Environment
From "Maple Street Co-op News", Apr/May 2004

The Journey towards Sustainability on Farms
by John Muir

Some people think conventional industrial agriculture is on a downward spiral. This is the perception of many consumers. But I want to share with you details on the positive work we have been doing with horticultural farmers on the Sunshine Coast to address some of the environmental issues that confront them (and all of us, I believe, as we are also part of the issue as consumers!).

Barung Landcare has been working on such a project for the last four years. I've had the privilege to be the ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) Farmcare– Landcare in Horticulture facilitator for southeast Queensland (and The Philippines). This came about several years ago when Barung's management committee (including myself as the then co-ordinator) acknowledged that the group was not engaging enough with real commercial farmers. And so Barung developed a partnership with the local DPI (Department of Primary Industries) Horticultural Research and Extension staff at Nambour. Coincidentally, DPI was also interested in researching both bush food tucker species and the Landcare approach/phenomenon/ethic in SE Qld horticulture industry groups as well as in The Philippines.

The hypothesis was that there was not a lot of Landcare going on in Queensland horticulture. This was soon proven correct with a mail survey of Queensland fruit and vegetable growers by Sunshine Coast University business lecturer Dr Barbara Geno. Her survey showed that only 11% of horticultural growers were involved in local Landcare group activities, compared with 26% of growers in all agricultural industries in Queensland and 38% nationally.

So the project went ahead in 1999, and specifically targeted peak local-grower-only groups (and not the usual "whole of community" Landcare groups). These included the Sunshine Coast Sub-tropical Fruits Association, Golden Circle pineapple growers and banana growers. Naturally (one might say), many of my key stakeholders were organic growers or were implementing more sustainable best-management farming systems.

The challenges facing growers

These horticultural growers are being swamped with ever-changing information, regulation, legislation and course training on issues to do with quality assurance and food health and safety as well as environment and natural resource management. For example, there are local, state and national laws on vegetation management and water management, what constitutes good-quality agricultural land, spray drift, control of flying foxes and birds as well as provisions under the Integrated Planning Act (IPA) and the EPA – the list goes on.

All this is on top of the normal profitability and livelihood issues of farming, within a structure of ever-increasing costs and with globalisation pressures resulting in reduced competitiveness and price squeezes.

The message was "get big or get out" due to reduced economies of scale and productivity. Returns on capital were becoming insignificant and the risks were high.

How could farmers be green if they're in the red?

The growers I work with are in a dilemma in southeast Queensland. Should they continue to farm in an increasingly populated peri-urban area with all its challenges and problems, or sell up to housing developers to fund their retirement? (Note that the average age for farmers is 54 years.)

Water quality as a sustainability indicator

Despite all these issues – and the fact that the environment is not always uppermost in farmers' agendas or concerns compared to economic survival – there have been some interesting outcomes.

After working with growers for a few years and gaining their trust, respect and rapport, we identified water quality monitoring as a good sustainability indicator of the state of health of their farm (and wider catchment). Up till then, many people were pointing at farmers’ operations as the main cause of waterway nutrient loads and erosion sedimentation.

The farmers I worked with (mainly growers of fruit tree crops with grass groundcover under the trees) took up this challenge to identify just how much their farms were being affected by nutrient run-off and soil erosion. They were concerned that these effects would be bad for the downstream environments as well as for their hip pocket in terms of lost fertiliser and farm fertility.

This was also part of a wider, whole-farm environmental audit and sustainability assessment that was carried out – often termed an EMS (environmental management system) analysis.

So we formed a partnership with the Maroochy Waterwatch group at Nambour, which had been working with local communities around Sunshine Coast waterways for years and had over 140 volunteer sampling points in most local streams. The group had also been sampling water for nutrients and other water quality parameters from one local farm for a year and saw the need to expand the project. Thus a true partnership was born.

Water samples were taken from a diverse range of fruit-growing farms for potential "point source" monitoring. Simply put, the identification of poor water quality could be directly attributed to a sampled farm's sub-catchment source area upstream – i.e., cause and effect!

The data sets collected after a year and a half of sampling covered nitrates, phosphates and water clarity during rainfall events and included monthly monitoring of pH levels, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, salinity, temperature as well as nitrates and phosphates. These are presently being analysed.

So far, the growers are confident that the figures will stack up well compared to those for other land uses in these sub-catchments, e.g., dirt roads, home septic and sewage systems, urban and industrial storm water systems and the like.

Some experts are now suggesting that the more sustainable, enviro-friendly farms using best-management practices even have a filtering and cleansing role in the catchment landscape and will result in better water coming off their farmland than what runs onto it! This cleaner water is being termed "ecosystem services" or undervalued "externalities", or yet another important export from farming that’s similar to the provision of "scenic amenity", biodiversity and clean air!

Hence agriculture, I believe, can and does provide beneficial services in such a matrix of land uses in any catchment, as well as food production.

So while the jury is still out on the findings, the discussion and debate are very interesting and lead all of us involved to a better understanding of how we affect the landscape and environment around us, no matter what we do. The next question is: when will consumers start paying for the real cost of food, which includes these wider benefits for all?

The overall aim of such a Farmcare–Landcare in Horticulture project is to facilitate a better appreciation of these environmental issues and help growers and the wider community work together to address and solve such issues as they can.

This is just a little picture of the whole scene, but nevertheless a positive one. Remember: if one changes the little pictures, the big picture also changes! Landcare is all about people care!

[John Muir, at the time of writing, is the Farmcare Project Officer for Barung Landcare Association, based in Maleny, contracted to the Queensland DPI.]

[From "Maple Street Co-op News", April/May 2004; published by The Maple Street Co-operative Society Ltd, 37 Maple Street, Maleny, Qld 4552, Australia, tel (07) 5494 2088, email maplest.coop@ serv.net.au,
website http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au]