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We can be proud that Australians are so horrified by further revelations of horrific cruelty to our live exports. It shows us as the compassionate, caring people we are. And we must applaud the work of the animal activists who have exposed these horrors. But the Live Export issue is a political hot potato and we must tread with caution, especially in an ISIL era of heightened fear and suspicion of Islamic practices and ideals. The Live export trade is a necessary and lucrative business for Australian farmers and Government and also a mainstay of political goodwill between our nation and others. In 2009 the Live export industry earned $996.5 million and provided employment for approximately 10,000 people in rural Australia. Improving outcomes for our animals means addressing cultural differences in a diplomatic manner or insisting on humane slaughter here in Australia. But the reality is that there are many nations and people who will not accept that. This is a long game which will take years to resolve satisfactorily. Despite the hysteria it is not practical or appropriate to stop something so big overnight. If we ban live exports, those countries currently importing our livestock will simply source elsewhere or grow their own. We are actually better placed to improve animal welfare by continuing the trade and working closely with the supply chain, tightening loopholes and insisting on the highest standards and treatment at every step. We can work with recipient countries’ governments to change attitudes and treatment of animals at purchase and slaughter. We can’t do that if we walk away. Advertisement Farmers tend to duck at times like this. Frightened of the fracas and the cruel words sprayed around like shotgun fire by people with little understanding of the realities of animal production for human consumption. Most animal activists tend to be vegetarian or vegan which obviously kew their understanding of animals as a protein source for the majority of mankind. However, their work in exposing atrocities to our animals awakens Australian carnivores’ compassion in a huge hue and cry on Social and Mainstream Media. What I find so interesting is that those same people are not more interested in where their meat comes from within Australia. How Australian animals are treated, trucked and killed. There is plenty of shock value in the images from overseas but day after day Australian animals are trucked huge distances without feed or water to saleyards or abattoirs or new owners. Australian abattoirs are ever fewer and further between and on farm slaughter banned except for own consumption, so travel stress is a given in every animal’s life. Yes, our slaughter practices are among the best in the world, but you only have to take your animals to the abattoir once to understand that mass management of animals in high stress life and death situations is never going to be pretty. Animals are very smart – they know exactly what is going on, and like humans facing death they struggle and try to run from their ultimate reality. Australians need to be far more cognizant of the fact that animals die in their hundreds of thousands every day here in Australia in order to support the Aussie obsession with meat and lots of it. And what of the lives led by these animals before they die? Chickens raised in huge sheds sickening with the acrid stench of faeces, too big to stand on their own legs, genetically modified to grow to kill weight in a mere 5-7 weeks, as opposed to what is natural – 14-20 weeks. These chickens are sick and stressed and Australians eat them in their millions – 400 million are raised and killed in Australia each year. But where is the angst about that? Is it ok to be cruel to chickens, but not beef or sheep? Is it OK for Aussies to torture their own animals, but not our trading partners? Advertisement What of egg production? Aussies love their super cheap eggs and believe all the spin and pretty pictures on the boxes. But the reality is far from the claims and images at the supermarket fridges – huge stinking sheds of tortured chooks leading miserable lives of imprisonment to provide those eggs. And what of the pigs raised on concrete floors in huge barns, only seeing the light of day for the first time when loaded for the long trip to the slaughterhouse. Pigs and chooks should be free to roam and forage. Where is the outrage and uproar about that? Hypocrisy is inherent in the human condition. Never more so when it comes to live animals and their welfare and the demand for cheap meat at the supermarket. Before we criticise other religions and races for their handling of our animals, we need to carefully examine our consciences and own backyards. Let every person who feels outrage at the treatment of Australian animals overseas carefully examine their own conscience and where their meat comes from – how and where it is raised and slaughtered and turned into food. Yes, Australians need to have a conversation about animal welfare. Let’s start with our own backyard first.

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A revolution is long overdue in our unconscious over-consumption. We have become inured to where our food or clothes come from or how they reach the supermarket shelves. Most people simply don’t care, as long as it is cheap. They don’t know or care about Genetically Modified food and cotton- the gross manipulation of nature, the fact that ag chemical giant Monsanto is funding GMO, that GMO crops are routinely sprayed with toxic cancer causing chemical Round-Up, and that Monsanto’s aim is to own all the world’s seeds and have them under patent – own the seeds, own all the food in the world – seeds are the beginning of life.

