I must be living under a rock because until yesterday I didn’t know that 2012 is the Year of the Farmer.\u00a0 Sponsored by Elders, the Year of the Farmer board is impressive.\u00a0 Included are Deb Bain (Wool & sheep meat producer and Farm Day instigator, Vic), Geoff Bell (NSW), Bill Belotti (agronomist, NSW), Philip Bruem (dairying, NSW), David Cussens (journalist with a cropping background, WA), Katrina Hobbs (horticulture & livestock, Qld) and Maria Lally (cropping & livestock, SA).<\/p>\n
However there’s a\u00a0glaring omission on the Year of the Farmer board.\u00a0 Get a map of Australia out and draw a line\u00a0from Bundaberg (Qld) to Kojonup (WA).\u00a0 It is blindingly obvious that apart from Tassie, the bottom\u00a0of eastern and southern Australia is well represented,\u00a0however there’s not a single board member from the region that\u00a0comprises more than\u00a0half\u00a0 the continent.\u00a0 And apart from the board member from Forbes (NSW), nor is there a\u00a0member from anywhere more than a relative rock throw from the coast – all are from relatively closely settled areas.<\/p>\n
Obviously the Year of the Farmer board includes members from different industries to represent a healthy cross section of different types of primary production and it would be unworkable to have a representative from every single agricultural enterprise.\u00a0 However it is very odd that there is no-one on the Year of the Farmer board from the top half of Australia, representing tropical agriculture of any type – from bananas to sugarcane, pineapples, mangoes etc; let alone\u00a0cotton, rice and other summer-grown crops.\u00a0 Particularly glaring is the omission of anyone representing the northern Australian cattle industry because Australian cattle stations are the largest in the world yet the least understood sector of Australian primary industry, due to the relative remoteness and distance from Australia’s largest population centres.\u00a0\u00a0 Northern cattle stations are not<\/em> just larger versions of southern cattle farms; and they have the capacity to inspire and fascinate urban residents more than any other agricultural field.<\/p>\n As it stands, rather than it being ‘Year of the Farmer’, 2012\u00a0will be ‘Year of the southern Australian Farmer’ or ‘Year of the temperate climate farmer’.\u00a0<\/p>\n I could think of some ideal, suitably qualified candidates from the rest of the Australian continent for the Year of the Farmer board, if they are\u00a0interested in additions.<\/p>\n The Year of the Farmer in 2012\u00a0is\u00a0the perfect opportunity to vaporise the myth that there are only 2 types of people, city residents and country residents, and illustrate the huge range of Australian agriculture from Tasmania to the tropics – Cape York and the Kimberleys.\u00a0 It would be a tragedy to miss this golden opportunity, and only concentrate on the types of Australian agriculture that\u00a0people are most likely to be somewhat familiar with already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I must be living under a rock because until yesterday I didn’t know that 2012 is the Year of the Farmer.\u00a0 Sponsored by Elders, the Year of the Farmer board is impressive.\u00a0 Included are Deb Bain (Wool & sheep meat producer and Farm Day instigator, Vic), Geoff Bell (NSW), Bill Belotti (agronomist, NSW), Philip Bruem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6,8,11],"tags":[82,158,179,220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4215,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions\/4215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}