The Murray /Darling valley catchments are drying fast : Melbourne Indymedia

It's what the Nile is to ancient Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates is to the Babylonians.

This is where the Australians first learned to till and irrigate the land and where Sheep were first grazed.

A vast expanse of plains and mountains stretching for 3,000km from the river's source high upon the highlands of NSW and into south Queensland, to its mouth in South Australia it drains the continent of excess rain water.

Along the river's banks two thirds of Australia’s crops are grown.
The vast plains that are irrigated by its muddy waters produce most of Australia’s fruit and vegetables, much of its maize and even some of its rice.

The Murray River is also the governments shame as years of talk have amounted to little action to avert the current catastrophe". The river once ran wild, regularly inundating large swathes of the plains that now are desert.
Overused and abused, But today the Murray River is more famous for the exact opposite.

For more than 200 days of the year this once mighty river no longer makes it to the sea.
It's like the Rhine petering out in central Germany, or the Nile drying up in northern Sudan.

Why? In large part humans are to blame, in particular Australia’s governments, who have long believed nature should be bent to man's will.
The river has been overused and abused. Dozens of dams block its flow, drawing off huge quantities of water to grow cotton in the desert.

Cotton not for home industries, but for export raw, to flood saturated markets, a business noone profits from.
Today the whole region teeters on the edge of disaster. Global warming will shortly push it over the edge.
Crops threat
In the next 50 years temperatures in Australia are expected to rise by 3 to 4C.

As they do, the already arid climate will dry further. Leaving Australians to cling to an ever narrowing band of vegetation .
The drought that has afflicted the region for the last six years would become permanent. Climate change will be realized for what it is perminant change. The whole basin will dry up.

The impact on crops would be dramatic. Scientists predict yields in Australia’s main growing region could fall by 40% to 60% .
This would force Australia to import huge quantities of basic food items.

But worse will be the effect upon those who live along the river.

Economic policy has contributed to the river's decline
Some are now predicting the creation of a dustbowl that would dwarf that of the American mid-west during the 1930s. That forced hundreds of thousands of Americans farmers off the land in a mass migration to areas that were not able to support the refugees.

But in Australia the effect would be much worse.
Literally thousands of rural refugees will be pushed off the land, and Australia has no land for them to move to.
Instead they would flood into the cities, further swelling the ranks of the unemployed and dispossessed.

For Australia’s leaders, it's a frightening prospect. However the present policy is to add another blockage to the stream that is barely flowing. The current plan is to introduce a weir on the southern section of the Murray that will prevent water being lost to the lake system near Goolwa.

Already salinity has killed life in the Coorong and placing a weir up stream of Lake Alexandrina will kill all ecosystems south to the sea.

However it is feared that doing nothing will mean that the pumps supplying Adelaide with water for 1 million people will dry up before the middle of summer.

Already Adelaide is suffering its worst drought in history, where water restrictions of unprecedented force have been introduced, but the laws are having the reverse effect.

Water use has gone up in the months since restrictions were introduced.
Farmers in the River land have called upon the government to drain wetlands and block environmental flows, making it clear that people are more important than life on the river.

Unfortunately the government has expressed similar feelings. All money allocated to save the Murray will now be used to stangle the life out of it instead.

Chronic drought conditions create hardship in Australian rural areas

One of the worst droughts of the past century is having a devastating impact on farmers and rural communities across much of Australia.

During a national water summit last month, the Murray-Darling river basin commission dramatically announced that the drought could be the worst in 1,000 years. Since records have been kept only for the past 114 years, the figure was at best an estimate. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that drought conditions in large parts of the country’s farming land are serious and will get worse during the summer.

A statement issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology on December 4 painted a bleak picture of the drought intensifying over eastern and southern Australia. The four-month period from August to November was the driest on record across South Australia, the second driest across the Murray-Darling basin and the third driest across Australia as a whole. Significant parts of the country experienced the lowest rainfall on record—that is for the past 100 years.

As the statement noted, the deficiencies “have occurred against a backdrop of multi-year rainfall deficits that have severely stressed water supplies in the east and the southwest of the country”. Many farming areas never recovered from the 2002-3 drought and have been in drought conditions for more than five years.

Water levels have fallen dramatically in the Murray-Darling basin, which is the continent’s largest river system, accounting for more than 40 percent of agricultural production. According to the December update, only 610 gigalitres of water flowed into the basin for the six months to November—56 percent of the previous low and just 7 percent of the long-term average for the same period.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) in October forecast a 60 percent drop in the production of the three main winter crops—wheat, barley and canola—more than a million tonnes less than during the 2002-03 drought. Lack of feed and water has driven up the sales of sheep and cattle as farmers cut their herds. Prices have dropped correspondingly—13 percent for beef, 34 percent for lamb and 52 percent for mutton as compared to the same time last year.

