Four Corners. Monday. Mining V's Farming.

[The Fence]

Farming land lasts forever.

At the risk of upsetting you TC, and I am not intent on that so please don't take this personally....I'm neither for nor against mining.....it's a complicated matter indeed.

.....but I must ask.... can you really tell me all those chemicals that farmers, including yourself use, month after month, year after year, fertilisers used the same, year after year.....and, the irrigators who 'rape' those precious water aquifers.....will that not, sometime in the future, figure as being a bit ba5tardising....?

I have lived on a farm (1998-2004) smack bang in the middle of this latest area proposed for coal (yes it was shown on the 4C segment ) and I can tell you that the neighbours' water pumps did not stop...!...and the tail-water washed giant gullys out into the Mooki River straight across from my bedroom window.....! Silted up the river like a plug in a sink...I've seen it...farmers degrading the landscape, above and below the surface....

Also, the neighbours a few doors down the river have their chemical 'dump' out in the middle of the black soil plain (I know, I delivered the drums personally) and it is sodden with a white residue with literally hundreds of used chemical containers rotting and leaking out onto the land....I bet they cleaned that up quick smart when BHP came about doing their studies....

Not a butterfly to be seen these days....chemicals..? who knows, but I have my suspicions.

The next place I lived was closer in to town but surrounded by irrigators and, again, the pumps did not stop..... and our house water bore ran dry....Oh...but the pumps did not stop.....

one neighbour (on 90 acres) sold his water lic. so the govt. could on-sell it to an irrigator...but the guy who sold the lic, never actually used the water....cause he didn't have any worth speaking of...!
But the right to use that amount of water on the lic has now been given to someone up the road with more water under them who will indeed use it....how is this saving water...???

Sorry Mate.... but as you say...there are indeed two sides to this story. Why is this bit never told....?
....well it will when the miners hand over their studies...but of course that will be called a lie won't it...!

Hasn't the miner in question now committed to only mining the ridges and not the black soil...? That's what has been committed to when I last heard anyway....I could be wrong....

I've heard our local Member has even sold out to the mines and yet he is siding against them...c'mon.....

What do you make of that...?

I just like to see those two sides to a story...fully disclosed that is...

 

[topcropper]

.....but I must ask.... can you really tell me all those chemicals that farmers, including yourself use, month after month, year after year, fertilisers used the same, year after year.....and, the irrigators who 'rape' those precious water aquifers.....will that not, sometime in the future, figure as being a bit ba5tardising....?:

G'day Thorpie.

I'd say all that nasty fertilizer and chemical is why farmers have been able to increase food production as much as they have. And, farmers haven't benefited, it's been the consumer, and the extra billions on the planet. The only ones to lose are the farmers. Increased food production means stable prices.

Ban globally all fertilizer and chemical right now. It would slash my production by two thirds, but prices wouldn't rise by 3 times, they'd rise by 10 times. Me and every other farmer would be the winner. Increased food production does not benefit the farmer. We'd be better off with lower production. Everyone else is the winner.

Roundup has been a good thing for the environment. It's roundup or ploughing, nothing else.

I'm no fan of irrigation. It was over allocated everywhere. It's been cut back, as you would know, up to 95% in that little spot you were. Or will be once the cuts are fully in.

I have lived on a farm (1998-2004) smack bang in the middle of this latest area proposed for coal (yes it was shown on the 4C segment ) and I can tell you that the neighbours' water pumps did not stop...!...and the tail-water washed giant gullys out into the Mooki River straight across from my bedroom window.....! Silted up the river like a plug in a sink...I've seen it...farmers degrading the landscape, above and below the surface....

Also, the neighbours a few doors down the river have their chemical 'dump' out in the middle of the black soil plain (I know, I delivered the drums personally) and it is sodden with a white residue with literally hundreds of used chemical containers rotting and leaking out onto the land....I bet they cleaned that up quick smart when BHP came about doing their studies....

Not a butterfly to be seen these days....chemicals..? who knows, but I have my suspicions.

The next place I lived was closer in to town but surrounded by irrigators and, again, the pumps did not stop..... and our house water bore ran dry....Oh...but the pumps did not stop.....

one neighbour (on 90 acres) sold his water lic. so the govt. could on-sell it to an irrigator...but the guy who sold the lic, never actually used the water....cause he didn't have any worth speaking of...!
But the right to use that amount of water on the lic has now been given to someone up the road with more water under them who will indeed use it....how is this saving water...???:

Not much I can say about that. If that's what happened, then not good, but not surprised either. I don't think I've every denyed that agriculture had environmental problems. But they pale compared to mining.

