As they say, ‘truth is stranger than fiction’.

But there’s also been a few glaring gaffes.  One is the commentary remark made when one of the cleanskin bulls objected to being loaded on the truck: ‘he should be happy since he’s going off to breed with the females’.  Feral, unbranded bulls are caught and sold, not kept.  In fact later in the programme Milton mentioned that they aimed to catch 30 bulls a day late in the year, because it was ‘handy fuel money’.  Once cleanskin bulls are caught, they don’t come within a coo-ee of any cows, instead it’s straight to good yards with a fence higher than 6ft (if possible), then onto a ‘town’ truck and to the meatworks to be turned into hamburger mince.  Cattle station owners/managers don’t want the undesirable temperament and physical attributes of feral cattle passed on to any offspring.  Also, cleanskin bulls will tend to lurk in difficult-to-muster scrub and come out at night to compete with the good quality and expensive herd bulls, hunting them away from the breeders with the aim of passing on their genes instead.  Suggesting that Milton was catching the cleanskin bulls to drop them off in a 3-barb paddock with the domesticated cows, has drawn attention to the fact that whoever wrote the script has absolutely no genuine understanding of cattle management on northern cattle stations.  Because the cleanskins would vanish from open country overnight.   It’d be like dropping off a bus load of crims at a tea party.  Yeah they might scoff a few cakes down as they passed by but they wouldn’t hang around where they could be seen and easily re-caught, sipping cups of tea with the ladies.

Early in the 14th episode the commentary remark was also made: ‘the wet season starts in a few weeks’.  We all wish it was that cut & dried!  Unlike southern regions of Australia which have four relatively predictable seasons and an official calendar start and finish to summer, autumn, winter and spring; northern Australia has two commonly recognised seasons ‘the wet season’ and ‘the dry season’.  However there’s no official start day marked on any calendar and no-one agrees on precise times.  Every wet season and every dry season is different and every season starts at a different time and in a different way.  And it varies between locations.  Most commonly, October heat will start to bring thunderstorms to the north, and everyone hopes for some falls of at least several inches each time, in November.  But frequently northern Australian residents are disappointed, and bake in unrelenting heat and rising humidity instead.    Annual rainfall averages show that the highest rainfall month in the northern end of Australia is February; followed by January then March.  December and April average rainfall figures, follow on.  Usually wet season rain has gone by some time in April, and months of cloudless, completely rainfall free days, usually follow.  In some years these predictable days may be interrupted for just a day or two by cloudbands dropping light rain over the cooler months, and hour-long intense thunderstorms in October & November, but solid rain (from low pressure systems or monsoon troughs) doesn’t usually commence until December at the earliest.  So ‘the wet season starts in 3 weeks’ – if only it was that predictable!

From memory there were only going to be 15 episodes of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’, and next week shows the start of heavy wet season rain, so presumably it is the last episode.

People who have enjoyed watching ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ love the best-selling coffee table style books ‘A Million Acre Masterpiece’ and ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’.  So these unique books, with more than 500 photos taken on Australia’s largest cattle stations, are ideal Christmas gifts.  Orders for 2 or more books come with a free calico carrybag and a good discount, books can be personally signed and mailed direct to anywhere in the world.  The books also come with a money-back guarantee of satisfaction.  For more information on these outback books, visit the Book Contents page, or visit the Testimonials page to read comments from other book purchasers.

Attendance at these social media workshops is is highly recommended for any livestock producers who are interested in learning more about how to get first-hand stories of everyday rural life and issues, direct to anyone who is unfamiliar with Australian agriculture, via the internet or mobile phones.  I’m not sure that there would have been much rural interest in attending social media workshops prior to the live export ban fiasco.  But the outpouring of live export misinformation actually did the bush a favour in one way, because it highlighted the increasingly urgent necessity for as many rural Australians as possible to take maximum advantage of the huge range of direct storytelling and networking avenues now available, to counterbalance the mass of opinion very efficiently broadcast by animal rights extremists and uninformed conservationists (eg the ones who keep telling us that ‘Meat Free Mondays’ will stop the sea engulfing coral atolls in the Pacific). 