The vast majority couldn’t care less where their meat comes from – many don’t even know which animal their cold cut comes from. We have lost all respect for life – any life, whether it be human or animal. We are merciless, pitiless, selfish, angry. And it may well be that the normal western diet of coffee, meat & alcohol overtaxes the body and fuels our rage. But a shift is happening – populaces are protesting about live exports, which is great – they are beginning to equate animals with suffering and slaughter and their minds are opening to the treatment of the animals they expect on their plate. Ripples on the pond.

Most people don’t know or question what chemicals are used to produce their broad scale farmed fruit and vegetables, and what damage the run off does to the ground where it kills earthworms, dung beetles etc and poisons the ground for generations to come, or how many fish and other stream and river life that same run off causes once it reaches the waterways. Let alone what those same sprays are doing to the bees and air borne insects which are all part of our incredibly complicated ecological tapestry. Cotton, wheat, corn etc . . . it’s so hard to be sure what we are buying if we shop in the big chain stores.
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And then there is the way in which supermarkets and big food chains are screwing farmers to the wall on pricing, so they are forced to compromise quality for quantity, using every unnatural means available to meet the demands of a few big buyers. Superphosphate in the soil, locking up the nutrients and salinating the soil, which then leaches into the waterways, killing wildlife etc . . . and on and on it goes.

Of course there are the feedlots, breeding E Coli in cattle by forcing them to eat grain while standing cheek to jowl in unnatural concentration camps, fattening up for slaughter . . . and the hormones and other chemicals used to grow obscenely large chickens to further fill our plates . . . what about the global wave of infertility, surely that is related to all the unnatural hormones in our foods?

Now let’s talk about the power and water used in the industrialised farming system – pumping vast amounts of water onto parched lands – draining the rivers where the wildlife can no longer survive once their lifeblood is dried. The devastating damage done to the landscape in order to produce coal fired power. The senselessness of our preoccupation with destroying the earth to dig coal out of the ground when solar is so readily available. Indeed the industrial revolution is still powering our thinking, growing and raising practices, when we need to revert to a more local, agricultural, and needs based farming system.

But there is a groundswell of people who are questioning the ethics and realities of the food and clothing industries. Who want to know where their food comes from – how it is grown or raised and killed (if they eat meat). People who are putting their consciousness onto their plates and making sure that they can account for the provenance of every mouthful. .

These are often the same people who don’t want thirsty cotton clothing, bleached and then dyed with noxious chemicals. These consumers would rather pay more for organic cotton or hemp – who care about factory slavery in Vietnam, Bangladesh and China. Who prefer natural wool products from sheep and alpacas raised solely for fleece, rather than petrochemically produced clothing which pollutes our blue planet.

We are all hypocrites in one way or another, such is the nature of our human-ness. We all make mistakes and fall down in some way in our consumption choices. It’s hard to be a fully conscious being at all times, in all areas.

As we all tighten our belts and lockdown for a few more years of tight budgetting, it is time to become aware of where our hard earned dollars are going, to buy less and more consciously, closer to home, supporting local farmers and industries and paying for quality, not quantity – getting back to basics.

History in the making, The Renewable Revolution is HERE and NOW – JOIN IT!
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14374

Two hundred years ago, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions were in full spate, with first a trickle and then a flood of machines, which facilitated increased production, and the mechanisation of every form of agrarian and industrial pursuit. Prior to the invention of the steam engine and the mechanisation of production, invention of factories etc., the Domestic System meant that each family was involved in its own cottage industry, which contributed to the whole. Production was small scale, involved the whole family, and home based. Communities were self-sustaining and interlaced, travel was limited and expensive and a high value was placed on goods, workmanship and food, where the manufacturer or producer was an integral part of the population.