Sorry Mate.... but as you say...there are indeed two sides to this story. Why is this bit never told....?
....well it will when the miners hand over their studies...but of course that will be called a lie won't it...!

Hasn't the miner in question now committed to only mining the ridges and not the black soil...? That's what has been committed to when I last heard anyway....I could be wrong....

I've heard our local Member has even sold out to the mines and yet he is siding against them...c'mon.....

What do you make of that...?

I just like to see those two sides to a story...fully disclosed that is...

Hopefully they will leave the plains alone.

Sold out eh? Haven't heard that one.


See ya's.

 

[battler]

If the miners are able to reinstate the land, by putting the topsoil etc back after removing 200 years worth of coal, what do they use to backfill the hole to bring it back to the original levels?

 

[WinstonWolfe]

TC, if I was in your shoes, I'd consider getting together with my farmer mates, the ones with the top coal seams, and form a coal mining company of our own.

Get a coal mining consultant in, and do a proper feasibility ax, and a proper business plan.

Then get around and talk to some people with capital, like the Japs and Chinese and Koreans.....

It wouldn't be long before you had a much more profitable business plan then selling to some fat a$$ with NSW State Labor in their back pocket.

Whatever any third party is prepared to offer you for the land, it will be a lot less then you could make doing your own deal.

Further, once you had control, just to pee off the polies, you could drag out start time on operations until you farmer owners thought the world needed the coal from those seams.

Retain control at all costs I say.

No reason you and your buddies can't become Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer, or Ken Talbot. Rudd would have to back a grass roots operation like that.....would do his image good to support the little fella against the conglomerates.

 

[Bill.L]

Hi all,

Just want to clear up a few misconceptions....

TC, in any type of Environmental Impact Report, the farm land you are on will be regarded a lot lower than the useless scrub up woop woop. That scrub will be "natural" and have a rating as to its rarity, unique flora and fauna etc. Farmland is already regarded as degraded because of destruction of natural habitat.
As for "economic utility" the mine will come in as much better for the local community.

I actually think that the best form of defense here is attacking the govt's both fed and state, on the amount of CO2 burning all this coal will cause. Highlighting as often as possible to all media about the 1.5 billion tonne of coal, think of the CO2 released etc. (I didn't say you had to believe in it, just that the media and govts do, you're just highlighting the hypocrisy of it)

Hi Equity,

To those who doubt the integrity of an EIS for mine approval conducted in Australia, I suggest you attack the science in them rather than the process!

Umm, I have a degree in Environmental Science and have been involved on both sides of these things in different capacities in the past. The questions and answers in them will be whatever those with the money to commission them want them to be. The trick is to include only the "right" questions. If you want to produce an EIS about some farmland, trust me, piece of cake. It is the rehabilitation of "natural" that costs a few more dollars.

WW, BHP and Shen (something) already own the mining leases, nobody else can do it unless those 2 are willing to sell them.

bye

 

[WinstonWolfe]

WW, BHP and Shen (something) already own the mining leases, nobody else can do it unless those 2 are willing to sell them.

bye

Well......time to buy real estate in Quirindi and Willow Tree.

 

[HiEquity]

Hi Equity,

Umm, I have a degree in Environmental Science and have been involved on both sides of these things in different capacities in the past. The questions and answers in them will be whatever those with the money to commission them want them to be. The trick is to include only the "right" questions. If you want to produce an EIS about some farmland, trust me, piece of cake. It is the rehabilitation of "natural" that costs a few more dollars.

I agree Bill - this is why I was advocating focussing an attack here - the document is likely to be doctored in a particular way and being able to point out the real flaws is very powerful. Takes some hard work to do properly though! Just using generalist comments like "what about the drilling mud" won't do anything for the credibility of your argument...

I also agree that degraded farm land has little environmental value so this is potentially a case of diminishing returns with an attack on these lines - it depends on the claims made in the EIS though.

TC, I didn't say the land would be good as new again after rehab, just that it is very likely to be arable. Anyway, I agree there is a strategic value to Australia in its prime arable land. But that is still represented by a dollar value. Take the argument to its hypothetical extreme - ask the govt or Joe Public if it would trade 1% of our prime arable land for an oil resource the size of the Arab states and the answer would quite rightly be an emphatic yes. We are a long way from being a net importer of food anyway so it would be a fantastic trade off. You can't say nobody should touch our arable land "no matter what" - it depends on the value of the alternative use.

