As an Australian and as someone who has watched the land get drier and drier, it just astounds me that 99% of farmers aren't trying new ways of doing things. I personally know farmers, stubborn as mules who will always do things the way they've been done. Until one day, the top soil will just be dust. Look at Peter Andrews and how he's been trying to change rural NSW and QLD - that's the way of the future 🙌
The problem isn't Peter Andrews, but how the governments fought him tooth and nail, every single step of the way, even though he proved his techniques a hundred times over. They had the evidence right in front of him, yet they still chose to fight against him and what he'd developed. Everything we see in this video.... is pretty easy to solve once you get the arrogance of bureaucrats and pencil-pushers out of the way. Unfortunately, they're the ones with the power and money.
They should take advice of Alan Savoy from the Savoy Institute in S Africa. He rehabilitated hundreds of thousands of hectares that the government had deemed irredeemable. He proved it works time and time again. He used sheep, but cattle, goats, camels and other livestock can be used too. The basic concept is you graze the animals elsewhere, or you feed them on site, then you lock them up tight together at night for about two weeks, until the ground is saturated and slick with muck. Then you move over and repeat. You don't return to those lands to graze until it has sprouted and gone to seed, basically a season. He showed 52% improvement in one year. The lands he improved remained green while all the land around his died, they both received the same amount of rainfall which was minimum. Seasonal streams became permanent, wells were recharged. The results can't be denied, he repeated them over and over again. Australia should try this, start on the edges of the desert and move inward. Use the animals' dung and urine. It's the natural way and it never fails. Ask the farmers to help out with providing muck if they can't get their animals over there. Cover the ground with about 4-6 inches of muck, it's enough to start growth and sequester fresh water, allowing life to begin to grow. Australia also floods a lot. That water could be channeled to dry areas thrrough a series of canals and percolation ponds. If Australia wanted to totem this desert green they would. They know how, it's not even new science. They choose not to, for whatever reason, probably to blame climate change. I'm not sure who decided that climate should never change but it always has. Im not sure mother nature cares about what they say. None of the remedies are expensive or complex logistically. They're quite simple.
Savory didn't come up with anything new. His farming technique is essentially the same as strip grazing, a technique that has been used for many decades. It can work well in places where rainfall is reliable and gentle. However, in places where rainfall is episodic and heavy, or is very low, or there is potential for wind erosion, it can simply denude the landscape and cause heavy erosion. Although strip grazing and similar techniques can be used in some parts of Australia, over most of the country it is either unsuitable or can only be used under specific climatic conditions.
Geesus, you're a genius who needs scientists to tell them anything when you this fountain of knowledge. Of course, no one has anywhere near the same intellect as you they couldn't possibly have ever thought of a plan like this, let alone any potential flaws such a plan might have
Is not the Australian government or the Australian people in charge,it’s the overseas companies that are responsible for the distraction-get as much as possible and move to other place.
37:00 Right on dude. The PROPER application of science to a problem. The problem is many decades ago the science was in mass production failing to understand what that can do to different environments, or to say it another way, what the environment will end up doing to that land being used for mass production. You have to figure out how to work within that natural system. Getting away from Australia and into tropical lands I see a lot of people starting to apply permaculture because it makes sense to do that there. I've seen tours of people's properties and it's absolutely wonderful and rich and full of life. Instead of chasing nature out, the agriculture was incorporated into that natural environment, and done properly it enriches the life there. These are the kinds of people I respect the most, those who figure out how to work within a natural system to provide benefit to themselves via farming and ALSO the natural system. This is sustainable agriculture.
Near 1000 comments and unlike you very very few seem to understand that there is no universal solution despite the story actually saying "just add water " will not work . And yes permaculture does work particularly for fruit , vegetables & nuts but not so much for cereal crops unless you want to pay $ 30 for a loaf of bread
You could take almost everything that has been said in the documentary and apply it, directly, to West Texas here in the northern Chihuahuan desert. No doubt one could say the same thing about vast stretches of Africa, Central and South America, and many others.
Correct mate but then that would not suit the agenda the clip maker is pushing. He talks about the desalination plant in Western Australia but does not mention no dams have been built for nearly 50 years whilst population in WA has risen. Rainfall in Australia is higher now than it was 50 years ago yet most is wasted as NOTHING has been done to capture this water and let it fill dams. I live in the outback in NSW and in the last 3 years we have exceeded annual rainfall by 50% or more. Up and down the coastline of Eastern Australia we have had flood after flood during the last 3-5 years and again most is wasted as dams are relatively full and during floods have to release water as they cannot store it. This video is an example of fitting the facts to the narrative you push. Given the right amount of funding someone could make a video debunking the majority of the claims in this video.
@@saintsone7877dams would not really help much. They would capture water im not saying they do nothing but if you want to improve environmental conditions you need to slow the water movement and increase green life from grass to trees. This helps replenish underground water and lowers water tables reducing salinity and future proofs for much longer then a dam. An increase of greenlife can increase the rainfall further inland while increasing the rate in which water infiltrates soils when large rainfall events happen. Dams store water that's it. Natural sequence farmer Peter Andrews has increased water holding over large swathes of land. Africans are holding back desertification of the sahara with slowing water in land and planting an abundance of plant life. Dams seem great but they stop water not slow it down.
@@saintsone7877 This video is from *2016.* _Debunk?_ Yeah, Nah. Dams in rivers destroy *whole ecosystems,* unless you're talking about ponds and lakes used as reservoirs. Yes, almost all the floods are on the east coast, refilling that huge underground water reserve. But the climate crisis...well that gets in the way of greed fuelled _business_ until it starts to impact their bottom line. On the whole, WA is *still* in drought despite the rain up north. I know the news only really covers the east coast, but the Perth suburbs have spread like mould in the past decade! Far too many market gardens are now sub-divisions, or industrial "parks." So, de-salination here is *needed* unless we get some of that rain you're complaining about. It's easy to think this is a new doco... *because nothing has changed* despite this being from 2016. M8. Pam {Tom's wife}
I am no proponent of the whole climate change agenda, but I will say that the biggest climate change issue is human-caused desertification. If we tackled desertification in a meaningful way, using regenerative land management methods, we will have made huge strides in the fight against climate change and environmental destruction. The crisis is one of land mismanagement more than pollution due to carbon emissions.
Farina was built to service the Central Australian Railway not as an agricultural town, when the railway pushed north so did a lot of the population, it was used as a stock loading area for many years and when the railway was rerouted further to the east in the mid 1980s that was when the town was left to decay. Now the friends of Farina are in the process of restoring buildings. There is now an amazing Bakery (opening in the winter months) a year round camp ground and a productive cattle farm.
Unfortunately when profit and greed prevail, our environment suffers. About 30 years ago I saw the result of trees being taken out of the soil (in an area that still had much vegetation and sources of free water). There were trees all around the New England area suffering from 'die back.' They were dying from the roots up. Trees and even small shrubs help to keep the land intact and flourishing (and also helps to stop landslides). Once you remove this vegetation, the salt table (which should be way down in the layers of soil) starts moving it's way to the top of the soil. This is what causes those big cracks in the ground. Furthermore, when it does eventually rain, that rain just goes straight through those cracks and the rest slides off the top, so even rain is repelled. On top of this, we have to contend with water in rivers being siphoned off upstream. There needs to be a better way to share the water as it flows from the upper parts of Australia right down to the south. Of course, there's degradation of the land from mining. They advertise that they'll replenish the land when they're done but we've not seen anywhere the amount that needs to be done compared to what has been ruined. Look at the coal seam gas invasion. Are the doing anything to replenish what is taken? Or is the land above going to be too unstable to be used for buildings and the like? Is the land above subject to collapsing? Added to this, there are farmers in the local areas where this mining takes place who are starting to see unusual illnesses in those who live near these sites. When are these 'profit and greed' types going to admit to harming the environment and the people who live nearby? So, to the solutions? * Regrow shrubs and trees around each section of your crops. Better still, plan your crops AROUND existing vegetation. *Add more CARBON into the soil. (Look up 'carbon farming' and 'natural sequence farming' on YT to find some excellent explanations.) *For the home gardener, make sure you start a compost bin and regularly add ready compost to your lawns, pot plants and gardens. There are loads of councils in Australia who will subsidise the cost of a compost bin and some councils give away bags of compost several times per year. *Look into the laws governing the flow of rivers, then start petitioning your national PM to make some changes. Someone here will have to tell us a better solution first! *Look into the requirements for mining near to communities and land and water sources. Petition to have these laws be more than four times the current requirements. Being fair, we do need the value of mining so we don't go broke as a nation but there does need to be better rules in place to keep environments and people safe. Anyone got any better ideas?