The invention and then improvement of the steam engine, and the subsequent increase in demand for coal changed all that. Previously mining had been small scale, local and shallow. The huge demand for coal to fuel the new machines meant ever-deeper exploration of the earth and the invention of factories started the migration of workers and the centralisation of population into the cities that housed them. Production was increased across every sphere but life started to become very different. Instead of home based industries, which accommodated the family in every age and stage, and embraced community, the smoke belching cities became a magnet and families were divided into those who went to work and others stayed home. Entire families went to work in the new factories and the mines in order to increase income, which was often a pittance, workers were crowded into slums with no sanitation where disease was rife.

While the poor gravitated to the cities with the promise of a better standard of living, all that was created was a new class of ‘working poor’ with just enough for a subsistence existence, literally ‘working for the man’ who owned the factory, the slums, the factory school and the shop where they spent their meager earnings.

The Luddites rebelled by smashing the machinery that replaced their skilled artisanship with cheap, unskilled, labour and mass production. Many of these rioters and wreckers were either executed or transported to penal colonies in America or Australia. Riots swept the U.K, culminating in the Peterloo massacre. The Luddites might have been a restless minority and seemingly achieved little, but like the 1891 shearer strike and riots in Australia, the underbelly of unrest politicised the country and led to the rise of the trade union movement.

Two hundred years later we are totally dependent on coal and the mechanisation of every facet of our existence. Little could any Lancashire Luddite have dreamt how mass produced our clothes are now – let alone that they are mainly made of plastic, not the wool they carded and wove with such skill and dexterity. No Farmer would believe our vast treeless plains of GM crops or acres of monoculture cropping. They would shudder at our industrialised feedlots, poultry houses, and egg production. We have industrialised and made factories of every facet of our lives – our schools, syllabus, day care centres, farming, and supermarkets.

And while we have gained in convenience, we have lost in connection as we become ever more dependent on machines and ever more removed from the land that feeds and fuels us.

But there is a groundswell moving in the opposite direction (some would say backwards). Seeking to create intentional communities, sharing transport, centred on home based businesses. City dwellers relieving themselves of the rat race and going back to a simpler, less stressful way of life. Seeking self-sufficiency and a more meaningful relationship with the earth, their children, neighbors and family.

A growing number of global citizens who see that our reliance on fossil fuels feeds our ‘greed is good’ mindset and is destructive – to the planet, to the atmosphere, to our connections to each other and community, and to our connection to Mother Earth. These visionaries have led the Renewable Revolution by showing us that we can indeed have all the machines we are so dependent on, but that they needn’t be destructive. That Nature’s abundant resources can fuel us. We don’t need to keep digging deep into the earth, destabilising our foundations, when sun, sea, wind and water can give us all we need in terms of power.

The Industrial Revolution was driven by a monied few excited by the linings of their own pockets, while the Renewable Revolution is being stymied by the same monied minority scared of what the future holds if we cease to be reliant on their coal and oil.

In Australia those people are larger than life and twice as vocal. In the U.S. they are more veiled and powerful behind closed doors. But the populace sees the sense in solar, wind and geothermal and no amount of naysaying by the power brokers will convince them otherwise. Because ordinary Australians look up and see how much sun we are blessed (and sometimes cursed with) we feel its heat on our skin, we experience the abundance and so harnessing it makes total sense. If the grey and gloomy skied Europeans can be leading the world in their take up of wind and solar power, why are we lagging so far behind?

Is it simply that the powerful few have Government so tightly in their grasp? Like the Luddites they will have to accept that progress is inevitable, we have to keep evolving and the new revolution is literally ‘back to the future’ – powering our lives and needs without pollution, high prices and petrochemicals.

A hundred years from now we will look back on the late nineties and noughties as The Renewable Revolution. We need to embrace it, advocate for it, force Government and Industry to accept it and welcome in the dawn of this new age.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13979

Last week Chris Hartcher, with a straight face, announced that coal seam gas extraction (fracking) and food production can co-exist. Julia and Tony wrangled over how much of Australia’s farmland to sell to overseas interests and a NSW dairy farmer’s wife sent Coles into spin fever with a comment on their facebook page which garnered 75,000 ‘likes’.  Forgive me for beating the same old drum, but where will Australian food come from when every farmer has left the land, we have mined and fracked the fertile food plains and sold the farm overseas?