In this case it isn't so clear cut obviously. Your argument about strategic value has to be given a dollar value. Govt faces these problems every day. What is the value of supplying reliable power and clean drinking water and sanitation to an Arnhem land community? What is the value of a life saved there when we know how much it costs to provide these things and what happens when we don't? What is the strategic value of our agricultural land as our future bread basket? You have to be able to say that $x is the value and here we are wrecking that value by only getting $y for (potentially) destroying it. This allows people to get a feel for what the trade offs are.

Anyway we do have lots of coal (the cost of extraction is the question of course) but gas (CSM - coal seam methane - can be turned into effectively natural gas with a bit of trickery...) is the real issue here, which we have much less of. This is very valuable stuff if available at reasonable cost - comparable to oil in fact as east coast gas prices will soon reach international parity with (hopefully) export facilities being developed in Qld after decades of our onshore gas fields being stranded in the small Australian market and resultant incredibly low gas prices.

The net present value of a decent resource in that area could therefore be measured in the many billions... so don't underestimate what could be at stake here! IMO the value picture is not at all clear as the difference in cost between easily accessible CSM up your way and the more difficult stuff out in the scrub could also be well into the billions! Food for thought anyway... if not for the table... Sorry, that was a very poor attempt at a joke!

Good luck with it anyway!

 

[HiEquity]

Well......time to buy real estate in Quirindi and Willow Tree.

WW, I think you should be buying exploration permits not the land - as has been pointed out owning the land gives you no right to the resource - only the right to be bought out at (typically above) market prices.

FYI - proving up a resource at this scale costs at least tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars... if you know what you are doing!

 

[WinstonWolfe]

WW, I think you should be buying exploration permits not the land - as has been pointed out owning the land gives you no right to the resource - only the right to be bought out at (typically above) market prices.

FYI - proving up a resource at this scale costs at least tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars... if you know what you are doing!

which is why I originally suggested TC get a fat equity partner.

as for me, I was referring to buying commercial property in nearby towns such as the names I mentioned, but am half way through the 4C program and realized values have most likely gone up dramatically.

 

[Mooze]

Have you considered getting other user groups involved? Hikers, mountain bikers etc - basically the outdoor community. Mining is our worst enemy - even in cities we can usually find somewhere to ride/run/hike etc - mining areas become serious no go zones even after supposed rehabilitation.

Also agree on the attack the EIS. The one done for Shellharbour Marina indicated no reef, no endangered species. The references to the reef had been removed by asking the right questions - there most definitely was one there (I had photos taken whilst diving down there).

Good luck with it

 

[topcropper]

. Mining is our worst enemy -

Look Mooze, thanks for the encouragement. But I'm not against mining. I'd be a hypocrite if I was, as I've been on here ranting and raving about mining and BHP and RIO and the commodity boom for years now.

Mining produces well over half Australia's export income, and as manufacturing slowly dies here that's just going to increase ever further. And as we fill this place up with ever more people who all want to live in the cities and not work in a factory, mining will be more important still. Mining is the reason for our current high standard of living and will be even more going forward.

Google 'dutch disease'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

That's whats happened to us. Mining has ment we don't need manufacturing. Mining has also increased our wealth immensely, and thus our wages. So that's increased the value of our dollar, which also disadvantages manufacturing.

I just want to clear that up now.



As Thorpie pointed out, agriculture has it's share of environmental problems. But that comes with feeding 6 billion people. If we'd have stayed at 1.5 billion as it was in 1900 the entire world could be fed organically and with very little irrigation.


See ya's.

 

[topcropper]

TC, in any type of Environmental Impact Report, the farm land you are on will be regarded a lot lower than the useless scrub up woop woop. That scrub will be "natural" and have a rating as to its rarity, unique flora and fauna etc. Farmland is already regarded as degraded because of destruction of natural habitat.

OK. Never thought about that. I'd have thought it would be the other way around.

See ya's.

 

[battler]

But does the council rate it as improved value, and if so, improved over what?

 

[topcropper]

TC, in any type of Environmental Impact Report, the farm land you are on will be regarded a lot lower than the useless scrub up woop woop. That scrub will be "natural" and have a rating as to its rarity, unique flora and fauna etc. Farmland is already regarded as degraded because of destruction of natural habitat.

This is a terribly important point you've bought up Bill.

That bit of scrub I've been talking about,....