It made my heart swell to see people with such love for the land. And yes that man is correct in feeling like a child when walking next to someone whose linage walking that same earth is over 50,000 years old! Receptive to the wisdom. That made me smile ❤
@@vineleak7676 Race or background doesnt matter in the slightest, however, the relationship with the earth and wisdom passed down does. It just so happens that aboriginal Australians have a deeply significant connection and relationship with this land. So when it comes to restoring/preserving said land, turning to them for wisdom and learning is the best course of action for all 💛
I live in country South Australia and it is totally insane I would describe the wind as psychotic , it never stops in it so destructive . But of course there are no trees left so I'm assuming that's why
@@dingodog5677 ok so I lived in Canberra for a year which is surrounded by virgin bush and it rained quite often , however go across into the border into New South Wales where there are no trees and there's very little water at all. The trees need to be in the ground to keep the ground alive . When you have lots of trees the leaves fall down and create compost which creates healthy soil
@@James-kv6kb every chance you just moved into a drier climate zone. if you don’t have ground moisture or rain you won’t have trees. That’s why deserts and grasslands exist. Trees grow where they can, they don’t grow where they can’t. Everywhere west of the divide is arid or desert, naturally. The veg is all sclerophyll, large trees are non existent and most woody veg is savanna or shrubbery. Vegetation holds soil together but predominately grasses and shrubs, trees to a much lesser degree. Let’s not be blinded by our bias for trees. They are only a part of the ecosystems and not in all.
trees cause net evapotranspiration, but stop saline groundwater from rising to the soil surface and concentrating there. which kills most shallow rooted plants, and tree seedlings and damaging mature trees. The tree's shade and wind-disrupting canopy, reduces bare soil evaporation, and grass and row crop evapotranspiration. Generally trees don't cause precipitation, but forested areas create higher elevation for condensation (like a 70m eucalyptus or redwood), increase dew and fog interception, with more surface area from leaves and branches, or continuously forested areas where increased ET leads to cloud formation and more rain downwind (visible in the Amazon by satellite). Also where grass doesn't readily establish without trees and shrubs, the trees contribute critical soil carbon which increases the topsoil water holding capacity. @dingodog5677
I stopped at 3:52 to say the original inhabitants also burned the forest so they could hunt better leaving the eucalyptus tree the dominant tree which thrives on burn and regeneration, other deciduous plants didn’t return to some areas but the eucalyptus causes the fires when it’s hot because their leaves give off a haze of flammable gas when super hot.
@@Jumbo-k4t wow mate . 8 months ago I made this comment. Without going and watching this again, I would say that the accusations against the British settlers that they caused widespread environmental destruction is all relative. The first Australians also damaged things . Australia used to have these mega fauna , like a bear size koala and a super sized kangaroo. All lost because the first Australians just set the forest alight because hunting was beginning to get a little hard. Many animals died just so humans could get easier hunting. Unlike Europe who started farming and livestock rearing to get a regular meals, aborigines just burned everything to the ground.
@@garryrichardson4572 I don't know why you're so surprised that someone read your comment After eight months . And that's a lot of content for "I don't know what I wrote" and by the way I'm 52 I have known that information for a long time lol
CORRECT. Unfortunately the ability of different environments to get rid of the sodium in it varies, so the rate at which different environments can get rid of high salinity is a large variable. So there's that. You can't do the same thing all over the world. And for part of the world I don't know why you would. However in lands that have been lost to desertification almost exclusively because of man's lack of understanding of dealing with those lands, mostly white Europeans who moved around the world wanting to set up agriculture but certainly not limited to that, there are steps that can be taken to recover a good chunk of that and processes have been used by people around the world to do this, and not just one group of indigenous people. But over thousands of years indigenous people destroyed environments and also learned to restore certain environments, mostly to suit their needs. Having said that you didn't understand the reason why the salinity increased I guess, and to say you can reverse salinity when the ground water is full of sodium, well, have fun with that one. It would take a lot of effort. The one thing many humans fail to understand is that most natural environments are millions of years in the making. Also, hydrology is a very fickle thing.
Yes it is irreversible! Take 2 glasses. Nr. 1 with sea water Nr. 2 with fresh water. Take the salt from 1, add it to glass 2. Repeat in the reverse direction from glass 2 to glass 1.
Trees pump huge amounts of water out of the ground and into the air as vapour. When they are cut down, the water table rises and when it reaches the surface, evaporation leaves a salt deposit that kills plants. The recovery process involves planting tree belts next to the salt areas to start lowering the water table. As this happens the rain dissolves the salt and takes it back down underground where it came from, allowing more trees to be planted on the newly recovering strip of land. Salt tolerant eucalypt varieties collected from natural salt environments are particularly suitable for this. A slow process, but one lots of farmers in the West Australian wheat belt are using.
@@johndoh5182Salt in the Australian surface environment arises from ground water (itself usually not very salty) reaching the surface (upper meter) then evaporating, concentrating and then leaving behind an accumulation of salt. The problem over much of Australia's interior is that on balance (over decades) evaporation rates consistently exceed rainfall rates so the salt doesn't get flushed to the sea and goes on accumulating. Most contemporary fixes involve lowering the water table (by planting salt tolerant trees and saltbush). In places this has been very successful at containing damage from salt, but doesn't lend itself to agricultural activity. Technical fixes to the problem are likely possible using large scale desalination as is done in parts of the middle east. So far though many Australian farmers have demonstrated increased adeptness at desert farming, exploiting 'windows of productivity' or geographically dispersing their activity. Consequently, outside long established irrigation areas, there has not been much appetite for these types of project in Australia.
Coming from New Zealand and having travelled around Australia I have always been fascinated at how they farm, or make that attempt to farm, in much of Australia. At some stage there must be a reckoning to say that farming is just not viable in certain areas. This was a point made by their PM years ago. And while I realise that the farmers do not want their stock starving to death but they do and I find that abhorrent. Sorry. Here you would be prosecuted in court.
Oh so perfect mr peterdykzeul3074 we have two distinctly different countries.So quick to judge,must be nice to be perfect and be able to judge others with your 21st century eyes!!
Coming from Australia i never understood why NZ went from sheep to cattle and destroyed their waterways, remember when it was a "pristine" environment ? Now you can't even swim let alone drink from 90% of NZ fresh water ways. Enjoy not even being able to match Tasmania in exports thanks to your PM and regulatory anti farming lobbyists.
PM "making a point" but none of his (hers, themz, theyz, it's....) biz, ppl there know best. They figure it out, adjust, move on. So ANYTIME a head of livestock dies a farmer goes to jail? WTH, where do you draw the line? You can find deadstock on any large ranch anywhere in world, and dead 'wildlife' everywhere that it can exist, even more so in the desert where decay can become as slow as weathering. *You* wouldn't know if it died 6 months or 6 yrs ago, how why or where it came from, but some random unpleasant media images controls you. Reality will intrude on your privileged fantasyland one day.
..and clearing the forests east of the Great Dividing Range for all manner of lunacy. Clearing the tops of mountain ranges to install wind "farm" that are not Green at all. Then clearing wide swathes of forest from those toxic, inefficient follies to erect the cable towers for power delivery down to the coastal cities and towns.
@@ianking-jv4hg The latest land clearing data from Queensland show clearing at the rate of about 350K Ha per year. If you can show me more than a tiny portion of this is for turbines and power lines you may have a point. But nearly all of the RE infrastructure is in open country and most clearing is to turn woodland and forest into pasture for cattle. Are you angry with this far bigger problem, or is it only wind power that bothers you?
This is, Australia, my neighbor chopped his tree down so he can cement his whole driveway for his 4wd, people don't care, the greens are a mock.@@James-kv6kb
I saw a video of someone suggesting setting central australia under water (it's lower than sea level) by digging a canal towards the inland. by doing that, there would be less land to bridge for clouds to rain upon the land, also there would be a lot of evaporation from the inland sea. next to that, the inland sea could have several canals towards the coast, making good ways to transport all kind of things.
Two things, firstly the man blamed a rising water table for the salinity, but rather it was erosion due wind and water, as well as collapsing healthy soil biomes that cause the surface to drop closer to the salty water levels. Harvesting rainwater thru small frequent catchments made from onsite materials will dilute the salts and reverse biome collapse. Much Australia's agricultural products actually land in Asia, rather than the US. The farmers and ranchers would do well to follow Mark Sheperd's methods of growing biome- appropriate food-and feed-producing, polycultured shrubs, vines, trees in an alley cropped system that alternates with perennials, grasses, and annuals. This mimicks the most productive food system known, the savanna. The weeds, fertility, pests etc are managed by diverse livestock. This does more to rebuild soil, and appropriate soil moisture. It eliminates costly inputs and substitutes them with black line, profit-making management systems. The livestock are healthier, their products more nutritionally complete, the soil rebuilds, there is more climate resiliency built-in, there is more food security, the farmer had more economic resiliency, etc. This system is called restoration agriculture. The other side of using this is that it adds market diversity, too. Asians are very adaptable about foods, so the international market is there for novel food systems. Australia is full of permaculture innovators the government just needs to support education regarding these better methods (thinking of Lawton, Andrews, and Mollison, to name a few... Should be added that droving is reasonable provided they stop overgrazing. Eating the grasses to where they are less than several inches tall is a no-no and harms soil as well as the ability of the feed to recover quickly.
Worked in a Muslim country for long enough to eat camel dozens of times & Australian camels are said to be healthier than ones in Saudi Arabia. Maybe some sustained marketing might help…
@@macawism It would. Think they are likely keeping the carcasses out of the market, though. That's often what they do with culled animals in the US. That is wasteful. China is experiencing food shortages, as well as they (Oz) could use this to feed the poor in their country as well as sell to those wishing to buy novel game meat abroad at high prices.
Over clearing which causes the water to rise is the number one reason for salinity and salt pans. Salinity has nothing to do with soil erosion, I lived with salinity turning cropping paddocks into bare salty earth. We had salt pans so large in area we used them for screaming through and throwing a mini minor around that I cut the roof off. Two million was spent digging a continuous channel system through the the entire western side of the property (74,000acre sheep and cropping property on mid Eyre Peninsula SA) which had the most damage from salinity. The channel had to be at least 3m wide and 2m deep with over 90km of channel dug cutting from the top of salt creek (it's actual name because the water is twice as salty as sea water) cutting in a large loop to rejoin salt creek at the bottom of the property. Some areas were still savable by isolating the entire area and gradually reintroducing original native ground cover then replanting the original mallee bush.
