What a good thing elections are. Were it not for the looming federal election – not forgetting those in Victoria and NSW – we city slickers might by now have forgotten the drought that continues to damage much of eastern Australia. Collections taken, donations given, end of.
Not so our tireless Prime Minister. Scott Morrison’s put the drought at the top of his to-do list of problems to be sorted before the election. And having fixed high electricity prices earlier in the week, on Friday he held a national drought summit, announcing a $5 billion Drought Future Fund.
From July 2020, the fund will provide grants worth up to $100 million a year for community services and research, and to assist the adoption of technology to support long-term sustainability in periods of drought.
Details yet to be decided. What it amounts to is anybody’s guess. It could be something that really would improve our farmers’ resilience to future droughts, or it could be just another slush fund for spending in National Party electorates.
The thing about droughts is that when the media eventually find out about them and start making a fuss, there’s an outpouring of concern and everyone wants to help. Individuals reach for their purse; governments want to be seen taking charge and doing the right thing by our poor stricken farmers, the salt of the earth (to quote a red-headed prince).
It’s always assumed that farmers have been hit by some unpredictable natural disaster beyond their control, the worst in years. They’ve all been hit hard, and so are desperately in need of our sympathy and support.
The trouble with this familiar, feel-good ritual is that it isn’t true. There’s nothing more predictable than that this drought will soon enough be followed by another, and one after that.
What’s more, though the Nats deny its existence, climate change means droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe, thanks to higher average temperatures – up about 1 degree since 1950 – and higher rates of evaporation.
It is possible for farmers to prepare for drought. And the truth is, most – yes, most – farmers have prepared, and as a consequence aren’t doing as badly as some. In their efforts to whip up our sympathy, the media give us an exaggerated impression of the drought’s severity, showing us the least-prepared farms rather than the best.
This matters because, as two economists from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences have written recently, “in our rush to help, we need to make sure well-meaning responses don’t do more harm than good”.
“Drought support could undermine farmer preparedness for future droughts and longer-term adaptation to climate change,” they say.
They argue that, to remain internationally competitive, our farmers need to increase their productivity, both by adopting improved technologies and management practices, and by shifting resources towards the most productive activities and the most efficient (that is, bigger) farmers.
“Supporting drought-affected farms has the potential to slow both these processes, weakening productivity growth,” they say.
Professor John Freebairn, of the University of Melbourne, notes that government drought assistance usually falls into three categories: income support for low-income farm families, subsidies for farm businesses and support for better decision-making.
The existing policy of making the equivalent of means-tested dole payments available to farmers is justified on social grounds.
But farm subsidies on loans, freight and fodder – all of which we’ve seen this time – can have unintended side effects. “Knowing that subsidies will be provided during drought . . . reduces the incentives for some farmers to adopt appropriate drought preparation and mitigation strategies,” Freebairn says.
By contrast, providing meteorological information on seasonal conditions, or hands-on education and support to individual farmers in developing more appropriate decision-making strategies, actually makes farming more robust and self-sufficient.
Suspending justified scepticism, at its best Morrison’s proposed drought future fund could go a step further and finance water infrastructure and drought resilience projects.
So, what can farmers do to make their farms more resilient to drought? Professor David Lindenmayer and Michelle Young, of the Fenner school of environment and society at the Australian National University, have plenty of ideas.
They say a key approach is to invest in improving the condition of natural assets on farms, such as shelter belts (tree lanes planted alongside paddocks), patches of remnant vegetation, farm dams and watercourses.
This increases the land’s resilience to drought, with collateral benefit to the health and wellbeing of farmers.
“When done well, active land management can help slow down or even reverse land degradation, improve biodiversity, and increase profitability,” they say.
Restored riverbank vegetation can improve dry matter production in nearby paddocks, leading to greater milk production in dairy herds and boosting farm income by up to 5 per cent.
Shelter belts can lower wind speeds and wind chill, boosting pasture production for livestock by up to 8 per cent, at the same time as providing habitat for animals and birds.
Their work with farmers in NSW who invested in their natural assets before or during the Millennium drought suggests these farmers are faring better in the present drought, they say.
“The need to invest in maintaining and improving our vegetation, water and soil has never been more apparent than it is now. We have a chance to determine the long-term future of much of Australia’s agricultural land.”