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=-30.845647,149.518433&spn=0.79467,1.229095&z=10

......north west of the Liverpool Plains? There is plenty of coal seam methan gas activity going on in there around the edges on private land, so there has to be coal there too. The only reason this patch of scrub still exists is because it was agriculturally worthless. No farmer wanted it 100 years ago, or any who did quickly went broke. The only thing it will grow is trees, not good enough for grass. Grab a street view from one of the main roads going through?

So it gets declared a national park. The loggers get kicked off, and logging was one of the few things it had any value for. Under your theory about EIS, this is more valuable than the Liverpool Plains.

If anyone proposed coal mining here there would cause a big stink because it's a national park..!!


Food for thought.


See ya's.

 

[Bill.L]

Hi TC,

Under your theory about EIS, this is more valuable than the Liverpool Plains.

My theory

Down here in Vic, we have the land all zoned according to its Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs).

I was about to try and explain the vegetation rules, but it would take 50 pages. Instead, I'm just going to quote a few different bits that may paint the picture.

Basically, farmed land that does not have native grasses is excluded.

An ecological vegetation class consists of one or a number of floristic communities that appear to be associated with a recognisable environmental niche, and which can be characterised by a number of their adaptive responses to ecological processes that operate at the landscape scale level. Each ecological vegetation class is described through a combination of its floristic, life-form and reproductive strategy profiles, and through an inferred fidelity to particular environmental attributes.

The Vegetation Quality Assessment Manual describes the application of the habitat hectares method for assessing native vegetation quality. It provides a step-by-step approach to conducting assessments in the field and useful tips for ensuring consistency of application. The method involves the assessment of a number of site-based habitat and landscape components against a pre-determined EVC benchmark.

Sounds like we can employ few greenies yet??

Conserving biodiversity is also fundamental to both quality of life and economic well-being, both now and in the future.

Greenie speak for "you can't cut down that tree"

The primary overarching legislation with biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of native flora and fauna is the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, administered by the Department of Sustainabillity and Environment. The Act remains the landmark biodiversity legislation in Australia and is designed to address biodiversity issues on both public and private land.

We've got you by the short and curly's if you cut that tree.

That is here, I'll bet NSW has something similar, or shortly will.

The big companies know all this stuff and how to defer attention away from what they really want. If their initial proposals are to dig up some scrubby hillside, and someone finds a unique bug that only breeds there every 7 years, after much media attention about saving the 7 year bug, a stack of reports about the habitat of the 7 year bug, after politicians jump on the 7 year bug, etc, etc......
The big company will relent and dig up the degraded farmland instead.
Most will end up happy. The greenies will have saved a bit of bush, the pollies have shown they are in charge and saved the environment, while still creating local jobs, and the farmers have won by getting a good price for their land, which will be rehabilitated to native scrubland/trees after the mining.

bye

 

[The Fence]

The big companies know all this stuff and how to defer attention away from what they really want. If their initial proposals are to dig up some scrubby hillside, and someone finds a unique bug that only breeds there every 7 years, after much media attention about saving the 7 year bug, a stack of reports about the habitat of the 7 year bug, after politicians jump on the 7 year bug, etc, etc......
The big company will relent and dig up the degraded farmland instead.
Most will end up happy. The greenies will have saved a bit of bush, the pollies have shown they are in charge and saved the environment, while still creating local jobs, and the farmers have won by getting a good price for their land, which will be rehabilitated to native scrubland/trees after the mining.

bye

therein lies the main reason the farmers are kicking up a big stink about their land with the main theme being the water aquifers.....because adjacent to this beautiful black soil plains is the Doona State forest and some other private ridge country.... it is here that the Gov has approved longwall mining and BHP has said they will only mine the ridges, not the balack soil....but, lets have a closer look....mining a State forest...!!!

As I said before I lived on a property that included black soil and ridge country and it's immediate neighbour is this very State forest.....do I need to mention the fact that we had koala bears roaming freely thru our houseyard on a regular basis....brings me to Bills' 7 year bug...or should we say thorpys Caroona Koalas.....why have we not had any protest whatsoever from wildlife people...?

So...will BHP relent and give up trying to mine the black soil and go for the State Forest instead...?

If Bill is right, then the water aquifers under the black soil will remain undisturbed but the koalas will be living in shaky trees....!

Interesting times here locally, yes the property market has moved on up generally, but it has stalled the last few months awaiting further confirmation the mine will go ahead....Which it will.....

I do know of one particular businessman in Quirindi who is buying up all he can get his hands on both residential and commercial.....and he's no fool.

I heard that BHP will employ up to 120 staff when it's in full swing, now that's alotta office space needed....

Disclaimer: what we hear and what becomes fact in QDI these days can easilly be two different things...