@@zalired8925 You're misunderstanding some crucial principles. 1) Erosion removes the good soil, exposing the saltier layers. Look up photos that show soil losses during the Great Dust Bowl in the US. During that period the affected areas lost 6 ft of soil... 2) Removing trees, plowing, monocropping/chemical ag causes the microbiome to die off and the ground to collapse/undergo compaction/subside. That also allows the saltier layers to be near the surface.
Top viewing, What can be gleaned from this story is not dissimilar to the Egyptian story, once an Eden savanna, now desert, unearthing township remains…camels the lot… The earths environment knows where to plant, encouraging only enough ppl & animals for all to remain viable, listening to nature & the indigenous is where it’s at, these ppl doing 🤙
In the video it says that's what the farmers who ignored the Goyder line thought, they thought they could plant trees and make it more verdant. It didn't work in the long term.
It’s relevant to note that Australia has always been a desert country. Idiot colonists made it sooo much worse. FYI: first fleeter on one side and indigenous on the other side. 7 generations. Primarily pastoralists who had very bad farming practices. Our family property is heritage listed and has had no stock on it since 1962. The land has finally recovered.
When you till the land and expose it to UVB light it kills the biosphere, I have a feeling you already know that but the global climate cartel seems to ignore it
@@tonyspaccarelli8702Then again, you have gov & military playing with HAARP weather modification. Same in Canada & U.S. Admitted , documented, patented. used as a weapon.
"Idiot colonists"? Are you referring to the Aboriginal people who devastated the megafauna of Australia to extinction? This anti-colonialist mindset has rendered b people dull of mind. Cherry picking history so you can get your daily dose of virtue is childish.
Thirty seconds of video of the ruins of the houses showed me that those people were doomed to fail; they're not designed for hot weather. If they didn't know how to build for the environment it's hard to believe they understood how to live in the ecosystem.
@peterjones4180 exactly. And they still try to maximise their profits, whilst increasing the severity of present desertification, in an area which is naturally prone to desertification cycles. If you can't see the connection between bad agricultural methods and growing desertification, then you're either a) one of those bad farmers, or b) a dunce.
For a 100 thousand years the Aborigines have been setting fire to the place so that the food will come out and other food will turn up and eat the new grass then the settlers removed any remaining trees and we have the situation we have
They were minute in numbers in comparison to persons per acre let's say in the modern era. The practices of the people then will not save what is required now to feed the nation, we can't all wander and eat berries etc.
@@glennmorrissey2529 No we can't. Maybe they show us the true carrying capacity of the inland. We should get rid of the huge cattle stations and let the country recover.
@@patemblen3644 Hi Pat, can't agree with you here, people are not going to stop coming here that is a given, I think Labor are bringing 1.8 million in the next few years. The huge cattle stations are not the issue, it is water and we build no dams whatsoever, I can't recall the in the last twenty five years and dams being built in any state, I shall google and see if any. Water brings life.
We know this all too well. Interesting is the future when all deserts in Australia have disappeared. How a desert is slowly transformed you can see at SEKEM in Egypt or Israel and China and Africa. There is a secret not acknowledged by science. It is the fact that planting trees attracts rain. Today it cannot be denied anymore.
How long will it take us humans to understand that the environment we live in is a reflection of ourselves, of our state of mind. If fertile land is turned into a lifeless desert, it is because there exists a desert in us ourselves already, our hearts have dried up, our minds are empty, the pursuit of profit rules supreme. Greed is a deadly disease, not a virtue.
What a load of bollocks, Australia is a very INFERTLE land, leached soils millions of years old. The deserts are likewise much older than European presence here.
So many people say we need to do something about the environment usually on a phone made in China and can count 1000 products in their house from China made in unregulated factories causing climate change lol
75% is arid, but before humans arrived it was 75% inland lake, the biggest lake on the planet, until humans began burning the land and removing the rainforests and eventually the lake dried up and left a dustbowl behind.
According to John D. Liu, who helped green up the Loess Plateau in China, grazing animals should be penned and fed there. Otherwise, they will eat any green thing emerging, causing the land to turn to desert. Perhaps they could be fed waste from crops, such as corn husks and stalks. Also, sprinklers should be run in early morning hours only to avoid evaporation. Also, China developed a rice that is saline-tolerant. Beach plum bushes in New England also grow well in a Sandy, saline soil. They produce abundant berries, size of grapes, to be made into syrups and jams.
These are good ideas, but one of the major problems has been the introduction of non-native invasive species, of both plants and animals, into ecologies where they simply do not belong.
While I am on your side re Permy, once the upper soil layers are saline for thousands of acres it's a long slow haul to bring it back. Other (Permaculture) methods are needed plus lifetimes of patience.
Nobody will put any money in because the weather is too erratic and you're not allowed to do anything with most of the country because it's been given back to the Aboriginal people who just want it to stay exactly the way it is .
While permaculture is great it just won’t work on the scale needed in Australia. Some of these areas are the size of European countries. How could you permaculture a place the size of England ?
@@fleurdickinson5626 You sound like my mother, if you never try you will never fail! it won’t be overnight but much like anything else you have to start or it never happens! The Bradfield scheme is probably a starting point. If lake Eyer had semi permanent water than plants grow & hold moisture in the soil plus evaporation leads to more rain & more growth. Look at any desert reforestation project, it starts off slow & small but starts getting bigger & more people get involved & at some point it takes on a life of its own.
Australia must scope soil and heap up so the man made mountains and lakes are formed. Plant trees on man made mountain and let the dug up pits remain as lakes once filled with rain water that flows down the man made mountain. It is as simple as that to alter the climate and landscapes because the flow of the wind is zigzagged and its temperature is cooled in pits and hot air rushes in to the pit making pit air escaping along the ridges of the man made mountain with trees which will give rain or moist all over and at the surroundings. I like to see it achieved. The work must begin as soon as this comment idea is read, therefore. This idea is for all the countries in the world also.
Well, that's the start of an idea. Living in the wheatbelt of southern WA, our _soil_ here requires a jackhammer to dig *at all.* So at this point, we build raised beds on top, creating bio-diverse, healthy, living soil, in the hope that this will affect what's underneath in time. But as the old NY proverb says, "Time takes time." It can't happen overnight. Perhaps you should look to the open pit mines for those lakes, and find out where those greedy bastards dumped what they've taken out for your "mountains". Have you ever seen actual mountains from a distance in person? I think you can build hills, but a mountain requires Mother Nature, and Gaia to form. But hills will do the job. Food waste and green (and brown) waste will compost and create soil. There is no need to turn compost, except to accelerate the process. Look to the tip to find what you need until you can get people to do what's needed. All luck to you! *Pam* {Tom's wife}
You are correct. Mexico has had an agrarian interaction in arid lands for centuries which included the use of agaves and cacti which thrive in the desert. Furthermore, this plants are cultivated which extends the prolificity. They are directly edible by man or fed to stock.
People including Australian Aborigines today, are not interested in living a Stone Age lifestyle. No one who ever came out of the bush decided to back there.
Speaking of societal age, one can listen also to the Khoisan then. Wonder how much they would agree? Seriously though, in societies that have kept no objective records, the deep past that they call the “Dream Time” is all conjecture. While there may have been people provably living there for 50,000 years, that time span may have covered hundreds of minor civilizations growing, colonizing, and destroying each other leaving the current residents to invent all their collective memories within say the last two centuries.
I'm not a farmer or a expert but I saw a video about Allan savory about holistic planned grazing Management in Simbabwe and other areas. It worked but "every grass has to be decayed biologically until the next rainy season is coming ". He uses lifestock to graze the land but not over grazing it. They poo and pee on the soil and break up the hard soil to let rain soak in instead of running or evaporatoring of
I lived in Merredin for 5 years in the late sixties and early seventies. It used to average about 13", (325mm). Some years were less than that and the crops suffered. There were salt pans everywhere where the farmers had removed all the trees. Merredin was known as "Heart of the Wheatbelt", but it's more like Edge of the desert.
Cows roam along the roadside because they are naturally nosey. There were 20 cattle on the station next to the one I worked on in WA. 100;000 acres and they were always by the only tarmac road through the property.
There was a guy 100 years ago that proposed this and they have been arguing about it ever since it seems so logical ,yes pump the water to somewhere where it's actually going to be useful but they won't do it because they keep arguing about who's going to pay for it and what do they get for their money. they don't realise that the damage caused by the floods every year are costing way more than any infrastructure would cost . In South Australia we put a thousand kilometres of water pipes in the 50s in so I don't see why other states can't do that
Here in Michigan we are blessed not only with the Great Lakes but with many glacial lakes as well. I’m close to Lake Superior but I live nearer to a Glacial lake that’s 13 miles long with plenty of fish. It also has beautiful islands scattered throughout. Some are private islands compounds. One even has a float plane . That private Island is huge with many buildings.