MLA workshop information includes websites (static or rarely changing background information – but it can take days or even weeks to be found by search engines, especially if the website is new and/or small), Blogs and online forums (up-to-the minute opinion pieces, found by search engines within minutes), Twitter (instant 140 character messages, around the world in seconds), Facebook (more personal and casual family stories, but also how to set up a Facebook ‘Page’ for business networking/storytelling), LinkedIn (more formal business networking – direct with decision makers running companies and organisations to grassroots primary producers; all around the world), YouTube (videos) and Flickr (online galleries of still images).

Workshop participants bring their own laptop if possible.  And if you need help with anything, it’s there in spades.  Our group had a huge age range, from Hillgrove’s venerable can-do Tom Mann at 76 (embarrassingly capable with a fancy mobile phone activities) to people many decades younger.  The range of experience was very varied also, however most had personal experience with one area (eg Facebook) but knowledge gaps in other areas. 

Participants end the one and a half days with a Tumblr blog page set up and a Facebook ‘Page’ (for non-family/close friends) set up, with images and links attached.  Plus a new network and a specific ‘to do’ list.

Any livestock producers who are interested in attending the MLA ’Social Media Conversations’ workshops should contact Deborah Leake at Meat & Livestock Australia as soon as possible, because only the dates and locations for the first 3 ‘test run’ workshops (Charters Towers, Qld; Katherine, NT & Katanning, WA) have been set.  More workshops will be held in other areas in 2012.   Speaking up now will help ensure an MLA workshop is held within travelling distance of where the largest number or most interested participants live.  Information Technology-related workshops tailored for rural residents are as scarce as hen’s teeth – so best to sieze the opportunity.

Over the last six months it has been great to see so many rural residents realise they have first-hand stories of what it’s like to live in the bush that are of interest to other people, and that you don’t need to have some sort of special qualification to be able to write something of interest to others.  The more primary producers who invest a bit of online time in explaining to the public what their life is like, all over Australia and in all aspects of food and fibre production, the better off we’ll all be now, and future generations.

The observations are fascinating - in summary – more net energy is obtained from eating cooked meat than raw.  No wonder my hairdresser is as thin as a stick, he only ever eats raw food these days.  My conclusion is that if people were eating only raw tucker from Macca’s and Pizza Hut, our obesity epidemic would be reigned in at least slightly, because they’d be obtaining less net energy from the food being consumed (as more energy would be required for digestion, and some would remain undigested).   (Although they’d have to steady up on the fizzy drinks, as well.)  Read about the study on the Beef Central website.

The Harvard University website has other interesting information in the same field, such as an article on Richard Wrangham’s book regarding the effect of the invention of cooking on the evolution of the human race, called ‘Catching Fire – How cooking made us human’.  Richard Wrangham believes that human beings started cooking food much earlier than several hundred thousand years ago, as is most commonly thought, due to archaeological evidence.  He believes the change in human anatomy 1.9 million years ago is best explained by the advent of food cooking.  This brought about physical changes, including a smaller gut and teeth, other changes, such as the ability to wean children earlier, and social changes, as much less time was required to gather enough food to provide sufficient energy, and less time needed to be spent actually eating.  (Richard Wrangham says that if we spent as much time chewing as great apes, we’d spend 5-6 hours/day chewing.)

The Vestey family still own large cattle ranches in Venezuela, trading under the company name of ‘Agroflora’ and President Hugo Chavez has just announced that the Vestey family’s 290,000 hectares is to be taken over by the Venezuelan Government.  The Vestey family had been negotiating with the Venezuelan Government in regard to reparation for resumed land, and according to Hugo Chavez, negotiations broke down because the Vestey family insisted on payment in U.S. dollars rather than Venezuelan dollars.

The reasons given by President Chavez for the resumption of land, are related to improving social equity, food security and environmental management.  In recent years, a number of significant assets owned by other private companies have been seized by the Chavez government.

For more information on the Vestey land resumption in Venezuela, see William Hayes’ ‘Meat Trade News Daily’.