The gross value of farm production for crops and livestock in 2006-07 is expected to decline by 35 percent or $6.2 billion, compared to 2005-06. Adjusted for inflation, gross value is expected to be 16 percent less than during the 2002-03 drought. ABARE estimates the drought will have a negative impact on economic growth of 0.7 percent, even though agriculture comprises less than 3 percent of national GDP.

These raw figures, however, say little about the suffering and hardship the drought is causing in rural areas. While farmers, particularly those with smaller properties and less financial resources, have been hard hit, many rural towns and cities that act as agricultural service centres have also been seriously affected. Contractors, farm labourers, small businesses all face a drop in income or loss of jobs.

A Charles Sturt University study of the 2002-03 drought found that it had accelerated the decay of small rural towns, which have already been hard hit by the loss of services and economic decline. The report identified a serious erosion of incomes for farmers and small businesses, a greater need for out-of-farm income, leading to increased workloads and difficulty in accessing welfare and health services. The authors concluded that a significant number of farm families experienced poverty and cited an earlier study, which observed that only 20 percent of farms linked to the global economy did well.

The report described the drought support system for farm families and rural small businesses as cumbersome, allowing “people to fall between the cracks”. The lack of welfare, together with government policy on water allocation, had led to “a significant expression of mistrust of the state and its institutions, increasing feelings of marginalisation and strong expressions of alienation”. Rural Australians on farms and small communities “feel overlooked, unsupported and forgotten”.

The most tragic expression of these difficulties is the growing number of suicides. It is currently estimated that every four days a farmer commits suicide due to the stress of failing crops, dying livestock and growing debts. The rate of suicide among male and female farmers is twice the average rate for Australian men. According to the Land, more than 500 people turned up to a depression awareness day at a Trangie property in October, listening silently for hours to the speakers. Even more people attended a similar seminar at Dubbo on the same weekend.

Even though the problem is widespread, mental health support services in rural areas are limited. According to NSW health official Richard Matthews, the entire psychiatric workforce in central west New South Wales operates on a “fly in, fly out” basis, with the exception of the town of Orange. He described the situation as “terribly worrying and depressing” and called for an urgent review of rural mental health services.

Like other essential services in rural areas, health services have been successively run down by governments—Labor and Liberal, state and federal. As part of its drought relief package, the Howard government allocated $51.7 million in funding for rural mental health. The Rural Doctor Association of Australia responded by pointing out that the extra money was of little use unless more psychologists and mental health workers could be attracted to work in rural areas.

Drought assistance 2006

Acutely sensitive to the hostility in rural areas to the lack of assistance, the Australian government announced on October 16 the provision of $350 million for 18 Exceptional Circumstances (EC)-declared areas in five states and territories. While the package provided limited financial assistance for farming families, many people who have been affected by the drought, including contract harvesters and town businesses, received no aid.

Australian Contract Harvesters Association president Peter Bradley said: “We’ve been asking and asking and asking the Federal Government for some assistance, but it’s got to the stage where it’s totally and absolutely critical at this stage that we do at least get interest rate subsidies on our financing.”

Paul Stephenson, mayor of the rural town of Goulburn, criticised the package as being too late. “I don’t know that anyone can really benefit until the drought breaks. The drought is here now... It has been here for long, long time and the farmers will tell you that and so will people here in Goulburn and a lot of other country towns who have gone pretty hard without water.”

Goulburn, a town of 22,000 people near the Australian capital of Canberra, has had severe water restrictions for the past five years. With local reservoirs either empty or at low levels, each household is allowed just 150 litres per person per day. Declining farm incomes have hit local businesses hard. Rural services agent Steve Ridley told the International Herald Tribune: “The main crops have failed. They’re not even good enough to make hay or silage.” He said many farmers were going further into debt and were “hanging on by their fingernails”.

The package did not stem the criticisms. National Farmers Federation spokesman Ben Fargher pointed out that Government Exceptional Circumstances funding was only available to farmers able to demonstrate their ability to run a viable farm. For many smaller farmers struggling to survive and most in need of assistance, the funding test is impossible to meet.

The Howard government subsequently announced an additional $560 million in aid to drought-affected farmers on October 24, including an easing of restrictions on the provision of interest rate subsidies. According to the government, the additional funding would increase the number of farmers receiving drought assistance by 10,000 to 72,000.

On November 7, Canberra promised an extra $210 million for businesses in EC-declared areas that obtain 70 percent of their revenue in normal years from farmers. Not only is it difficult for many businesses to meet this test, but there is no guarantee that the government aid will materialise.