I mean it does but they don't see resources, they see money, and money blinds people, imagine if communism was positive or something like it, the community of communism, not a oligarch@@yaddahaysmarmalite4059
😂Australia was aridified after the first Homo sapiens arrived around 50-60 thousand years ago. They caused the extinction of of over 90percent of fauna including megafauna that previously were vital in cycling nutrients maintaining the vegetation and ecosystems that maintained hydrology. Australian ecosystems eventually stabilised under deep Aboriginal management but everything was destabilized and further degraded again after the next human invasion by Europeans. I have described this in my book 'Ecoagriculture for a Sustainable Food Future' based on my PhD thesis looking at human impacts on Australian ecosystems since the Pleistocene. Dr Nicole Chalmer
@@lisaschuster686I don't think that has been the case for like 60 years. It's about greed nowadays. Shift from food producing societies to industrial city societies transformed the purpose of food production. There is 8 billion people and global distribution of food and every year there is enough food produced to feed 12-16 billion people and much of seeds for example stay edible to eat for many years. If not for human consumption then also for animal feed. Like 20 years ago harvested seeds. So there's probably enough food to feed 20 billion people every year, maybe even more? It's about capitalism. Greed of the stock exchange market, greed of the supermarkets, greed of the ultra processed food giants. All of this and the greed of some of the farmers that pushes the crop prices down so rest of the farmers have to also boost their crop yields to get the money back or use better management practises.
Much of Australia's internal drainage system has no outlet to the sea. Water percolates down to the aquifer and/or settles into a 10,000 square kilometers drainage basin known as Lake Eyre. Lake Eyre is up to 15m below sea level and can hold many cubic kilometres of water. Typically after floods the lake fills, then, when dry times return, it dries out over a couple of years, leaving behind vast salt flats. Lake Eyre whether it is full of water or dry is a spectacular sight.
For a years they have been arguing about an idea of piping that water into the middle of Australia and the stupid politicians keep arguing about the cost despite the fact that every year the floods create massive damage. South Australia a state with very little money built a thousand km of water pipes but the biggest states refused to it so the water ends up going out into the ocean .
Lesson Number One : NEVER ignore the wisdom of the people who have lived and thrived in harmony with the land for uncounted centuries. This documentary is all true at various levels all over the planet. That's why, slowly but surely, gardeners and farmers are finally rethinking their approach and starting to work WITH the natural processes. No More Man-Made Chemical Fertilizers, pesticides and designer genetically plants for one. Strategically planting a variety of trees and bushes as wind breaks, Enabling the germination of dormant natural pastural grasses and other nutritious forage. Smaller pasture enclosures for rotating and controlling grazing so the livestock can fertilize the ground and the earth and plants can rest. Most important in all this, making sure the soil's microbial concentrations are brought back to sustainable and self-sustaining levels. This is how we must producing food for humans and forage for the animals with flavor and much higher levels of nutritional value once again. ****As for Soil salinity it's a case-by-case problem but not always irreversible. It's not easy but it can be overcome.
The Aborigines have been setting fire to the land for far too long and the farmers have dropped the Artesian water to levels where the trees can't reach it anymore so there's not much we can actually do
If the Chinese and the Israeli can turn the desert into vegetation with running water why can't the Australian. Different mentality and corruption in the Australian government is the problem.
Rain water harvesting, artificial rain, increasing suitable vegetations, controlling animals, replication of the proven technology from outside, local technology development are a few measures to combat against desertification
The wildlife has been in crisis for a long time We starve our dingoes And leave Brumbies with no water We have the longest fence in the world to keep all the other animals in the desert, we keep dingoes out on a sandy island to try and find a lizard on the beach, no-one is allowed to feed them its illegal, we think they are murderers, but that's bloody questionable We are sick and its horrifying
Rabbits & camels aren't natives. Camels are being exported to Middle East having originally being imported from Pakistan, India & Afghanistan in the mid 1800's, to transport goods through the dry interior whilst the railway & telegraph lines were being built.
The wild camels , rabbits problem, could have been easier solved if Australians started to eat them, and export the over supply as delicious bio products . No chemical food supplements, antibiotics etc in their food.
@@juliesheard2122 well, then let the government promote businesses that use camel, rabbits meat with a huge Subvention from tax payers. Those who prefer beef, chicken nuggets, wings etc okay. It's their problem. A hamburger from the likes of McDonald's or Burgerking with camel or rabbit, should become normal.
People don't understand we're talking about a thousand km of absolutely nothing there's no refrigeration in a lot of these places and refrigerated trucks are very expensive to run so by the time you get the meat to a capital city it's off . Despite modern Australians thinking we're all dumb most of these ideas have actually been thrown about before and dismissed
That's a brilliant comment. It deserves a thousand thumbs up. But, in the TH-cam comment section it seems people want to focus on the problem more than any solutions. To shame and blame. Or, to get stuck in hopelessness. You may have noticed, playgirl, at this moment in time, that's what gets thumbs.up and multiple replies. I'm glad the trend didn't keep you from commenting.
@@gardengeek3041 Mate you just talking shit. You're just raving on and you don't know anything about the outback of Australia obviously because you live in a city
it is completely irresponsible to release cows to graze on rocks in the desert. Farmers destroyed the land. Farmers should improve the soil to make it fertile and useful for all of us humans, animals and the planet. The cow is completely usable by nature for humans. All products and parts from it are completely usable. I really hate the fence across Australia. We cannot change the past, we can change the present and the future. The country has one big problem: it is not rugged. Hills, mountains, valleys, elevations, which create different climatic conditions, water retention, circulation and cold air. It is not at all suitable for cattle breeding. This country needs a special water retention solution. Increase biodiversity through various special programs and solutions.
@@linmal2242 cattle is raised not just in the arid parts of australia its raised in most of australia including the coastal area's that are not developed
Govt policy was to offer land which had to be cleared. It was a govt stipulation on the land. This went on for 150yrs til the mid ''70s. Desertification of the whole continent was well underway due to longterm weather changes which only made land clearing worse. There are still property developers subdividing beautiful lush areas on the East Coast today. Everyday. Climate change is only one factor in the destruction of Australia.
@@ianmiles2505no they didn't. The European /English settlers came & destroyed the environment & brought on nonnative animals like the camels & rabbits which are contributing to the destruction of plant life. They destruction of plant life led to loss plant life leads to loss of water. They need to erradicate the invasive animals & plants.
Please , show the date , the year . This could be 5 years ago or now . With this extreme land degradation , its important to observe the progression over time, accurately.
@@SLICE_Earth And yet the information is *still current!* What a terribly sad thing that is. I hope that you can edit in any new information and release this again with a plea to Australians to call out to the ABC to have it shown on _Landline._ Because of the three time/strike rule... The first time I warned you, maybe you didn't hear me. The second time, maybe you didn't understand. If I have to warn you a third time, I *know that you're ignoring me!* And *then* we can take it to social media. Because the world is in more dire circumstance in 2024. People *need* some hope for the future. *Pam* {Tom's wife}
"300 of [Richard Kinnon's] cows died from starvation and thirst." No, Richard Kinnon made 300 animals suffer a cruel and inhumane death. He doesn't deserve to be a rancher, nor own the land he's destroyed.
Good idea, let’s just legislate regular rainfall and jail anyone who disagrees. If anyone has a drought it’s their own fault. I can’t imagine what could go wrong under this policy.
@user-sc7fk5ys6x His animals didn't die of thirst because there was a drought, they died of thirst first because he has too many animals on the land, and second because he didn't slaughter them. Those are two choices he made. I grew up on a farm; I know all about hard choices. You're the only one talking about legislation, so maybe you need to have a good think.
In the Netherlands we get plenty rain, but destructive farming practices are still destroying nature on a massive scale. Nitrogen pollution caused by the manure as well as the spread of dangerous chemicals for weed and pest control, and the spread of fine dust caused by large poultry farms is damaging nature and the public health on a massive scale. And the farmers own so much land that it is hard for the rest of the population to buy an affordable house. On a population of 18 million people there is a shortage of a million houses, resulting in waiting lists of 12 years for all the other people who can't afford to buy a house. A small empty plot of land that is only 1000 square meters costs on average around €350 000,- Euro. And that is a plot at a regular location that is nothing special. Most starters, or single people can't afford that. But the farmers claim that it is their way of life, and when the government wants to do something about the situation the farmers only get angry and then they block the roads and highways, and they come up with all sorts of nonsense. As if all the other people do not have any rights at all. The farmers even refuse to accept what scientists have to say about it, because farmers think that they know everything better as everyone else. And as soon as they receive any form of criticism all that the farmers do is play the victim. The farmers get massive subsidies, and they have invested big in lobby groups who have more to say in politics as the regular population. Here we have a woman who has no formal education about farming or ecology or science in general, but she is a populist and she picked the side from the farmers, and now she is in government. The news says that the industry is unable to meet the emission reduction limits that were agreed, but at the same time local governments are banning scooters and burning wood stoves entirely form cities, which only hurts the poorest people, and it is not even the biggest cause for all the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. And even judges ignore to apply the laws when it comes to violations committed by farmers. I am getting sick and tired of farmers and politicians and judges who keep defending farmers. Here the farmers make huge profits, and they get a lot of subsidies, and about 99% of the products are for the export. They live in their big farms with nobody around them, while everyone else has to live packed together like a can of sardines. And the cost of living has skyrocketed in the past 50 years.
Australia has over 1 million will camels roaming thier deserts, while low in cholesterol and high in protein it tastes like beef. So go wonder why only 1 farmer in Australia is slaughtering and exporting is a mystery..