There is virtually no objective analysis and in-depth discussion of the figures in our mainstream media.  Nor discussion of the fact that the figures appear to be approximations, at best.  Rural organisations have pointed out the figures are not detailed enough to be of any real use and there is no regular recording of property owner citizenship details, so foreign ownership trends cannot be accurately identified.  And that there is no analysis of the size of the agricultural businesses concerned, so it is utterly pointless and meaningless for the ABS to state:  ’99% of Australian businesses are entirely owned by Australians’.  Oh yes, and just how many tiny hobby farm-type properties were lumped in with the multi-million dollar company-owned businesses?

And how has ownership been calculated when the land owner is a company, with both overseas and Australian shareholders?  This issue applies to some of Australia’s largest pastoral companies – for example, the AACo and Terra Firma.  It appears about as much accuracy as we get is a statement saying a certain percentage have some degree of foreign ownership.  It could be 10% foreign owned/90% Australian owned, or vice versa.

Regarding objective analysis of the figures.  I am astonished that a number of journalists and others believe these figures are no reason for concern.

The major factor that seems to be overlooked by all and sundry is a) we have very little good quality agricultural land, and b) if someone has, for example, a 10% stake in something that is not homogeneous throughout, it is imperative to analyse whether that 10% is of the very best quality, the worst quality, or a mixture.  Just as is the case with urban residential land purchased by overseas owners, I suspect analysis would show the majority (if not all) overseas owners have bought up slices of our very best quality (most valuable, scarcest etc) land.  In other words, for example, foreign ownership may only be 10% of all our agricultural land, but it could well be 80% of the top 10% quality land.

In the case of agricultural land ownership, I suspect a thorough analysis would reveal that it’s a case of quality being more significant than overall quantity.  Classic examples of ‘cherrypicking’ the very best - the ownership by Argentinean John Kahlbetzer’s Twynham Pastoral Co, of numerous blue-ribbon historic wool/cropping properties throughout the Murray-Darling river system in New South Wales.  And 7th Day Adventist ownership of the exceedingly valuable Kooba Station, at Darlington Point (south of Griffith, NSW).   In land area terms, a relative small percentage.  But if New South Wales farmland was graded into categories according to the levels of productivity (quality), it would show that a disturbingly significant percentage of the very best agricultural land available in NSW, is owned by people who are not Australian citizens.

For this reason, this ABS survey is virtually useless, and one is left with the impression that those responsible for running the survey wouldn’t know an arid 6″ variable rainfall plot flat out running 1 flea per hectare even in a good year, from in incredibly productive and intensely farmed river flat on the outskirts of Sydney’s southern suburbs.  Because they’ve lumped the two in together.

The fact that this appears not to have been addressed by anyone writing on the subject, smacks of either lazy journalism or simply a lack of understanding of Australian agriculture – or both.

Two of the basic figures provided in the ABS survey are of utmost concern.  One is the fact that 91% of Australian agricultural water entitlements are 100% Australian owned.  This means that 9% of our agricultural water entitlements are owned/part owned by people who do not live here.  That’s almost 1 gigalitre out of every 10, doesn’t belong completely to Australian citizens.  In a continent that is often described as the driest on the planet, with undeniably the most unreliable rainfall (to the great detriment of our agricultural productivity and rural living standards), that figure should be of great concern.  I don’t believe anyone other than Australian citizens should own Australian water rights.  We take our food and water security for granted at our peril.

The second issue of major concern is the level of overseas ownership in the Northern Territory, which is given as 24% of NT agricultural land as having ‘some level’ of overseas ownership. 

The ABS, in their infinite wisdom, have lumped together ‘sheep beef cattle and grain farming’ into the one category.  It is this category that has the highest level of foreign ownership.  Given that our cattle stations are the largest in the world, generally can run only cattle (no grain cropping, ever, and no sheep these days), and that most Territory agricultural land – where there is the highest level of overseas ownership – is used for running beef cattle; and there are plenty of regions that successfully run sheep but could never grow grain crops, creating a category that combines cattle, sheep and grain growing, for the whole of Australia,  is next to useless for anything much.

About the ownership of Australian agricultural water entitlements, the ABS report says: ”The Northern Territory reported no agricultural water entitlements for agricultural purposes being owned by businesses with any level of foreign ownership. ” Yet the ‘Beef cattle sheep and grain growing’ category had the highest level of Australian ownership.

