Droughts aren’t a new concept , we’ve just come out of 5 years of record farming , many are asset rich , many refuse to adapt to the conditions . Understanding we need their products and they’re top quality  , however like the auto industry that also went broke we can import their items . Nobody raised money for the auto manufacturers or gave a shit when we started importing all our cars , so why do we constantly feel sorry for the farmers who seem to never have a backup plan for the inevitable droughts ? 

The fact we need Aussie farming to prosper aside , are they partly to blame for their financial situation ? 

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  • Yes, people go bust in the city all the time, do they get govt help?

    • How many in the cities have to pay rates in the hundreds of thousands of dollars?  Farmers in the main do a lot of work to try and drought proof their properties, but its not always possible, having lived and worked in quite a few areas in Country NSW, I have witnessed the heartache of life on the land. Farmers also have a lot of static capital rather than fluid capital that ordinary workers have, with huge amount of money needed for expensive machinery, and for their repairs.

      There is one thing that many could be doing now though and that is if their main dams have dried up, they could be getting the cracked and dry mud out them and expand them in depth as well as the overall size, but not all dams are suitable for that.

      Using your example Snake, of people in the city, and those in their own businesses they do get help under certain circumstances.  If there was no help to farmers how long before all of our food and other items are brought in from overseas? We are very much controlled by Multi Nationals as it is as they own so much of the country and what was Oz brands and the like, any further loss of the ability to produce products and keep any profits in this country and to improve things on the land and general businesses, would also mean the loss of a lot more jobs than we have lost now, and how many phone calls to get help that are not in Oz call centres but from large centres on the sub continent.

      • Nailed it with the dams . I travel past Pejar dam at the back of Goulburn regularly on our way out West  , only a few years back the dam was dry and they were shipping water into Goulburn . Then the rains came and I watched millions of megalitres go down the weir and vanish . Now the dams down very low again . 

        I say to the wife every time we drive past it “ why the fuck didn’t they dig that out more whilst it was empty?” 

        • This reply was deleted.
          • Interesting Browny , might explain why they didn’t increase the size of Pejars capacity . 

          • Browny, I understand that a lot of dams cannot be dug deeper, especially those that sit with a minimal amount of the clay over rock structure, and yes the best option is therefore to make a higher and broader embankment wall around them to hold more water.

            Its often a real problem in many areas to make dams or continue with cropping, also the terrain creates problems when heavy rain comes and dam walls can cause problems with run off and flooding.

            I have seen some places where there is undulating stock country where the farmers will create small gullies down the slopes and have dams at intervals to collect water, when full the overflow goes down to the next one and so on. It has to be done right and usually is but like the flatter terrain it can be problematic.

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      • So you’re saying the Chinese can survive on our land but our own farmers can’t ? 

        • Yes, because the money they have and by a multi Billionaire who wants to buy the farm will bring in his workers but keep on some Oz farmers in charge and if there is a drought again, he will be able to bring in water and the like to cover the areas of need.

          When they come in, they will build a lot of infrastructure that will guarantee they can store whatever grain and fodder they need, and most of it is to breed stock for the growing Chinese food market, they want quality and they know what is produced here is safe when compared to some items produced in China, the infant formula is big case point, for the new generation of executive Chinese business and higher end general workers.

    • sorry snake but you city slickers have no fecking idea what it looks like in the country, go bust in the city move to other suburbs lose youre job go on the dole yes city slickers do get govt help,

  • This reply was deleted.
    • Very True!  The aspect that so much of this country is dry and the amount of droughts that have impacted over the last 60 odd years is incredible, there is not just the major droughts like is seen now, but the small ones in different areas of the country that suck up the income from the few small years of decent rain and good crop and stock conditions.

      They may get a fair bit of assistance when things get really tough, but the vast majority of them are tougher than the vast majority of seaboard dwellers who lap up their lattes on the way to their office towers, and they would need 6 months rehab in health resorts if they were to work for 6 days on a farm.

      There was an interview with a farmer near Narrabri through the week who said the biggest problem at this time was that their local councils are not helping, he showed his land rate bill for the current year and it sat at $150K. He was talking while standing on a failed wheat crop.

      Many of the upper hunter farms are crying out for water and hay, Murrurundi has around 2 months of water in its dam but how much water is being used on the coal mines?

      There was a desalination plant build near Botany Bay, is it just for Sydneyites and for their social needs but then again it has sat in mothballs and rust since the first tests were done on it. We see fodder coming in by road from WA, but surely as in years gone by what NSW and other states had access to water and it was carted by railways in dry times, today all the railway vehicles that are capable of doing that work are gone as they have been scrapped.  Yet there are sealed containers that have rooftop hatches that take oils in them that could be used for water cartage, more especially from the desal plant.

      Also lets not forget that its not just the farmers doing it tough, have a look at the towns that are closing down as no one has the money to make purchases and workers put off as a result, also the larger ones where businesses also are closed. So this drought is really hitting so many other areas of this country than just the farmers.

  • Yes! Also shits me how the local farmers complain about how broke they are yet they’re driving around in their 85K land cruisers
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