Farmland must be just that

The Launceston City Council this week approved a development application that enables hens to be housed in a shed on an egg farm at Lalla. In doing so, the council rejected the objections of neighbours, including nearby a bed and breakfast tourism establishment.

For those of you a little uncertain about where Lalla is, you will find it west of Lilydale, deep in the heart of some of Tasmania’s best farming country. The B and B’s website even describes its location as being situated “…on the wine route in the middle of nowhere on thirty acres of verdant farmland…”

So let there be no mistake this is farming country and it was farming country long before it started to attract tourists.

There should be no controversy about an egg producer wanting to build a chook house in the country, but, this being Tasmania, of course there was. In this case, the dispute was about the proximity of the new chook shed to the tourist cottages, within the “attenuation” distance or buffer zone.

“The smell, the noise … we may even have to consider shutting our business down,” the owner said.

This case epitomises the need for constantly-updated right to farm legislation in Tasmania, for want of a better expression. That legislation is the Primary Industry Activities Protection Act that came into force in 1995 and which the state government is reviewing.

To quote from our submission to the government last year regarding its review:

“It was drafted to protect the rights of farmers to farm according to their normal, traditional, responsible practices with all their accompanying smells, noises, lights and to-ing and fro-ing without being subject to constant complaints and interference at the interface of the country and new residential development.”

Nevertheless, in places such as Lalla we are under pressure from non-farmers to stop what we are doing. That threatens our viability.

Those who come to the country for its lifestyle benefits must have a real appreciation that life for the neighbouring farmer must go on.

The TFGA believes we need an overarching state planning policy that takes account of the critical role that agriculture plays in Tasmania’s economic, social and environmental life. The policy has to recognise that agriculture is a pillar, perhaps the main pillar, of the Tasmanian economy.

Agriculture has to be at the top of the planning hierarchy, rather than, as our submission pout it, “pushing farmers into the spaces left when everything else has taken the space it needs”. Agriculture must not seen as the remainder, the bits that are left over when other uses have been catered for.

We would like to see a form of buyer beware certification. A person who buys land adjoining a farm must certify they accept the neighbouring farmer’s right to farm. Other states have similar requirements.

Sensible planning will minimise the possibility of disputes and is the best way to overcome the type of issue we have seen at Lalla. In the end, the city council approved the development, with environmental conditions.

Nobody sets out deliberately to affect water quality, create unwarranted noise or smells or antagonise their neighbours, but the reality must be that, in a farming landscape, farming just always take precedence.

This is particularly so when it also happens that there are other forces at work to end the conversion of forest to farmland in this state. That just reduces our options completely.
TFGA president Wayne Johnston