The fact that a $231 million and above purchase is the point at which the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) purchase approval is required, is a joke.  Are we stupid, or what?  As it stands today, buyers from other countries could at least in theory, buy up a whole state, piece by piece, and still not come under any scrutiny (let alone control) by government authorities.

Best of all, it appears the ABS report was based on a survey filled in by property managers or owners:

“The Australian Land and Water Ownership Survey (ALWOS) was a large survey, with a sample of 11,000 agricultural businesses which represented the Australian farming industry. The businesses reporting they were not fully Australian owned may have been either partially or entirely foreign owned and, as such the survey provides information about business, land and water entitlements by the extent of their foreign ownership.”

Well it must be completely accurate then, if the property owners/managers were the ones who provided the ownership details!  Surely we need a long term, Federal Government-run property ownership register?  So that the ABS doesn’t have to rely on self-filled out surveys filled out by people who may have a vested interest in answering in a particular way?

Attending Beef Week at Rockhampton costs me more than $5,000 to attend as an exhibitor:  not much short of $1,000 in accommodation (6 nights, scalper rates in a caravan park cabin – booked more than 12 months prior), $3,000 in tradefair site fees (booked 9 months prior), and more than $1,000 in fuel, basic meals etc.   Just as significantly, it involves being away from home for 7 full days – with days either side spent on preparation, unpacking etc.   This of course involves significant cost, also.   A large amount of sales are required to make a net profit.  Exhibitors always ask themselves if there’s a more profitable way to spend their time, money and energy.    I imagine this financial & time summary is fairly typical of  many of the tradefair participants – and the bigger the business, the higher the cost of attendance (freight, staff costs etc) so the higher the sale value has to be to make the same percentage net profit.

From the outset, Beef Week has been held once every 3 years – yet I have still only managed to attend every second one.  There have often been other demands on my time and/or money or energy that have prevented consistent attendance.  Enjoyable though it is, tradefair attendance is exhausting for a sole owner/manager small business owner.  There is absolutely no way I would make it to Beef Week every time it was held, if it was on every second year, despite whatever good intentions I may have.

Because Beef Week is only on every third year, I do make a big effort to get there.  You know if you miss it it’s a three year wait until the next opportunity.  You also know that while it costs a bit of time and money, the time & budget bank has three years to recover before it rolls around again.

If Beef Week is held every second year, what will happen?  Rural Australians are ultra busy people, and everyone has only so much money to spend.  The more often Beef Week is on, the more likely they are to think, ‘oh well, it’s not so long to the next one, I’ll give it a miss this year and go next time’.

The absolute highlight for me is seeing people I haven’t seen for years – people I’d otherwise not be likely to bump into.  Last time I attended Beef Week I saw an ag college lecturer that I hadn’t seen since 1983.  Every time I go I see owners, managers, ringers, chopper pilots etc that I haven’t seen for years, and I meet mail order customers that I’d otherwise have never met in person.  These are people who live all over Australia – who have made a special trip to Rockhampton to attend Beef Week.  Are these people going to spend the significant amount of money and time to attend 30% more often?  I doubt it.  Instead they’ll come every second time (i.e. once every 4 years, rather than every 3 or 2).  And more significantly, because there is likely to be fewer tradefair exhibitors and they’ll bump into fewer of their friends (some of whom would have not attended because they’re coming ‘next time’ instead), the overall experience will be watered down. 

The more often a rural event is held, the lower the percentage of remote area residents attending.   Every three years is just often enough to keep people keen while not so overly frequent that they’re likely to have to miss attending due to time or cash shortages.  AgQuip is held annually, however it pertains to a sector of agriculture that is far more closely settled – farming.  Held in the northern NSW cropping heartland town of Gunnedah, it is the largest agricultural machinery field day in Australia.  Many people travel hundreds of kilometres and from other states to attend, however the vast majority of visitors live within several hundred kilometres – from southern Qld cropping country down to central NSW.  The average AgQuip visitor would have travelled a much shorter distance to Gunnedah than the average Beef Week visitor travels to Rockhampton. 