Until 1989, drought was officially regarded as a natural disaster and those affected were eligible for assistance under the Natural Disaster Relief program. But in 1989, the Drought Policy Review Task declared drought to be a natural and normal feature of the Australian landscape, putting the burden on farmers themselves. This approach dovetailed with the Rural Adjustment Scheme, which provided support only to farmers with the prospect of long-term viability. Limited emergency assistance for other farmers was only available in exceptional circumstances.

In other words, drought policy is not designed to assist those in need, but is part of ongoing efforts to restructure agriculture by forcing smaller, less economical farmers to leave the land. Two recent government reports have recommended phasing out interest rate subsidies for drought-affected farmers. With no income during a drought and denied financial assistance, small farmers are forced further into debt and are left without the money to plant a crop when rain does come. The only choice left is to sell up.

The impact of these measures has been a growing gap between rich and poor farmers. A 2001 study found that in good years only the top 25 percent of farmers were doing well financially. The middle 50-60 per cent only survived by having multiple incomes, including from off-farm jobs. The remainder was living in poverty with an annual income of less than $10,000. A 2005 report published by the Australian Productivity Commission found that in the past two decades the number of farms had declined by 25 percent, while the average farm size had increased from 2,720 hectares in 1982-83 to 3,340 hectares in 2003.

The Howard government retained the Rural Adjustment Scheme set up under the previous Labor governments. The impact of its program of economic restructuring and privatisation, which further eroded services in regional areas, has created tensions with Prime Minister John Howard’s coalition partner, the rural-based National Party. Support for the Nationals has slumped and the party has come under increasing challenge, including from rural-based “independents”.

Howard has made a point of rejecting the criticisms of Professor Peter Cullen, a water ecologist, who argued against providing drought assistance to keep marginal farmers on the land. The prime minister declared that the rural community was “part of the essence of Australia”. Losing the rural community, he said, meant not only that Australians would suffer economically if the farm sector shrunk, but they would lose something of their national character.

The image of Australia as a country of rugged farmers and stockmen is a long-cultivated myth aimed at obscuring the essential class divide in a largely urban society. Howard’s appeal to “the essence of Australia” is to cover up the fact that his government has been directly responsible for policies, including on drought, that have devastated much of rural Australia. His highly publicised “listening” trips to rural areas are designed to try to appease mounting anger, while making no essential changes to the economic measures that are producing hardship and suffering for the poorest layers of the rural population.

In the final analysis, the economic and social impact of the drought is a glaring example of the irrationality of the profit system itself. Australia is the driest continent in the world. Much of it is desert and most of the soil is shallow and infertile. Nearly half the country’s agricultural output comes from a relatively small fraction of the total land area in the Murray-Darling basin. But the allocation of water from the Murray-Darling river system is not based on a rational, long-term plan but on immediate profit and the fluctuations of the market. Huge amounts of water are allocated to the production of rice and cotton on a continent that is prone to drought and water shortages.

Large areas of land have been cleared and exploited for agriculture based solely on its ability to return a short-term profit. The health of river systems has been seriously compromised by the overuse of irrigation for water, creating widespread problems with soil salinity. No long-term plan exists for the potentially disastrous consequences of global warming on agriculture, let alone a credible policy to deal with the emission of greenhouse gases.

Even when they are aware of the dangers, farmers are constantly caught in the bind of trying to make ends meet. Whenever a disaster like a drought hits, the operation of the market ensures that those least able to cope are hardest hit. The solution is not simply financial handouts, but the complete restructuring of society from top to bottom on socialist principles to plan production, including agriculture, on a long-term sustainable basis to meet the social needs of humanity as a whole, rather than the profits of a few.

http://wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/drou-d21.shtml

The term climate change has not been understood.

Even now the writers are waiting for the drought to break. No amount of aid will help the farmers through a perminant dry. The climate has changed.

Australians will have to get used to a future where our food is imported and we get our earnings only from mining resources.

Refugees from Perth and Adelaide will compete for attention with the Rural hardship.

This reality will increase local and global emissions as mining accounts for 98% of all GHG. The cash will be spent importing food and what little is left will go to prop up law and order.

Civil unrest will occur in acts of violence as memories of the lucky country are replaced with endured nightmares of impoverished lifestyles.

long term loss after a couple of generations of Short term profits will become an uncomfortable way of life and those thought responcible will pay the price.

Our farmers have displayed so much forsight over the years,they are smart and generous. Look at all the trees they have left to protect the banks of the 'mighty Murray'.

gee
by globalization of climate change Monday December 25, 2006 at 10:33 PM

i read the same about the yellow river, in fact exactly the same words were used...but in China millions of farmers were threatened.

However even if this article was copied and adjusted the fact that the two rivers are both in simular conditions excuses the writer. The article makes a link between two great disasters, something we can share with our trading partner but cannot profit from.