I really get annoyed when people fall for this I'm a dumb Australian thing given to you by the media so you will be dumb and fall for all of their tricks Australians were never dumb people we had bad dress sense but we certainly weren't dumb stupid people. And we didn't all talk like Steve Irwin we had quite normal Australian accents.
the aussie government appears mostly British bred. They seem likely to be part of the problem instead of the solution. Not much that Britain has been involved with has resulted in success.
Australia's desserts can be the answer and help solve the continuous global warming and rising sea level,, using desalinated water, Australia should build lakes and water reservoirs in different parts of Australia's vast dessert with irrigation systems,,turning them into an arable lands, rainforest and habitable region in the southern hemisphere..
@@kieranh2005depending how toxic the brine is… seaweed can survive in higher salinity than land plants; maybe something can be bred/ engineered to even higher levels of salt tolerance.
Australia's interior has the space and often quite good soils. However, over much of the country it lacks rainfall sufficient for the surface water needed for anything but desert agriculture. Large scale desalination is definitely a possibility. A 4GW nuclear power station coupled to a comparable desalination plant could generate a fresh water stream comparable to Australia's largest existing river.
First of all where are the billions of dollars going to come from to pay for the de-sal units which are extremely expensive to buy an operate ? And piping water 2000 km , Then you need vast amounts of money to pay off the Aboriginal activists that will tell you you're not doing anything on their land until you pay them off , Before you even get to planting anything
Super Beitrag. Dieser Baum ist faszinierend von seinen Fähigkeiten und Eigenschaften. Aber wie soll man ihn im Zaum halten? Die Idee so eine vitale Pflanze in Wüstenregionen zu pflanzen ist faszinierend. Aber dieser Baum soll ja auch nach anfänglicher Förderung von anderen Beipflanzen diese dann später doch unterdrücken, wenn der Bestand erstarkt. Es wäre interessant, ob dieser Baum in seinem Ursprung in Südamerika sich auch so verstärkt ausbreitet. Was gobt es für Methoden ihn kontrolliert anzubauen?
After a short road trip in Australia I have seen all of this. We have destroyed so much of the forests and land for farming and housing in this country now crying for drought I don't care about it. Don't get it why we blame petroleum companies only for damage of nature and climate change.
Didn't Australia have a scheme where they turned the river's round to go inland instead of to the sea ? I am sure such a plan would work today with modern technology, or desalination plants where appropriate. Australia being a rich country could surely afford the price of it.
The Aboriginals destroyed most of the forests by regular burning thousands of years ago thereby greatly increasing the amount of grassland for herbivores to hunt. When Cook sailed up the East Coast south of Sydney he escribed it as looking like English Parkland that is open grassland with a few large eucalypts. Now that area is thick scrub and forest. Because its not being burnt regularly.
@@peterjones4180 Are you using all of your reasoning capabilities......? Fire has been apart of nature for much longer than the aboriginal people. Look at the 🌞 today?? Methane has turned our perfect yellow circle ( Sun) into a blurry orange Blob. And the skyline also. Because Methane blocks blue light waves creating the orange that is becoming more and more prevalent. Big Oil has completely removed any hope of fighting to save life on earth? They own and control everything they want. So they create confusion about the scientific facts concerning Co2 and Methane. They turned global warming into Climate change. And they never even gave Humanity a reason for "'this Climate change ". The only thing that's changed is CO2 and Methane levels. And look at what Co2 and Methane has done to our sister planet Venus. OUR IGNORANCE AND REFUSAL TO THINK BEYOND THE TV SCREEN HAS COST US THE WORLD.
The solution was discovered by Allan Savory 50+ years ago in the African desert. . Gabe Brown has adapted those techniques to create a highly profitable system with the aid of university researchers to rapidly rebuild thriving ecologies all over the world.
There definitely are bad aspects of Australia's dry country management historically and in the present - BUT documentaries designed for activism are able to make it appear a whole lot worse- ie..cherry pick footage from; droughts - or drought stricken areas, overgrazed feedlots, then contrast with wonderfully curated "native wonderlands" demonstrating the end of the wet in the Tanami - or something... Australia before colonialism, civilisation and cultural diversification - or conquer, pillage, rape and plunder, however you look at it, was NOT a perfect larder of abundance and plenty across the length and breadth. "Indigenous" settlers - Nomads and unlanded, scarcely survived across much of the terrain (droughts existed then too) - the "dreaming" mapped the waterholes so an initiate may survive harsh times, though to others ("foreign" Natives indigent nations included) the wilderness was a place of scarcity and horror. - Just like in modern times, the bulk of the population was coastal - relying on fish, mussels and fresh water streams to water the garden crops...
@kadmow and yet the Inland or Central Australia supported many hundreds in different tribal groups, if you read the diaries of the early explorers (available at any good library or online).
It's always the ones that write the longest responses that talk the most crap now there are plenty of desert Aborigines ,type in western desert Aborigines if you'd like to see them in action . maybe a bit more content and a bit less looked at me I've just written this amazing thing lol
And what's this bulshit about watering crops when they didn't have any pipes or way of doing that they only had wooden dishes you're just talking crap . Next time you're in one of those Aboriginal community centres which I'm sure you're a part of go and have a look at the map you'll see there are tribes all over the country
I think that they should be handed back the land that the empty cattle station sits on, so that they can *teach* the rest by example. Perhaps the bank that has foreclosed can be reasoned with. They can build a _camp_ where they hold classes and generate income in that manner. It's a shame that _Landline_ would never run this doco...but I would love for the ABC to prove me wrong in that. *Pam* {Tom's wife}
we have plenty of laws regarding it and most farmers dont let their animals starve they will send them to market early for a loss or if they cannot buy in feed for them they will cull them the feed is not normally the problem its the water that is more of an issue as they cant buy enough water in to keep them watered in the remote regions and the cattle are spread out so far it hard to round them all up for water. we have some cattle stations here were they use helicopters to round up the cattle not just spot them some stations are as big as some euro countries
Really if you understood what you are talking about you would know that here you have to go VERY LARGE, Sidney Kidman understood you have to own enough properties in distant locations in order to shift stock around to follow the rains. Prior to European settlement droughts have been recorded lasting thirty years based on lake core sediment data longest in my lifetime has been twelve years.
reading the comments from idiots defending ''animal rights'' when talking about ''walking meat'' meat that they'll put on their plate too, is hilarious!... we don't need ''excuses'' to hate others!... we can be honest enough to admit the truth... ''we hate each other just because we feel like it!...''
What a load of BULLSHIT. Arable land in Australia is a little over 4% and it's been that way for a bloody long time. The idea of asking for help from the aboriginal people who have been on the country for 65,000 years and done nothing with it is absolutely absurd.
Done nothing with it? Blow me down, mate, this is the runaway fave for the Most Ignorant Comment of the Decade Award. What an utterly stupid and arrogant comment.
you can't apply your cultural assumptions onto ecology. A region's ecology doesn't care about what you think people should be doing. There's a lot of cheap land in Antarctica. Why don't you go build a city there? people like you are absurd.
Most of the desertification occurred after the Biblical Flood and the break up of the continents. Climate change has been an on going problem ever since. However, the aborigines that migrated there after the Flood, and not 40 thousand years ago, did an excellent job at maintaining a balanced environment. It is true that the arrival of Europeans made the situation worse.
The variability of the rain fall is the problem that this discussion is missing. Trees just die in the dry times. We can not use "Average Annual Rainfall" as it is a useless concept. Trees can not survive a 10 year drought. Australia is not Europe. The "Greens" keep telling the city dwellers that if you plant trees, the trees will make it rain. If there is no rain, there is no trees. Where there is reliable rain, the trees are already growing in Australia. Hope this helps.
It amazes me every time I see something like this, they still think they can farm the land!!! I suggest they look at the Paani Foundation in India. Although it has been tried in Australia with great success.
All the cattle in semi-arid regions should be replaced by feral camels. Compared with hard hoofed grass pulling cattle, feral camels do sweet FA damage with the soft feet & much more general diet.
I think if we were all responsible as citizens in an ecozone, for the health of that zone as our first priority of government as the ancient people did, we would heal in one generation. Use the principle and hone the practices. It's about changing how we live and relate to land. Maybe?
As an Australian and as someone who has watched the land get drier and drier, it just astounds me that 99% of farmers aren't trying new ways of doing things. I personally know farmers, stubborn as mules who will always do things the way they've been done. Until one day, the top soil will just be dust.
Look at Peter Andrews and how he's been trying to change rural NSW and QLD - that's the way of the future 🙌
The problem isn't Peter Andrews, but how the governments fought him tooth and nail, every single step of the way, even though he proved his techniques a hundred times over. They had the evidence right in front of him, yet they still chose to fight against him and what he'd developed. Everything we see in this video.... is pretty easy to solve once you get the arrogance of bureaucrats and pencil-pushers out of the way. Unfortunately, they're the ones with the power and money.
Yes, that's the way to go and plant tall trees. Which will provide shade for grass...
Older people farmers certainly refrain from their customary practices and traditions, but young people should try.
right - just bypass the chemical/political corrupt complex...
Geoff Lawton is another Australian permaculture expert who’s teaching people how to grow food in the dessert and restore and revitalize landscapes.
They should take advice of Alan Savoy from the Savoy Institute in S Africa. He rehabilitated hundreds of thousands of hectares that the government had deemed irredeemable. He proved it works time and time again. He used sheep, but cattle, goats, camels and other livestock can be used too.
