Salinity solution sought

The salinity problem plaguing farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin and other dry land regions around Australia is not going to improve unless private investors help out, according to experts who will meet in NSW state Parliament on Monday April 8.

David Pannell, Assoc Prof of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia, said salinity is one of the biggest environmental problems in Australia. He said the solution lies in implementing a "different style of agriculture that will overcome these problems."

The new style of agriculture involves replacing at least 30 per cent of the traditional crops with perennials.

Perennial pastures, shrubs and small trees, such as mallee oil, are all being investigated as possible substitutes for the traditional farm crops in a project trial in Western Australia.

"A proportion of the farmers' fields should be devoted to woody perennials which have a commercial value," said Pannell, who is involved in the WA mallee oils research project.

In the long term, farmers should realise the commercial value of growing mallee oil, but in the short term, he said, perennial pastures may substitute more easily into farms as they would provide grazing feed for livestock.

The question is, who will pay for the transformation into this new style of agriculture?

Planting millions of hectares of perennials to reverse the loss of natural vegetation to forest areas would cost the government up to $60 billion over the next decade, according to a discussion paper by the National Farmers Federation and The Australian Conservation Foundation.

"Private sector investment in revegetation and remediation is what's needed to drive this solution to the salinity problem," said Dr David Brand, director of the New Forests Program, Hancock Natural Resource Group.

He said "We are in the business of planting forests to solve problems such as salinity.

"The private investment company is the world's largest institutional investor in forests," said Brand who set up the company's Sydney-base fifteen months ago after being head-hunted from the NSW state forest department.

He is suggesting that his company will cover the costs for planting millions of hectares of perennials as long as the government pays them for the service to assist in preventing dry land salinity.

"We will need to reforest up to 9 million hectares in the Murray-Darling Basin area alone, so it's not a trivial project," he said.

Pannel said the salinity problem began years ago when farmers were clearing the land of native vegetation and replanting it with wheat and other crops that leak water. This caused the ground water to rise, bringing salt to the surface, which had a major impact on the environment.

Salinity kills fish in nearby rivers, destroys vegetation along the river, cracks roads, and it also ruins crops and contaminates drinking water he said.