It is becoming increasingly clear that both politicians and corporations are completely out of step not only with the farmers but with ordinary Australians who fully grasp the issue of food security and are glad to stand up and campaign about it.

No one who has watched the American amateur documentary ‘Gasland’ can believe that we are still having a discussion about fracking in this country.  Australia is one of the driest continents on earth, we have almost constant water issues and the Great Artesian Basin below us provides the only reliable source of freshwater through much of inland Australia.  In addition our network of rivers and creeks are our literal lifeblood.  To even contemplate activities which we know from the US and Queensland experience poison groundwater is incomprehensible.  Short term decisions will wreak havoc on our water, and therefore existence, for ever.  Poison the well and the outcome is obvious. Water is too precious a resource for politicians funded by mining magnates to dice with.  France has been the first country to ban coal seam gas extraction.  We need to say no, too. Intelligent Australians don’t want cancer causing chemicals in their groundwater, and therefore food, when are the pollies going to catch up?

Meanwhile Julia and Tony wrangle over who gets to sell the farm.  I am no xenophobe, overseas investment is to be welcomed as long as food produced in Australia feeds Australians as well as foreigners.  The next big challenge for the world is feeding its ever expanding population.  Futurists are predicting global food shortages as well as lack and scarcity on a par with WWII rationing.  Australia escaped rationing then because it could feed itself and its friends in war torn Europe.  But if Chinese and Indian interests are buying Australian farms and food production facilities, as their huge populations increase beyond their land’s ability to feed their own, surely Australia’s food potential will all be shipped offshore?   And then where will the food for Australians come from?

In my local dairy based town, the co-operative have just sold their cheese making facility to an Indian conglomerate intent on continuing the current lines and installing apparatus for making milk powder for the Indian market.  They say they are going to pay local farmers more per litre for their milk than the current market price for ready freeze dried milk from purpose built facilities in Victoria.  Really?  Or is that just spin the starving dairy farmers fell for because the alternative – slaughtering the stock and selling up the farm five generations have slaved over, is too awful to contemplate?

If the world commits to cutting CO2 emissions and pricing pollution, how can we afford to fly in all our food?  And as populations increase and explode won’t current food source nations such as The Philippines, Vietnam, China, South Africa, Argentina and Japan lock down their resources to feed their own inhabitants?  These may seem like scaremongering worst case scenarios but we don’t know what the future holds and therefore we must be cautious, careful, take the long term view, be protective of our resources and practice careful husbandry (just like a farmer!)

Out in the real world, a NSW Dairy Farmer’s wife took her frustrations out on Facebook as her family struggled to stay alive on the paltry price paid for milk by Coles.  Over 75,000 people agreed with her plea for Wesfarmers to honour Aussie farmers with a fair price for providing the most basic of foodstuffs, full of goodness, which remains the staple table fair for healthy Australians.  Coles complained of an ‘orchestrated campaign’, apparently deleting the post to the ire of an extraordinary number of ordinary Australians who care more about Australia’s farming future and food security than they do about another buck in their hip pocket.

If only the duopoly which dominates Australia’s food intake would listen to their customers and realise that there is a global revolution away from fast food in favour of slow food and a visible chain from farmer to plate.  Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver, Stephanie Alexander and Richard Cornish, among others, are as passionate about the origins of food as they are about the final plate on the table.  Discerning customers are fed up with factory style farming and the tasteless pap it produces.  They want real food that tastes good, is rich in nutrients and really fuels our bodies, as well as feeds us.

Sure, there will always be a percentage of the population for whom price really matters, who stretch a dollar further than most of us would  believe possible.  Those people also know how to make do and mend and would be the first to support farmers demanding a fair price for their produce.  There will also always be people for whom liquor and cigarettes take priority over food and the supermarkets meet their needs too.

The increasing success of Farmer’s Markets are testimony to the fact that Australians are choosing healthier food options and want to be involved in the food chain from paddock to plate.  They want to reconnect with the men, women and children working the land.  They want their children to know where food comes from, to take responsibility for freshness, goodness and the life and health giving necessity of food.  We all need it, we all eat it, we all need to get more involved in making sure that we have plenty of Australian grown, reared, raised and nurtured food for every generation to come.