The basic concept is you graze the animals elsewhere, or you feed them on site, then you lock them up tight together at night for about two weeks, until the ground is saturated and slick with muck. Then you move over and repeat. You don't return to those lands to graze until it has sprouted and gone to seed, basically a season.
He showed 52% improvement in one year. The lands he improved remained green while all the land around his died, they both received the same amount of rainfall which was minimum. Seasonal streams became permanent, wells were recharged. The results can't be denied, he repeated them over and over again.
Australia should try this, start on the edges of the desert and move inward. Use the animals' dung and urine. It's the natural way and it never fails. Ask the farmers to help out with providing muck if they can't get their animals over there. Cover the ground with about 4-6 inches of muck, it's enough to start growth and sequester fresh water, allowing life to begin to grow.
Australia also floods a lot. That water could be channeled to dry areas thrrough a series of canals and percolation ponds.
If Australia wanted to totem this desert green they would. They know how, it's not even new science. They choose not to, for whatever reason, probably to blame climate change. I'm not sure who decided that climate should never change but it always has. Im not sure mother nature cares about what they say.
None of the remedies are expensive or complex logistically. They're quite simple.
Savory didn't come up with anything new. His farming technique is essentially the same as strip grazing, a technique that has been used for many decades. It can work well in places where rainfall is reliable and gentle.
However, in places where rainfall is episodic and heavy, or is very low, or there is potential for wind erosion, it can simply denude the landscape and cause heavy erosion.
Although strip grazing and similar techniques can be used in some parts of Australia, over most of the country it is either unsuitable or can only be used under specific climatic conditions.
Shiploads of Cow dung were being shipped out to the Gulf nations !! This proves the ' greediness " of the Australian govt. 😮😮😮
Geesus, you're a genius who needs scientists to tell them anything when you this fountain of knowledge. Of course, no one has anywhere near the same intellect as you they couldn't possibly have ever thought of a plan like this, let alone any potential flaws such a plan might have
BEAUTIFULLY EXPLAINED!!
Is not the Australian government or the Australian people in charge,it’s the overseas companies that are responsible for the distraction-get as much as possible and move to other place.
I thought about moving to Australia from Norway as there is so much rain. After watching this, I now feel grateful.
The coast of Aus is still nice
The inland is still nice
37:00 Right on dude.
The PROPER application of science to a problem. The problem is many decades ago the science was in mass production failing to understand what that can do to different environments, or to say it another way, what the environment will end up doing to that land being used for mass production. You have to figure out how to work within that natural system.
Getting away from Australia and into tropical lands I see a lot of people starting to apply permaculture because it makes sense to do that there. I've seen tours of people's properties and it's absolutely wonderful and rich and full of life. Instead of chasing nature out, the agriculture was incorporated into that natural environment, and done properly it enriches the life there.
These are the kinds of people I respect the most, those who figure out how to work within a natural system to provide benefit to themselves via farming and ALSO the natural system. This is sustainable agriculture.
Near 1000 comments and unlike you very very few seem to understand that there is no universal solution despite the story actually saying "just add water " will not work .
And yes permaculture does work particularly for fruit , vegetables & nuts but not so much for cereal crops unless you want to pay $ 30 for a loaf of bread
You could take almost everything that has been said in the documentary and apply it, directly, to West Texas here in the northern Chihuahuan desert. No doubt one could say the same thing about vast stretches of Africa, Central and South America, and many others.
Least we forget Green Land. 😊
Correct mate but then that would not suit the agenda the clip maker is pushing. He talks about the desalination plant in Western Australia but does not mention no dams have been built for nearly 50 years whilst population in WA has risen. Rainfall in Australia is higher now than it was 50 years ago yet most is wasted as NOTHING has been done to capture this water and let it fill dams. I live in the outback in NSW and in the last 3 years we have exceeded annual rainfall by 50% or more. Up and down the coastline of Eastern Australia we have had flood after flood during the last 3-5 years and again most is wasted as dams are relatively full and during floods have to release water as they cannot store it.
This video is an example of fitting the facts to the narrative you push.
Given the right amount of funding someone could make a video debunking the majority of the claims in this video.
@@saintsone7877dams would not really help much. They would capture water im not saying they do nothing but if you want to improve environmental conditions you need to slow the water movement and increase green life from grass to trees. This helps replenish underground water and lowers water tables reducing salinity and future proofs for much longer then a dam. An increase of greenlife can increase the rainfall further inland while increasing the rate in which water infiltrates soils when large rainfall events happen.
Dams store water that's it.
Natural sequence farmer Peter Andrews has increased water holding over large swathes of land. Africans are holding back desertification of the sahara with slowing water in land and planting an abundance of plant life. Dams seem great but they stop water not slow it down.
@@saintsone7877 This video is from *2016.*
_Debunk?_ Yeah, Nah. Dams in rivers destroy *whole ecosystems,* unless you're talking about ponds and lakes used as reservoirs.
Yes, almost all the floods are on the east coast, refilling that huge underground water reserve. But the climate crisis...well that gets in the way of greed fuelled _business_ until it starts to impact their bottom line.
On the whole, WA is *still* in drought despite the rain up north. I know the news only really covers the east coast, but the Perth suburbs have spread like mould in the past decade! Far too many market gardens are now sub-divisions, or industrial "parks." So, de-salination here is *needed* unless we get some of that rain you're complaining about.
It's easy to think this is a new doco... *because nothing has changed* despite this being from 2016. M8.
Pam {Tom's wife}
Wherever the white Christian went ,destruction followed
I am no proponent of the whole climate change agenda, but I will say that the biggest climate change issue is human-caused desertification. If we tackled desertification in a meaningful way, using regenerative land management methods, we will have made huge strides in the fight against climate change and environmental destruction. The crisis is one of land mismanagement more than pollution due to carbon emissions.
Farina was built to service the Central Australian Railway not as an agricultural town, when the railway pushed north so did a lot of the population, it was used as a stock loading area for many years and when the railway was rerouted further to the east in the mid 1980s that was when the town was left to decay. Now the friends of Farina are in the process of restoring buildings. There is now an amazing Bakery (opening in the winter months) a year round camp ground and a productive cattle farm.
Fia poko
Oh how lovely maybe I could buy a latte there some day.
I thought there would have been another reason Farina shut down apart from what was stated here
@@GM-jy6gd if you know more could you tell me
Unfortunately when profit and greed prevail, our environment suffers.
About 30 years ago I saw the result of trees being taken out of the soil (in an area that still had much vegetation and sources of free water). There were trees all around the New England area suffering from 'die back.' They were dying from the roots up.
Trees and even small shrubs help to keep the land intact and flourishing (and also helps to stop landslides). Once you remove this vegetation, the salt table (which should be way down in the layers of soil) starts moving it's way to the top of the soil. This is what causes those big cracks in the ground. Furthermore, when it does eventually rain, that rain just goes straight through those cracks and the rest slides off the top, so even rain is repelled.
On top of this, we have to contend with water in rivers being siphoned off upstream. There needs to be a better way to share the water as it flows from the upper parts of Australia right down to the south.
Of course, there's degradation of the land from mining. They advertise that they'll replenish the land when they're done but we've not seen anywhere the amount that needs to be done compared to what has been ruined. Look at the coal seam gas invasion. Are the doing anything to replenish what is taken? Or is the land above going to be too unstable to be used for buildings and the like? Is the land above subject to collapsing?
Added to this, there are farmers in the local areas where this mining takes place who are starting to see unusual illnesses in those who live near these sites. When are these 'profit and greed' types going to admit to harming the environment and the people who live nearby?
So, to the solutions?
* Regrow shrubs and trees around each section of your crops. Better still, plan your crops AROUND existing vegetation.
*Add more CARBON into the soil. (Look up 'carbon farming' and 'natural sequence farming' on YT to find some excellent explanations.)
*For the home gardener, make sure you start a compost bin and regularly add ready compost to your lawns, pot plants and gardens. There are loads of councils in Australia who will subsidise the cost of a compost bin and some councils give away bags of compost several times per year.
*Look into the laws governing the flow of rivers, then start petitioning your national PM to make some changes. Someone here will have to tell us a better solution first!
*Look into the requirements for mining near to communities and land and water sources. Petition to have these laws be more than four times the current requirements. Being fair, we do need the value of mining so we don't go broke as a nation but there does need to be better rules in place to keep environments and people safe.
Anyone got any better ideas?
So very true.. sadly.😟
The Aboriginals and their fire. They destroyed everything
At the start you're making some good points but no one is going to read a statement being so long you need to learn to be succinct
It made my heart swell to see people with such love for the land. And yes that man is correct in feeling like a child when walking next to someone whose linage walking that same earth is over 50,000 years old! Receptive to the wisdom. That made me smile ❤
Do you feel the same walking next to a white person in Europe or just noble savage obsession?
@@vineleak7676 Race or background doesnt matter in the slightest, however, the relationship with the earth and wisdom passed down does. It just so happens that aboriginal Australians have a deeply significant connection and relationship with this land. So when it comes to restoring/preserving said land, turning to them for wisdom and learning is the best course of action for all 💛
@@lotuslemonade I mean that is a very naïve way of seing the world... Don't forget aboriginals hunted the megafauna auf Australia to extinction...
Trees used to stop evaporation and slow and cool wind now it heats up on farming country
I live in country South Australia and it is totally insane I would describe the wind as psychotic , it never stops in it so destructive . But of course there are no trees left so I'm assuming that's why
No, trees take up water and release it through evapotranspiration. You need soil moisture. It doesn’t create rain.
