Farm sustainability is a term which has been flung around with gay abandon for some years. Landcare groups, particularly those associated with networks, have been scrambling for Federal cash from the Natural Heritage Trust and, more recently, the Caring For Our Country programme.
Now that lucrative funding stream has started to dry up they are squealing about their jobs. That's all it is. They've had little impact on sustainability or biodiversity conservation. Their main concern has been about maintaining and increasing job opportunities in their networks.
Some of the funding has been used for things like erosion control and planting native vegetation but there has been a relatively small return for the hundreds of millions of dollars which has spent.
Has the money decreased the environmental footprint of a significant number of farms? The answer is no. Has the money halted the biodiversity decline in this country? Again the answer is no.
It's not possible to have an impact on these things when huge slabs of funding end up in increasing employment opportunities in Landcare networks rather than being spent on-ground works carried out as part of a 'whole of landscape' plan.
Tags:
landcare, landcare networks, sustainable farming
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