Thread: The Darling river fish kill.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

All carriers should regard all loading as forward loading and stick together on this. "Below rate? I'll wait" should be the motto.

Likewise farmers should form marketing co-operatives to control supply and prices. "Mr. Colesworth, milk is now $3 at the farm gate."

Wishing you luck with all this, but the real question is really why should you even have to contemplate it?

DL

We have been told by our political masters , , that Australia will be the bread basket of Asia, with our supposed wealth of agriculture. Asia is to the North, so surely exporting this wealth would be through ports in the North. Two questions I guess. Where is the infrastructure to support this export, and who determined this, the same people who oversee the Murray Darling fiasco.? A third question. The cost of water allocation to farmers goes where? Back into infrastructure, or into some ones pocket?

Originally Posted by donh54

As long as you are willing to pay $25 for a pumpkin, fine. But of course the "Big Two" buyers will simply import their stock from overseas, and another local family, and all their employees are on the scrap heap.
The over-arching problem is that everyone wants good quality food (and other products as well), but they don't want to pay the actual cost.

And therein lies the big problem

Australians (and probably other western countries) have long believed they ‘deserve’ cheap food. Something like 70% of supermarket sales are based on price regardless of the bollocks people write on surveys about how they care for the animals/environment/workers etc. Supermarkets are masters of research and they know their customer
Look at their advertising campaigns and even the political rhetoric about ‘cost of living pressures’. Never innrecorded history has food and clothing been so cheap relative to daily earn

This will only change when the everyday Australian ACTUALLY votes with their wallet and supports genuinely local and ‘smart’ production chains.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

All carriers should regard all loading as forward loading and stick together on this. "Below rate? I'll wait" should be the motto.

Likewise farmers should form marketing co-operatives to control supply and prices. "Mr. Colesworth, milk is now $3 at the farm gate."

Not so easy when you owe the banks money!

The cost of water allocation to farmers goes where? Back into infrastructure, or into some ones pocket?

What "infrastructure" its a RIVER.
I have NO idea where the money goes But it isn't being spent on keeping the river alive that's for sure.

Originally Posted by bob10

We have been told by our political masters , , that Australia will be the bread basket of Asia, with our supposed wealth of agriculture. Asia is to the North, so surely exporting this wealth would be through ports in the North. Two questions I guess. Where is the infrastructure to support this export, and who determined this, the same people who oversee the Murray Darling fiasco.? A third question. The cost of water allocation to farmers goes where? Back into infrastructure, or into some ones pocket?

Australia has massive compliance costs to tackle before we can seriously challenge the world market in many industries.
We could export lots more produce, but the brutal
Reality of paying out so much money to this agency, that regulator this auditor as well as the costs of systems to make the aforementioned agencies / regulators / auditors happy inflates our prices while our competitors work in unregulated sh*tshows that can undercut us

There has to be a balance, but when we have a preponderance of our population involved in either tertiary industry or no industry, our society in a bit unbalanced.

Of course, if we'd had decent rains in the last few years, we wouldn't be having this conversation

Originally Posted by trout1105

What "infrastructure" its a RIVER.
I have NO idea where the money goes But it isn't being spent on keeping the river alive that's for sure.

This infrastructure, I guess.

Department of Agriculture and Water Resources


Murray—Darling Basin Water Infrastructure Program