@@dingodog5677 ok so I lived in Canberra for a year which is surrounded by virgin bush and it rained quite often , however go across into the border into New South Wales where there are no trees and there's very little water at all. The trees need to be in the ground to keep the ground alive . When you have lots of trees the leaves fall down and create compost which creates healthy soil
@@James-kv6kb every chance you just moved into a drier climate zone.
if you don’t have ground moisture or rain you won’t have trees. That’s why deserts and grasslands exist. Trees grow where they can, they don’t grow where they can’t. Everywhere west of the divide is arid or desert, naturally. The veg is all sclerophyll, large trees are non existent and most woody veg is savanna or shrubbery.
Vegetation holds soil together but predominately grasses and shrubs, trees to a much lesser degree.
Let’s not be blinded by our bias for trees. They are only a part of the ecosystems and not in all.
trees cause net evapotranspiration, but stop saline groundwater from rising to the soil surface and concentrating there. which kills most shallow rooted plants, and tree seedlings and damaging mature trees. The tree's shade and wind-disrupting canopy, reduces bare soil evaporation, and grass and row crop evapotranspiration.
Generally trees don't cause precipitation, but forested areas create higher elevation for condensation (like a 70m eucalyptus or redwood), increase dew and fog interception, with more surface area from leaves and branches, or continuously forested areas where increased ET leads to cloud formation and more rain downwind (visible in the Amazon by satellite). Also where grass doesn't readily establish without trees and shrubs, the trees contribute critical soil carbon which increases the topsoil water holding capacity.
@dingodog5677
I stopped at 3:52 to say the original inhabitants also burned the forest so they could hunt better leaving the eucalyptus tree the dominant tree which thrives on burn and regeneration, other deciduous plants didn’t return to some areas but the eucalyptus causes the fires when it’s hot because their leaves give off a haze of flammable gas when super hot.
Many don’t realise the indigenous also damaged the land just far fewer of them.
The Aboriginals and their fire. They destroyed everything
What is your point I know it's in there somewhere
@@Jumbo-k4t wow mate . 8 months ago I made this comment. Without going and watching this again, I would say that the accusations against the British settlers that they caused widespread environmental destruction is all relative. The first Australians also damaged things . Australia used to have these mega fauna , like a bear size koala and a super sized kangaroo. All lost because the first Australians just set the forest alight because hunting was beginning to get a little hard. Many animals died just so humans could get easier hunting. Unlike Europe who started farming and livestock rearing to get a regular meals, aborigines just burned everything to the ground.
@@garryrichardson4572 I don't know why you're so surprised that someone read your comment After eight months . And that's a lot of content for "I don't know what I wrote" and by the way I'm 52 I have known that information for a long time lol
And New Zealand is mountainous with many rains and waterways that wash away topsoil unless secured by native bush
Salinity is not irreversible
CORRECT. Unfortunately the ability of different environments to get rid of the sodium in it varies, so the rate at which different environments can get rid of high salinity is a large variable. So there's that. You can't do the same thing all over the world. And for part of the world I don't know why you would. However in lands that have been lost to desertification almost exclusively because of man's lack of understanding of dealing with those lands, mostly white Europeans who moved around the world wanting to set up agriculture but certainly not limited to that, there are steps that can be taken to recover a good chunk of that and processes have been used by people around the world to do this, and not just one group of indigenous people. But over thousands of years indigenous people destroyed environments and also learned to restore certain environments, mostly to suit their needs.
Having said that you didn't understand the reason why the salinity increased I guess, and to say you can reverse salinity when the ground water is full of sodium, well, have fun with that one. It would take a lot of effort. The one thing many humans fail to understand is that most natural environments are millions of years in the making.
Also, hydrology is a very fickle thing.
Yes it is irreversible! Take 2 glasses. Nr. 1 with sea water Nr. 2 with fresh water. Take the salt from 1, add it to glass 2. Repeat in the reverse direction from glass 2 to glass 1.
Trees pump huge amounts of water out of the ground and into the air as vapour. When they are cut down, the water table rises and when it reaches the surface, evaporation leaves a salt deposit that kills plants. The recovery process involves planting tree belts next to the salt areas to start lowering the water table. As this happens the rain dissolves the salt and takes it back down underground where it came from, allowing more trees to be planted on the newly recovering strip of land. Salt tolerant eucalypt varieties collected from natural salt environments are particularly suitable for this. A slow process, but one lots of farmers in the West Australian wheat belt are using.
If China, those deserts can be filled with trees, plants, fishes, cities.
@@johndoh5182Salt in the Australian surface environment arises from ground water (itself usually not very salty) reaching the surface (upper meter) then evaporating, concentrating and then leaving behind an accumulation of salt.
The problem over much of Australia's interior is that on balance (over decades) evaporation rates consistently exceed rainfall rates so the salt doesn't get flushed to the sea and goes on accumulating.
Most contemporary fixes involve lowering the water table (by planting salt tolerant trees and saltbush). In places this has been very successful at containing damage from salt, but doesn't lend itself to agricultural activity.
Technical fixes to the problem are likely possible using large scale desalination as is done in parts of the middle east.
So far though many Australian farmers have demonstrated increased adeptness at desert farming, exploiting 'windows of productivity' or geographically dispersing their activity. Consequently, outside long established irrigation areas, there has not been much appetite for these types of project in Australia.
Coming from New Zealand and having travelled around Australia I have always been fascinated at how they farm, or make that attempt to farm, in much of Australia. At some stage there must be a reckoning to say that farming is just not viable in certain areas. This was a point made by their PM years ago.
And while I realise that the farmers do not want their stock starving to death but they do and I find that abhorrent. Sorry. Here you would be prosecuted in court.
😂😅
Oh so perfect mr peterdykzeul3074 we have two distinctly different countries.So quick to judge,must be nice to be perfect and be able to judge others with your 21st century eyes!!
Coming from Australia i never understood why NZ went from sheep to cattle and destroyed their waterways, remember when it was a "pristine" environment ?
Now you can't even swim let alone drink from 90% of NZ fresh water ways.
Enjoy not even being able to match Tasmania in exports thanks to your PM and regulatory anti farming lobbyists.
And what YOU NZ' ers do to sheep would see you in jail in nearly any country
PM "making a point" but none of his (hers, themz, theyz, it's....) biz, ppl there know best. They figure it out, adjust, move on.
So ANYTIME a head of livestock dies a farmer goes to jail? WTH, where do you draw the line?
You can find deadstock on any large ranch anywhere in world, and dead 'wildlife' everywhere that it can exist, even more so in the desert where decay can become as slow as weathering. *You* wouldn't know if it died 6 months or 6 yrs ago, how why or where it came from, but some random unpleasant media images controls you.
Reality will intrude on your privileged fantasyland one day.
And still they're clearing Queensland's brigalow belt.
same in Saskatchewan Cy ,so many farmers clearing every bit of land..
Insane isn't it.
..and clearing the forests east of the Great Dividing Range for all manner of lunacy.
Clearing the tops of mountain ranges to install wind "farm" that are not Green at all. Then clearing wide swathes of forest from those toxic, inefficient follies to erect the cable towers for power delivery down to the coastal cities and towns.
@@ianking-jv4hg The latest land clearing data from Queensland show clearing at the rate of about 350K Ha per year. If you can show me more than a tiny portion of this is for turbines and power lines you may have a point. But nearly all of the RE infrastructure is in open country and most clearing is to turn woodland and forest into pasture for cattle. Are you angry with this far bigger problem, or is it only wind power that bothers you?
I heard they were clearing on the scale of the Amazon in Queensland
You have no trees, you have no rain
The farmers still want to do it the way grandpa did and it's just not working anymore
This is, Australia, my neighbor chopped his tree down so he can cement his whole driveway for his 4wd, people don't care, the greens are a mock.@@James-kv6kb
there is one old fella that I forget the name of the video, restored his land, Africa is doing it and its working. @@James-kv6kb
I saw a video of someone suggesting setting central australia under water (it's lower than sea level) by digging a canal towards the inland.
by doing that, there would be less land to bridge for clouds to rain upon the land, also there would be a lot of evaporation from the inland sea.
next to that, the inland sea could have several canals towards the coast, making good ways to transport all kind of things.
@@TheNonplayer what drugs are you on ?
Two things, firstly the man blamed a rising water table for the salinity, but rather it was erosion due wind and water, as well as collapsing healthy soil biomes that cause the surface to drop closer to the salty water levels.
Harvesting rainwater thru small frequent catchments made from onsite materials will dilute the salts and reverse biome collapse.
Much Australia's agricultural products actually land in Asia, rather than the US.
The farmers and ranchers would do well to follow Mark Sheperd's methods of growing biome- appropriate food-and feed-producing, polycultured shrubs, vines, trees in an alley cropped system that alternates with perennials, grasses, and annuals. This mimicks the most productive food system known, the savanna. The weeds, fertility, pests etc are managed by diverse livestock. This does more to rebuild soil, and appropriate soil moisture. It eliminates costly inputs and substitutes them with black line, profit-making management systems.
The livestock are healthier, their products more nutritionally complete, the soil rebuilds, there is more climate resiliency built-in, there is more food security, the farmer had more economic resiliency, etc.
This system is called restoration agriculture.
The other side of using this is that it adds market diversity, too. Asians are very adaptable about foods, so the international market is there for novel food systems.