Equitana is the equine equivalent of Beef Week in Rockhampton.  The absolute highlight for me at Equitana Melbourne in November 2010, was the massive amount of visitors from all over Australia.  In fact, the vast majority of people I spoke to lived outside Victoria.  There were large numbers of people from northern WA, the NT, Tasmania and north Qld.   As well as New Zealand and other countries.   Most of these people had planned and saved to attend, well in advance.  They were passionate and very excited to be there – they’d looked forward to it for 2 years – and this enthusiasm helped foster a great atmosphere.  (Apparently the biggest Equitana Australia event held to date was the previous one, which had been held after a 3 years absence due to postponement in the midst of the Equine Influenza outbreak.)  By contrast, I have met a large number of locals (living within a couple of hundred km or so) at Equitana, AgQuip and Beef  Week who have clearly only attended because they ‘may as well’.   Raise the percentage of those who have only attended because it’s easy, and the atmosphere changes for those who’ve attended with enthusiasm.  Meeting lukewarm local visitors who don’t care that much about whether they are there or not, when you’ve travelled more than 1,000km especially to attend, is like having  a wet blanket dropped on your head.

The number of northern cattle station residents attending Equitana was completely unexpected and made it incredibly interesting for me, and while there were many great aspects it is this one in particular that would lure me back to attend again. Equitana Melbourne ‘super tickets’ sold out within weeks.  Equitana is on again this year, only 12 months later, in Sydney.   However there are still hundreds of the special tickets available for sale this year, several months after they were available to purchase.  Regional and remote residents simply don’t have the cash and time to attend these big events on a too-frequent basis, and they are far more likely to think ‘it’s a bit difficult to go this year, we’ll go next time instead’, if the gap between events is reduced.

So is someone pushing for Beef Week to be held every second year instead of every third?  No doubt, it would be vested interests in town who perceive they may have more money in the bank if Beef Week is held more often.  Accommodation owners, eateries, hoteliers, etc.  Businesses who are not involved in agriculture but in tourism.  Is Beef Week run primarily for the benefit of the beef industry, or primarily for the benefit of Rockhampton businesses who will rake in some extra cash by overpricing their accommodation?  I guess this is something for the Beef Week committee to ponder.  If it shifts to being held every second year, you can be sure that local businesspeople would be the ones behind the change, not pastoralists.  Undoubtedly there would be more money over the years in the coffers of particular Rockhampton businesses if Beef Week became biennial, and it may be easier to run and take pressure off tightly stretched accommodation due to lower attendance each time, but it would be to the detriment of the quality of the event.

I suspect visitors who have travelled a long way to attend are worth by far the most to event organisers and the surrounding town.  They’ve travelled a long way so they stay for the whole time, attend every day, spend up at the tradefair and on accommodation and transport.  Many out-of-town visitors to Equitana Melbourne had planned a day or two before or after Equitana for relaxation – which usually involved spending more money on other things besides extra accommodation nights and meals.  Whereas locals often visit the show for just one day then drive home that afternoon – perhaps not even spending much on food, let alone anything else.

On a personal front, business on my tradefair stand (at Rocky’s Beef Week and Equitana)  has always been by far the best on the first and second days.  The majority of these sales are to people who have travelled a long way to be there.  There are usually more people attending towards the end of the tradeshow, but a much higher percentage are locals (within 100km or so), and they often seem to spend less.  Many of the sales made towards the end of the tradefair are to people who came past on the first one or two days, and have come back to purchase just before carting their heavy parcels home.

People who have made the effort to travel long distances to attend rural events such as Rocky’s Beef Week, Equitana and AgQuip are also great ambassadors.  They tell people where they’re off to/where they’ve been when travelling to/from their destination, they talk about it with enthusiasm when they arrive home, and they encourage others to attend.  In other words, distant visitors are like travelling advertisements.  They are the ones who are worth the most to event organisers and local businesses such as motels and cafes, and I hope in the case of Beef Week, they will be treated with respect.

The Australian beef industry is our most decentralised industry and no doubt, one of the most decentralised pastoral industries in the world, given that our cattle stations are the largest enterprises of their kind.  So in this respect participants are unique and should be treated as such.   Nor should agricultural shows in Australia be compared to those run in other countries – for example the U.S., with a population of more than 300 million people, which can support the running of annual week-long livestock expositions each winter.

