Dr MIKE WALKER
Fascinating.
Let me say from the outset, I and many others applaud the attempts to increase the importance of Tasmania as a sustainable Food Bowl – what we dont applaud is how it’s being done.
As a retired senior DPIPWE public servant/ag scientist/consultant now primary producer in the NW (pyrethrum,poppies, pastures,carrots, onions) I keep my journalistic inclinations alive with a regular column in the monthly trade journal “Good Fruit and Vegetables”
I’ve been writing about water and the Food Bowl for about 18 months now.I’ve already had a go about the dangers of re creating the Murray Darling in the Midlands which is the major threat of Bartletts “vision”,focused as it is on the electorate of Lyons (I was the author of the Tasmanian chapter of the National Land and Water Audit looking at dryland salinity in 2000).
The Food Bowl has been around since WW2,when Operations Dewpoint, Dewcrisp and Dewpearl supplied food to the allied forces in the Far East. They’ve now become Simplot and McCains.
As it says in the article, 50% of the farm gate value of Tasmanian produce comes from the irrigated 4% of farmed land. I farm in the centre of it and we’ve just spent $100 000 on a bore to supplement our dams, mains and a centre pivot.
My September piece for “Good Fruit and Vegetables” will focus on the totally different needs of the Midlands and the North West.
The bore cost $11 000 which, if we get one of those 11 schemes up here,would buy me the right to 10 megs. The recurrent cost per meg could be up to $150 on top.
This is because the “one size fits all” condition of the schemes in the National Water Initiative which has enabled Bartlett to develop his vision.
He is obviously has to rely on his advisers, being from an IT background. I was a bit startled at a meeting in Hobart recently to hear one person, who informs those advisers, dismiss the traditional food bowl as “a pocket of land in the North West”
Based as the Initiative is on the Murray Darling, those schemes have to have pumps, pipes and meters.
Subsidising a large storage dam at the head of a couple of catchments to top up during summer creeks which are already being used as irrigation supply channels doesn’t appear to be an option(the nice thing about reticulated pipes is that meters can be put on them and the bureaucrats can charge whatever they want for the water)
You’ll have to wait until the first week in September for my piece in “Good Fruit and Vegetables” but if you would like a sample of my ramblings so far, drop me a request on: [email protected]
