General News
18 April, 2025
BARRY'S CORNER: Pest debate
Few people who own land of any kind would reveal that they did not appreciate or value it beyond an economic rating.
When the settlers came with a gleam in the eye and strength in their arms they soon got rid of those pesky trees.
The squatters before them over-grazed the runs.
The timber was just burned or sent away for the furnaces for transport or the steam boilers of the gold mines.
Much has been learnt in the past 100 years and there is a great turnaround from that early era, ranging from fallow crop systems to satellite navigation and modern machinery.
There have been numerous attempts made since to encourage vegetation-covered paddocks rather than three years fallow, crops and grass.
Results have been significant, with improved soil health and far less destructive dust storms.
In the 1940sand '50s there was the Soil Conservation Authority and much was achieved promoting rabbit destruction, fixing up gully erosion and suggesting ways to hold the soil together.
From this evolved Landcare, which gave the community a chance to identify district problems and try to repair some damage.
There has been a push and take-up for growing food organically, with a system of checks and balances and proof of methods.
There is a much greater interest in producing food that can be demonstrated to be produced perhaps without chemical, looked after with care and consideration.
Many districts have an innovater who leads the way for new initiaters.
Some are experiments and fall over if conditions do not suit.
But the neighbors are watching and take notice of success and failures.
Getting together to discuss some of the results is a good way to spread discoveries, and that helps to have it taken up much faster.
Some advocates for new ideas do not require wide success but can take longer to be convincing.
There are many ways to take on ideas.
Some fail for lack of design and some might fall over for lack of finance or lack of workforce.
But not all ideas need to be established straight away because on a farm there is a planning time and an implementation time, allowing inventors to ride out any initial storm of opposition.