This article (with accompanying photographs) appeared in the Winter 2011 Issue 52 of the Victorian Landcare and Catchment Management magazine. The original can be seen as a pdf here
By David Cummings
Australian farmers are still looking for
the right balance between farm outputs
and environmental outputs. As human
population increases so do the pressures
on our farms. What will happen if
we keep pushing farm production
without proper consideration for the
environment? Farmers must also learn
to cope with the imperfectly defined
effects of climate change.
Six years ago, in the light of these
growing concerns, a group of interested
commercial farmers saw the need for
an organisation to represent the many
farmers who see that farm production
is intimately linked to environmental
production.
Because many of the existing
organisations are focused on the
production of individual commodities,
the opportunity to see the way the
whole system links and works together
was often being missed.
The Environmental Farmers Network
(EFN) provides a collective voice for
farmers who are concerned about the
declining health of native vegetation,
wetlands, waterways and soil and
interested in the long-term sustainabilityof farming in a social, environmental,
energy and economic sense.
The EFN promotes policies that further
the environmental health of private and
public land in farming areas. The policies
are built from member contributions.
The current policy coverage includes
biodiversity, farm greenhouse emissions,
bio-fuels, water, wetlands, farm forestry,
wind farms and climate change. The
EFN policies are used as a basis for
taking part in debates on the future
of farmlands and farm production in
southern Australia.
According to Andrew Bradey, EFN
President, the EFN aims to influence
standards, regulations and expectations,
and to be a force for change towards a
more sustainable future.
“We need to re-evaluate the
environmental costs of farming – and
investigate the role that farming land can
play in improving the general state of the
environment,” Andrew said.
For further information about
the Environmental Farmers
Network visit the website at www. environmentalfarmersnetwork.net.au
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