of private farms to agribusiness etc. The way out of this predicament is for the farmers to sell their product locally and to control production so that they simply charge enough for their product to be able to run herds or grow crops in a sustainable manner. The production needs to be much more modest. The indicators of production within carrying capacity are: land remains in good condition; water is not disaggregated and sold off and lost; loans are unnecessary; animals and crops grow naturally; cruelty is reduced. In fact the prices of the products may well remain less than they are in the global system because you have removed so many layers of profit that are added to the cost to the consumer and deducted from the price to the farmer. Our farmers are currently in a position where they have to produce more and faster, with a very small staff, just to stay in one place. The same can be said for most people on this planet; running to pay a bunch of profiteers who call this situation efficient. And what causes this situation? Population growth engineered to drive inflation of all resources and services. And then those resources and services are privatised, and the privateers charge 'rents' on them, just the way the nobles charged the peasants in feudal times. Naturally I agree with your solution, Tigerquoll, to "stop cheap imports, legislate against market dominance and bloody well enforce it, national investment into quality produce, best practice livestock and training, develop niche industries and markets such as organic beef, and customer focused strategies". I have, however, related the essential issue of carrying capacity at the farm gate to carrying capacity in regions, countries and the world. Much has been written about this, of course, better than I have done here, but, for the sake of discussion, it is worth sketching bits out here. I am familiar with Natural Sequence Farming, permaculture and a number of other theories, plus quite a few experimental or theoretical papers from CSIRO or other researchers. I had a quick look at two of your other links but do not have the time to devote to these specific links. Let me know if there is something in them that I obviously do not realise. Perhaps, in that case, rather than just give links - if they are really new ideas - you might copy and paste some of their statements etc onto a post here? Hope this helps. Please ask questions etc. Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page