Partners in rural stewardship?

The rugged independent farmer pioneering the harsh land was an idealised image of the self we wanted to be, celebrated in poems, plays, movies and advertising images.

Though the poem may be unknown to a current generation, the romantic attachment to our unique landscape remains part of our self-image. Australians love our country, even if most have little personal experience of the bush.

Overlaid on popular images of the inland are far less positive pictures of the destruction of the habitats of iconic animals such as koalas, the effects of climate change and farm practices seen with drying rivers and starving livestock, and farmers being perceived as benefiting from cruelty and environmental harm. Statistics on the decline of our natural environment add factual weight to the images seen on the news.

“Australia’s highly diverse and predominantly endemic biodiversity is seriously imperilled. In the past two centuries, at least 27 mammals, 23 birds (including island species and subspecies), 4 frogs and over 60 plant species have vanished ... In addition, over 1500 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants are currently threatened with extinction, along with over 3000 ecosystem types) .... In Victoria, for instance, ~30% of the original native vegetation remains, and some vegetation types, such as grasslands and open woodlands, have been reduced by more than 99% since European settlement ... The situation for marine systems is far more uncertain owing to data limitations even for economically important species ...”

Ritchie, E. G., Bradshaw, C. J. A., Dickman, C. R.,Hobbs, R., Christopher, N., Johnston, E. L. & Woinarski, J., 2013. ‘Continental-Scale Governance Failure Will Hasten Loss of Australia’s Biodiversity’. Conservation Biology, vol 27, issue 6.

As a result, the farmer as the trusted steward of the land has taken a hammering. The images that speak of stewardship failure have driven pressures for restrictions upon farmers, to safeguard the welfare of animals and the environment. Demanding standards have come partly as legal requirements upon farmers. Higher requirements also come in the form of supermarket chain environmental and animal welfare purchasing standards, or standards for “ethical” brands. 

Other than in truck or beer advertisements, the image of the farmer in media has changed from the rugged individual fighting to win a living from a harsh land, to be the loving family man who cares for the environment and who is kind to his animals, or the modern rural businesswoman or caring mother who can combine ‘grit’ with style.

Modern society wants the farmer to protect the romantic vision they have of the bush, and through the supermarket, the street march, the internet and the ballot box they make their feelings known. Many farmers have, sometimes with a sense of grievance that what is expected of them is not fair, changed how they manage their farms to meet higher expectations. They have joined Landcare groups, planted trees, adopted no- or minimum-till methods, joined voluntary environmental stewardship schemes, set aside land under conservation covenants, and become much more sensitive to the winds of social change. 

 Community perceptions about what is going on in the bush are not finely tuned to differentiate between the farmers who are trying to be responsible stewards and those who do not. They are shaped by “the vibe” created through the media, and influenced by the statistics about the loss of our natural heritage, over-stressed waterways, drying soils and dying livestock. These are often linked to campaigns for restrictions on farming activities. Issues of image make it attractive for retailers to compete for consumer goodwill on the basis that “their” farmers are more responsible than most.

What people see and hear does not provide them with a comforting picture of rural stewardship, and makes it easier to argue for controls on farmers. 

Rural capacity to invest in stewardship

That irresponsible or incompetent farmers exist cannot be denied nor excused, but if the challenge of rural stewardship was only “stopping the bad guys”, things would be a whole lot simpler. Nature, space, evolution, demographics, history, climate, markets and many other factors work together to make rural sustainability surprisingly complex and very, very difficult. Really good people trying hard to do the right thing can experience depressingly poor stewardship outcomes.

Australia is a vast territory with a population density similar to Mongolia or Iceland. While its GDP per person is similar to economies like the USA and Great Britain, in terms of GDP per hectare Australia has one fifth of the GDP economic intensity of Great Britain, one eight of the United States and roughly the same as South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. Because business is also concentrated in cities, the economic density in the bush is very low.

Four out of five Australians live within 50 kilometres of the coast and two out of three live in capital cities. Roughly the same number of people live in Sydney as live in the whole of rural Australia.

A further challenge is the economic characteristics of farming. Owning land is generally a requirement to be a farmer, so the activity is capital intensive. Because of the nature of commodity markets, agriculture has a low return on that farming capital. It is subject to climate and commodity market vulnerability. “Free cash flow” from farming to spend on stewardship activities is limited and unreliable, and “stop/start” spending is not a recipe for successful environmental management.

These broad brush statistics indicate the basic challenges of rural land stewardship: a special and vulnerable ecology, a massive territory to be protected or restored, powerful industrial farming and mining forces impacting on the land, and relatively little money or manpower in rural areas to carry out protective or restorative work. This “high level” picture reflects the lived experience of those in the country who try to be responsible stewards and to hand on the national natural heritage in as good, or better, condition as when they were handed it.

Controlling 456 million hectares of agricultural land, farmers are the stewards of almost 60 per cent of Australia but this percentage is declining. Non-farming landholders are increasingly essential to conservation, and face their own challenges.

Throughout the last 20 years Native Title has also allowed Aboriginal citizens to acquire a substantial estate, complemented by land acquired through other State and Federal programs. National Parks are increasingly co-managed with traditional owners and complemented by Indigenous Protected Areas, often co-existent with farmland.

In addition, land-use has become diverse, eating into the lands used for traditional farming. More lands are being managed for conservation, as private conservation adds to the public conservation estate. Other uses that are increasing include mining, urbanisation, “lifestyle” blocks, and non-traditional agriculture. This diversification means landowners have increasingly diverse motivations and concerns in managing their lands.