If you want to put your two bob’s worth in on whether Beef Week should become biennial, visit the Beef Australia website and fill in the online survey.   The survey organisers say it only takes 10 minutes to fill in – but it  took me just 3 minutes, and I typed in a few answers as well as ticking the boxes.  I hope those who fill the survey in, who encourage the committee to change Beef Week to biennial, are sure that they and everyone they know would actually support the change by attending every second year.  It’s easy to tick a box stating that running it ‘more often’ sounds like a good idea – but if it Beef Week changes to being held every 2 years, and people don’t act on their intentions, it will be to the detriment of what is a unique event.

Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC) is Australia’s second largest beef producing company, after the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo).  In 1983 Kerry Packer purchased Ashburton Pastoral Company and with the acquisition of other cattle stations, Ashburton Pastoral morphed into CPC in 1992.  UK-based investment companyTerra Firma bought CPC from the Packer family in April 2009,  several years after the death of Kerry Packer (December 2005).

Ashburton Pastoral Company was jointly owned by Ken Warriner and the late Peter Baillieu and Tony Chisholm.  Ashburton Pastoral Company owned three NT cattle stations – Newcastle Waters station (Elliott), Humbert River (Victoria River District) and Henbury (now RMWAH owned, near Alice Springs).   Prior to that, Ken Warriner had worked for Hugh McLachlan on  Kenmore Park (Alice Springs), for Tom Quilty on Springvale (East Kimberley, WA) and then as General Manager for Texas-based King Ranch, owner of Brunette Downs (NT), Mt House and Glenroy (West Kimberley, WA).

What Ken Warriner doesn’t know about cattle and the northern cattle industry, isn’t worth knowing.  And he has always been a busy bloke.  Roles have included Chairman of Consolidated Meat Group, GRM International (resource management), Chairman of Austrex (Australian Rural Exports Pty Ltd), Chairman of RTA (Road Trains of Australia) and Chairman of AFD (Australian Fuel Distributors).  Plus President of the NTCA (Northern Territory Cattleman’s Association) and the ACA (Asian Cattleman’s Association), as well as serving on the NFF (National Farmers Federation) National Executive.  Last year an old health issue resurfaced that took some beating off, however it appears Ken has only taken the foot off the pedal slightly.  

Mark Irwin comes from a Darling Downs farming family and is a qualified lawyer with a background in business management, and has previously worked for Graincorp, BHP and Asciano.

For many years I’ve read and listened to the commonsense advice handed out by Dr James Wright.  Then this ‘gem’ of ‘health advice’ turned up in ‘The medicine chest’ page in the August edition of our local newspaper’s magazine:

Q:  ‘We are constantly being admonished to be kind, don’t fight, do not kill.  Yet every day million of sheep, cattle pigs, poultry are butchered just to satisfy our food needs and ravenous appetites.  I find this double standard ethically hard to fathom.’

A: ‘The million of hectares of grain we grow to feed the animals we then slaughter could much more cost effectively be converted into human food after harvesting, and not fed to animals.  Grain in its multiple forms has fed the world for thousands of years.’

And here was I thinking all these years that Doctor James Wright was a medical doctor, when in fact he is an ethicist by trade?  Very surprising.  A fairly oddly worded question.  Surely someone who was asking a leading question regarding whether it was a good idea to eat meat, would trot out one of the usual vegetarian scaremonger furphies, such as ‘meat causes cancer’ and ‘meat causes blocked arteries’ etc.  Why would a reader be asking Dr James Wright about the ethics of what they eat?   Did they ask about the over-fishing factory-ship ethics involved in the canned tuna they scoffed with their lunchtime salad?  Or the ethics involved in the child labour used to pick the cocoa beans used to make their chocolate?  

Personally, I’m looking forward to letter writers burying fashion editors in questions along the lines of ‘lots of my friends wear x brand runners, but I’ve heard that the people who made them only get paid $1 a day and work in appalling working conditions - I find this double standard of comparatively rich, white westerners wearing throw-away fashion produced by poorly paid employees in unhealthy working conditions, ethically hard to fathom.’  

