Rural Community Fights Farm To Plantation Takeover

Kim Booth Greens MR

“Last year we saw 170 farmers gather at South Riana to protest and today another 40 residents gathered at very short notice to raise their voices against another farm going under to trees,” Mr Booth said. “What we are seeing throughout the north of Tasmania is a plague of plantations taking over family farms and driving out hardworking rural families. It’s a shameful and unjust situation that is backed by both Labor and Liberal at a state and federal level.”

As Greens Attend Another Rural Crisis meeting
Kim Booth MHA
Greens Opposition Spokesperson for Primary Industry
Friday, 14 December 2007

The Tasmanian Greens today called on Minister for Primary Industry David Llewellyn and Minister for Planning Steve Kons, to jointly address the crisis facing rural communities as more and more prime family farms go under to tree plantations, threatening the viability of the state’s agricultural sector and causing enormous anxiety and distress throughout the north of Tasmania.

Greens Shadow Primary Industry spokesperson Kim Booth today travelled to Upper Natone in the state’s northwest to meet with around 40 locals who had gathered at the Upper Natone Community Hall, outraged that another prime farm in the area is going under to tree plantations.

The meeting unanimously carried two motions;

1. That Managed Investment Schemes be abolished; and

2. That the planning scheme be amended to make plantations on class one, two, three and four land Prohibited and Discretionary on five, six, seven and eight.

The meeting also resolved to form a committee to link up with affected farmers and rural communities around the state to join forces in fighting the takeover of farms by MIS driven plantation schemes.

“Last year we saw 170 farmers gather at South Riana to protest and today another 40 residents gathered at very short notice to raise their voices against another farm going under to trees,” Mr Booth said.

“What we are seeing throughout the north of Tasmania is a plague of plantations taking over family farms and driving out hardworking rural families. It’s a shameful and unjust situation that is backed by both Labor and Liberal at a state and federal level.”

“Minister Llewellyn seems totally ignorant of the very real threat of collapse of rural communities through plantations sucking the life, water and prosperity out of the land and threatening the viability of whole regions of the north of the state,” Mr Booth said.

“The Liberals’ Jeremy Rockliff has been in parliament talking up the interests of plantation companies over farmers and proclaiming that plantation establishment is all part of the ‘market’; yet MIS schemes distort the rural market place by unfairly stuffing MIS companies pockets with tax dollars meaning companies like Gunns Ltd. can outbid neighbouring farmers, who are desperately trying to compete to secure a future for their families.”

“I’m calling on Minister Llewellyn and Minister Kons to investigate how many family farms have been lost to plantations; what are the losses to the rural sector through loss of jobs, income, future earning potential and opportunity costs to rural areas and how many farms they are happy to see disappear before they wake up to the crisis and start to act.”

“It is reprehensible that the communities are crying out about the injustice of this situation and yet the government ignores them whilst the Liberals tell them that they should consider the profits of plantation companies.”

“The Greens won’t be ignoring communities like Upper Natone and we will be ramping up our fight to get MIS schemes for forestry plantations abolished and family farms kept in the hands of family farmers where they belong,” Mr Booth concluded.