There are significant variations in environmental and socio-economic conditions across the country. Socio-economic disadvantage is most evident in an arc from the south and east of Australia to the north and west, with large parts of the inland suffering significant disadvantage. There is a correlation between socio-economic disadvantage, low economic and population density, and Aboriginal lands.

There is a hierarchy of welfare shown by the statistics, with urban Australians at the top, rural Australians in the middle and Aboriginal Australians at the bottom. There are also significant differences in the environmental challenges, with more intensely farmed or mined lands generally having lost a greater part of their natural biodiversity than areas that are less touched.

The characteristic of the rural stewardship challenge

Until 1788, Australia was a mega-diverse continent untouched by the technologies of Europe, and by the economic imperatives of European man. All that changed the day Captain Philip brought his 1500 charges into Botany Bay. From that day, ecological destruction was inevitable. What was less certain was the degree of that harm.

Environmental harm comes in different forms, with different management challenges. Over-grazing, chemical contamination, land-clearing and other conventional farm environmental problems have simple and direct “farmer cause/environment effect” characteristics. Solutions involve stopping the harmful behaviour, then remediation. Conventional concepts of accountability can apply, though causes may not always be within the control of the farmer, and solutions may be beyond their capacity.

A more difficult problem arises where solutions require co-operation, perhaps spanning many land tenures and different types of enterprise. In emergencies, such as a bushfire, co-operation is likely to be limited only by the ability of people to respond. For many other problems co-operation is more difficult. Managing soil erosion by revegetation or earth works, or creating a biodiversity corridor, removing a weir that affects a number of properties, controlling the spread of a weed – these and many other rural stewardship responsibilities require collective action.

It is beyond the power of a landholder to force neighbourly co-operation, and there are barriers to that co-operation. For example, a weed that produces burrs may be a problem for a wool producer, but their neighbouring cattle producer may see that plant as a soil carbon or stream bank stabilisation resource; a landholder may have competing demands on their scarce time and resources; or how the work is to be done may interfere with their enterprise management. Personalities may also be an issue.

The third type of problem occurs when individual complications combine into a “vicious” mix. Controlling wild pigs that are destroying a wetland, for example, is very difficult because these animals breed and adapt, can travel large distances, are intelligent, and are generally not eradicable. Control can be costly, and can require overcoming bureaucratic hurdles or obtaining specialist support. Effective management typically requires close coordination that goes beyond mere cooperation, continuing investment, and hard and sometimes unpleasant work.

Competing interests may pose difficulties. A grain grower may want control to take place at a time when their crop is vulnerable, but a neighbouring sheep grazier may prefer control close to lambing, or a nearby landholder may benefit from having pig shooters pay for a farm-stay holiday. The cattle farmer may be concerned about the risk to his working dogs or to native animals from baits, and other people may have ethical concerns about the use of poisons, or may object to any person entering their land. Co-ordinated action can also require complicated administrative work, obtaining landholder or government permissions, securing funds or materials, managing the work and reporting.

The protection or restoration of environmental values requires more than good stewardship on individual properties – many environmental services have to be functional across large areas if good environmental conditions are to be achieved. You cannot protect a mobile species, a major river, or many other environmental resources, unless you can also manage at a landscape scale. Three difficulties deserve special attention:

• Management of many rural issues requires sustained, coordinated positive action. Land-use and land ownership fragmentation is a fundamental management challenge. These difficulties overlap with the problems of rural economics and welfare, which limit the capacity of communities.
• Three levels of government and a plethora of bodies working through different laws, programs and strategies make it confusing and difficult for citizens to work with government. Private arrangements such as industry codes and standards, consumer branding, and private environmental initiatives are also significant considerations for landholders. The result is a mosaic that is difficult to understand and co-ordinate.
• Expectations of good natural resource governance should reflect what is feasible for the people, if we are to maintain our sense of self as a fair and compassionate country. This should be a serious concern in managing the rural environment, particularly when considering the increasing lands under Aboriginal stewardship. 

Overall, while good stewardship by individuals is necessary to meet community expectations for the environment and for animal welfare, responsible farming is not sufficient. The resources available from rural communities, including farmers, are far short of what is needed to cope with existing problems and to guard against new ones. Even if large scale land-clearing were to be halted, resource conservation was to be improved and farmers were to embrace environmental initiatives, new problems will emerge due to the effects of climate change, new pest species, and increasing human pressure on the landscape.

The opening up of Northern Australia to large-scale irrigation will generate unavoidable environmental impacts, no matter how carefully farms are managed. The challenge of enabling Aboriginal people to lead good lives while exercising stewardship on their own lands will become increasingly important to all Australians.

Government alone does not have the money and power to bridge the stewardship gap. The series of Intergenerational Reports justify the conclusion that government funding will continue to decline, and governments at all levels are demonstrating their inability to maintain, let alone increase, rural support. Other public funding demands are politically far more pressing. However, there are other possibilities. Around the world and in Australia there is a largely unacknowledged contest between the public and the private sector over who will govern for the environment and social welfare and how this governance will be delivered.

New hybrids are emerging, as the private sector pursues voluntary stewardship codes, codes of conduct led by retailers and civil society organisations, environmental and social branding, private conservation estates, philanthropy and new market instruments for the environment. None of these is a solution in itself, and many are as yet unproven or not reliable. These initiatives are neither coordinated nor systematic, but they could be. Embracing the potential of a true hybrid approach to governing for the environment, and for human and animal welfare, is a beacon of hope but it requires heroic commitment and a great deal of imagination.

What is lacking, which is essential, is a true strategic partnership between all sectors, to tackle the challenge of rural lands sustainability.

WRITTEN BY:

Paul Martin

Director, UNE Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law