I’ve often wondered whether all or most of the supposed ‘questions’ in advice columns are invented.   In this case, ’ravenous appetites’ is more an old-woman way of describing the grandchildren’s eating habits after school, or something totally creepy that someone dodgy gets up to.  And as if vegetarians are never ravenous?  Most I know are permanently hungry.  And, I seem to recall Dr Wright using the word ‘ravenous’ himself on numerous occasions; lending weight to the suspicion that he wrote this ‘medical’ question himself.

But the answer trotted out is the real gasper.  Clearly Doctor James Wright is unaware that in Australia there’s plenty of grassfed beef that has never eaten a single farmed grain between birth and the dinner plate.   Nor is he evidently aware that much of the grain fed to stock is not of a standard deemed suitable for Australian food production - i.e. it’s grain that has been downgraded from the higher quality human-consumption grade, due to climatic interference (eg insufficient rain) to the lower priced stockfeed quality.

And what of the majority of the Australian continent, where it is not possible to grow grain crops, but it is possible to extensively graze cattle on native pastures, producing high-quality protein in harmony with the natural environment?

A quick poke around Dr Wright’s website unearthed this revealing piece of information, March 2011:

Q:  I am a vegetarian simply because I do not like meat, and to make it worse, can’t stand the smell or taste of fish either. I know I should eat plenty of protein, but what’s left?

A:  Plenty.  I have been a life long vegetarian by choice.  Vegetable sources abound, and are claimed to be as high in protein as fish and animal.  It is based on legumes. This includes beans (more than 150 varieties available), lentils, peas, peanuts.  Also gluten, the protein part of grains (such as wheat) are protein rich….etc’

Dr James, what about the ethics of destroying the habitat of native animals, something unavoidably necessary for broadacre cropping (essential these days, in order to successfully feed our highly urbanised population).  Bearing in mind that if human beings aren’t receiving the protein they need from meat, they’ll obviously need to obtain more of it from grains, thus putting more pressure on the natural environment.

Why were people so angry about Cate Blanchett’s public support of the carbon tax?  Droves of Cate-worshippers wrote in reponse to her critics, saying that Cate is entitled to her point of view, so why shouldn’t she voice it.  Of course Cate Blanchett can voice her opinion.  If it’s on anything to do with acting, we’re all ears.  If she voices an opinion on television in a big-budget Federal Government-funded national advertising campaign, and what she is talking about has nothing to do with her field of employment, then people will use their right to an opinion and suggest she should stick to publicly voicing opinions only on what she specialises in.  The fact that she was on a national TV ad implied that because she is a great and well-respected actress, her opinion on topics outside of her line of work carries more weight than the views of the average person in the street.  Which is rubbish.  The only reason Cate appeared on that ad was because she was famous, but what she was spouting on about had nothing to do with the talent that made her famous – acting – and everything to do with the environment, small business, etc – about which, for all we know, Cate knows diddly squat.  She certainly would naturally have no understanding of what it is like to be the average suburban mother with a couple of kids, probably divorced, run ragged trying to run a household and earn enough to cover the basics of life, nor would she know what it is like to run a small business.  Nor, as far as I know, does she have any above-average experience or understanding of the natural environment and sustainability.

Does Dr James Wright know anything about agriculture and the environment?  He’s just demonstrated that he does not, yet he feels the need to barrow-push vegetarianism on the rest of us as a ‘better’ moral choice.  He has just gone and shot the credibility he built up over decades, by doing the same thing as Cate - using national media to push a personal opinion unrelated to his specific field of talent – healthcare and medical matters.  Worse, In Dr James Wright’s case, his vegetarian crusade has been poorly disguised as health advice, when in reality it is personal choice.

The day’s advice for the rich and/or famous, whatever their line of work?  When speaking out in public, stick to what you know.  Certainly, have opinions on everything under the sun – the more the better – but when it comes to voicing opinions on things outside your direct sphere of experience, only do it at the neighbour’s barbeque, not on national television, radio or in newspapers.  If you start spouting on publicly about issues which do not relate to your particular field of endeavour, then you run the risk of permanently damaging your credibility.

