Australian farmers leaving the dinosaurs for dead

Written by: Duncan B. on 15 July 2021

Recently many Australians were fascinated to learn about the discovery in outback Queensland of the fossilised bones of what was Australia’s largest dinosaur Australotitan Cooperensis, nicknamed Cooper. Cooper is believed to have stood 6.5 metres high, was about 30 metres long and weighed over 70 tonnes. We can only imagine the damage that Cooper did as it trampled through the countryside of Prehistoric Queensland.

A group of dinosaurs has also been discovered in Canberra. They are known as the leadership of the National Party. With their denial of climate change, support for coal mining and their sabotage of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement, the National Party is doing more damage to the environment than a whole herd of Coopers could ever do.

Fortunately many Australian farmers are leaving the National Party dinosaurs for dead. The rural press regularly reports on farmers who are recognising the threat that climate change poses to agriculture and are going to great lengths to deal with that threat, working to set their farms up to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

Many farmers are working to make their farms carbon-neutral or even carbon-positive.  They are implementing numerous measures to reduce their carbon footprint.  They are planting trees, combatting soil erosion and restoring degraded areas. Many are active in organisations like Landcare. 

Farmers are making use of technology to better manage their use of water, electricity, fuel and other inputs such as fertiliser. They are finding ways to recycle waste water and waste products such as effluent from dairy farms. Solar power is being used extensively on many farms.   

There are also companies like Sundrop Farms at Port Augusta (SA). Here over 23,000 mirrors capture solar thermal energy which is used to provide electricity, heating and desalinated water for 20 hectares of glass houses, producing over 17,000 tonnes of truss tomatoes annually.

Progressive farmers are making Barnaby Joyce, Bridget McKenzie, Matt Canavan and the rest of the National Party leaders increasingly irrelevant. They belong back in the Cretaceous Period with Cooper and all the other dinosaurs.

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