“…. the rejuvenation would be “a slow process, since most recovery relies on big rainfall events.  I would expect in a while, and after some good rains, you’d see fields full of daisies in winter and high grass in the summer”. 

I think Ashley needs to go and read some of the dairies written by explorers, the first white people to travel through inland Australia.  All the photos I’ve seen of Henbury show it looking right now as good as it probably has for a couple of centuries – well before whities arrived in this area with cows.

There’s more comments on ’removal of 17,000 cattle by year’s end, and thus significant emissions of methane gas.’ and “The project managers will then orchestrate a campaign to weed out introduced plants that have choked the propagation of native, carbon-storing species’ (only native plants store carbon?  Interesting view.) Plus:  ’New efforts will be made to cull the population of feral camels. Finally the company will manage fires on the property.’   Can anyone tell me whether anyone has succeeded in eradicating camels from the Simpson Desert yet?  I thought not.  And ask National Park neighbours – in any state - what they think of Federal Government weed control programmes on park land.  Henburywill be different?  Why, are taxpayers going to have to cough up more?  As for the fire comment – does this mean they are going to stop fires altogether, patch burn at the end of the wet season, or what, exactly?  What will be different to what the previous owners did, in relation to fire and vegetation management?  It is notable that all the Elders advertising I’ve seen in relation to Henbury Station, has stated clearly, what a well managed property is has been.

$9.1 million of taxpayer’s money has gone into the purchasing of Henbury Station and who knows how much taxpayers will be footing the bill for future management and research.  On just this one station.  How much good would $9.1 million have done, plus the rest that will inevitably be spent in future, if spread around on a number of other properties or parks – for weed and feral animal control.

RMWAH’s press release quotes R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings Managing Director David Pears as saying:  “We’re in the business of sustainable agriculture and we see an exciting opportunity in carbon sequestration.  By actively managing fire, water, weeds and feral animals on this former pastoral property we’ll encourage natural revegetation, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing carbon in the soil and native plants. We’ll be creating sustainable habitat and enhancing biodiversity.”  Is David suggesting that former owners/managers were not ‘managing fire, water, weeds and feral animals’?  Isn’t that exactly what any cattle station manager does on a daily basis?  Or is David suggesting that cattle station managers are not as competent as RMWAH managers, who are the only ‘sustainable agriculture’ model?

You know the absolutely funniest part?  I wonder how much fossil fuel will be burnt up ferrying purchasers, politicians, researchers, idle visitors and other hangers-on to this part of central Australia, either via Alice Springs airport or direct charter flights - on endless trips to and from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne.  My bet is it will be truckloads.  But that’s ok, it won’t hurt the earth’s atmosphere one bit, because Henbury is suddenly, after all these years, growing fields of daisies.  Those involved will all sleep soundly at night because hey, they’re saving the planet.

Why don’t we just turn all the land outside of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra into one great big national park owned and run by the Federal Government and/or big investment companies, as clearly they believe their efforts are second to none when it comes to land management. 

I’m all for the preservation of Australia’s native plants and animals (as a read of the blog topics, over the years, attest).  But this preservation should begin in cities, where the greatest environmental destruction has occurred.  In cities large and small, weeds and introduced animals flourish and native plants and animals are scarce.  When it comes to rural land, the most efficient way to ensure the preservation of native plants and animals, and sustainable, environmentally responsible agriculture, is to encourage family property ownership via rebates and tax incentives etc.  This is because, believe it or not, all rural families have the intention of passing the land on to the next generation, so are naturally thinking long-term, constantly.  They DO NOT damage the land they are in charge of.  More scrutiny than is currently the case should be applied to ownership of leasehold land by large companies (whether families & investment companies) because investors/extended family members apply constant pressure for short-term dividends, which always has the potential to be environmentally detrimental.  At present leasehold land management by government departments gets a big FAIL because while the vast majority of pastoral leasehold landowners do the right thing, right now there are 3 people in the bush, in charge of very large tracts of land, that should not be allowed to own or run anything other than a high-rise apartment.  Everyone in the bush knows who they are, yet nothing is done to reign in their poor land management by those in charge of overseeing leasehold land management.