Australia is full of permaculture innovators the government just needs to support education regarding these better methods (thinking of Lawton, Andrews, and Mollison, to name a few...
Should be added that droving is reasonable provided they stop overgrazing. Eating the grasses to where they are less than several inches tall is a no-no and harms soil as well as the ability of the feed to recover quickly.
Worked in a Muslim country for long enough to eat camel dozens of times & Australian camels are said to be healthier than ones in Saudi Arabia. Maybe some sustained marketing might help…
@@macawism
It would. Think they are likely keeping the carcasses out of the market, though. That's often what they do with culled animals in the US. That is wasteful.
China is experiencing food shortages, as well as they (Oz) could use this to feed the poor in their country as well as sell to those wishing to buy novel game meat abroad at high prices.
Over clearing which causes the water to rise is the number one reason for salinity and salt pans. Salinity has nothing to do with soil erosion, I lived with salinity turning cropping paddocks into bare salty earth. We had salt pans so large in area we used them for screaming through and throwing a mini minor around that I cut the roof off. Two million was spent digging a continuous channel system through the the entire western side of the property (74,000acre sheep and cropping property on mid Eyre Peninsula SA) which had the most damage from salinity. The channel had to be at least 3m wide and 2m deep with over 90km of channel dug cutting from the top of salt creek (it's actual name because the water is twice as salty as sea water) cutting in a large loop to rejoin salt creek at the bottom of the property. Some areas were still savable by isolating the entire area and gradually reintroducing original native ground cover then replanting the original mallee bush.
@@zalired8925
You're misunderstanding some crucial principles.
1) Erosion removes the good soil, exposing the saltier layers. Look up photos that show soil losses during the Great Dust Bowl in the US. During that period the affected areas lost 6 ft of soil...
2) Removing trees, plowing, monocropping/chemical ag causes the microbiome to die off and the ground to collapse/undergo compaction/subside. That also allows the saltier layers to be near the surface.
youre correct, old mate is wrong
@@b_uppy
Top viewing, What can be gleaned from this story is not dissimilar to the Egyptian story, once
an Eden savanna, now desert, unearthing township remains…camels the lot…
The earths environment knows where to plant, encouraging only enough ppl & animals for all to remain viable,
listening to nature & the indigenous is where it’s at, these ppl doing 🤙
plant trees...and there are many many experiences of people who have created paradise in desert
In the video it says that's what the farmers who ignored the Goyder line thought, they thought they could plant trees and make it more verdant. It didn't work in the long term.
Living in an environment with no water and rain is insanity
We can repair the desert.
@michaelrogers2080 of course I understand that but still living in an area that has no rivers or rain is crazy
oh really?@@vivalaleta
@@caretakerfochr3834 th-cam.com/video/zqkok2p-Kw8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=atVlu9YI9wGT06Iw
@@caretakerfochr3834 th-cam.com/video/QXQrvT23rPw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=3R3zx9JN4k0lz-g4
It’s relevant to note that Australia has always been a desert country.
Idiot colonists made it sooo much worse.
FYI: first fleeter on one side and indigenous on the other side. 7 generations. Primarily pastoralists who had very bad farming practices.
Our family property is heritage listed and has had no stock on it since 1962.
The land has finally recovered.
When you till the land and expose it to UVB light it kills the biosphere, I have a feeling you already know that but the global climate cartel seems to ignore it
Don't worry they have scientist's that are trying to figure it out .....heh heh
@@tonyspaccarelli8702Then again, you have gov & military playing with HAARP weather modification. Same in Canada & U.S. Admitted , documented, patented. used as a weapon.
"Idiot colonists"? Are you referring to the Aboriginal people who devastated the megafauna of Australia to extinction?
This anti-colonialist mindset has rendered b people dull of mind. Cherry picking history so you can get your daily dose of virtue is childish.
Congrats LisaD. It sounds like your family were smart.
If you let your rain run off it doesn't soak in
Thirty seconds of video of the ruins of the houses showed me that those people were doomed to fail; they're not designed for hot weather. If they didn't know how to build for the environment it's hard to believe they understood how to live in the ecosystem.
This video harps on the plight of the farmers and livestock. The farmers and the livestock were the prime cause of the desertification issue.
REALLY ! suggest you look at the age of Australia's deserts !
They predate European colonization by thousands and thousands of years.
@peterjones4180 exactly. And they still try to maximise their profits, whilst increasing the severity of present desertification, in an area which is naturally prone to desertification cycles. If you can't see the connection between bad agricultural methods and growing desertification, then you're either a) one of those bad farmers, or b) a dunce.
For a 100 thousand years the Aborigines have been setting fire to the place so that the food will come out and other food will turn up and eat the new grass then the settlers removed any remaining trees and we have the situation we have
it is rather people's bad management that is the prime cause of desertification , try holistic planned grazing.
@@asirem679 I'm very drunk so I'll bite OK what is holistic planned grazing ? I'm sure there is a much simpler explanation for this term
The Native Australians (Aborigine) knows how to live in the most extreme conditions in Australia.
Yep on Government handouts.
@@wishbone5785 for 40,000 years? Damn you aussies are a generous lot.
They were minute in numbers in comparison to persons per acre let's say in the modern era. The practices of the people then will not save what is required now to feed the nation, we can't all wander and eat berries etc.
@@glennmorrissey2529 No we can't. Maybe they show us the true carrying capacity of the inland. We should get rid of the huge cattle stations and let the country recover.
@@patemblen3644 Hi Pat, can't agree with you here, people are not going to stop coming here that is a given, I think Labor are bringing 1.8 million in the next few years. The huge cattle stations are not the issue, it is water and we build no dams whatsoever, I can't recall the in the last twenty five years and dams being built in any state, I shall google and see if any. Water brings life.
We know this all too well. Interesting is the future when all deserts in Australia have disappeared. How a desert is slowly transformed you can see at SEKEM in Egypt or Israel and China and Africa. There is a secret not acknowledged by science. It is the fact that planting trees attracts rain. Today it cannot be denied anymore.
How long will it take us humans to understand that the environment we live in is a reflection of ourselves, of our state of mind. If fertile land is turned into a lifeless desert, it is because there exists a desert in us ourselves already, our hearts have dried up, our minds are empty, the pursuit of profit rules supreme. Greed is a deadly disease, not a virtue.
What a load of bollocks, Australia is a very INFERTLE land, leached soils millions of years old.
The deserts are likewise much older than European presence here.
So many people say we need to do something about the environment usually on a phone made in China and can count 1000 products in their house from China made in unregulated factories causing climate change lol
75% is arid, but before humans arrived it was 75% inland lake, the biggest lake on the planet, until humans began burning the land and removing the rainforests and eventually the lake dried up and left a dustbowl behind.
The 1st mistake they did is chop down the trees!
there are more trees now than settlement this presentation is a crock of bullshit!
The first people landscaped the land by lighting bush fires for tucker and to protect themselves against Mega fauna.
What trees-???🤔.
@@asullivan4047 Sorry! Didn't know you never seen a tree before!🤣
It was said that the US had 400 ft white pine for as far as an eye can see. Bet you can't find one today.
According to John D. Liu, who helped green up the Loess Plateau in China, grazing animals should be penned and fed there. Otherwise, they will eat any green thing emerging, causing the land to turn to desert. Perhaps they could be fed waste from crops, such as corn husks and stalks. Also, sprinklers should be run in early morning hours only to avoid evaporation. Also, China developed a rice that is saline-tolerant. Beach plum bushes in New England also grow well in a Sandy, saline soil. They produce abundant berries, size of grapes, to be made into syrups and jams.
These are good ideas, but one of the major problems has been the introduction of non-native invasive species, of both plants and animals, into ecologies where they simply do not belong.
Permaculture & Biochar can improve the soil & capture moisture to turn not only Australia but any dry land area into an oasis!
While I am on your side re Permy, once the upper soil layers are saline for thousands of acres it's a long slow haul to bring it back. Other (Permaculture) methods are needed plus lifetimes of patience.
Nobody will put any money in because the weather is too erratic and you're not allowed to do anything with most of the country because it's been given back to the Aboriginal people who just want it to stay exactly the way it is .
Salinity can be mitigated also w good practices. hydrology cycles and biomass
While permaculture is great it just won’t work on the scale needed in Australia. Some of these areas are the size of European countries. How could you permaculture a place the size of England ?
@@fleurdickinson5626 You sound like my mother, if you never try you will never fail! it won’t be overnight but much like anything else you have to start or it never happens! The Bradfield scheme is probably a starting point. If lake Eyer had semi permanent water than plants grow & hold moisture in the soil plus evaporation leads to more rain & more growth. Look at any desert reforestation project, it starts off slow & small but starts getting bigger & more people get involved & at some point it takes on a life of its own.
Fascinating. You guys cover a lot of ground in this video.
Australia must scope soil and heap up so the man made mountains and lakes are formed. Plant trees on man made mountain and let the dug up pits remain as lakes once filled with rain water that flows down the man made mountain. It is as simple as that to alter the climate and landscapes because the flow of the wind is zigzagged and its temperature is cooled in pits and hot air rushes in to the pit making pit air escaping along the ridges of the man made mountain with trees which will give rain or moist all over and at the surroundings. I like to see it achieved. The work must begin as soon as this comment idea is read, therefore. This idea is for all the countries in the world also.
And they can use the remaining dirt from mining operations to start with.
Well, that's the start of an idea. Living in the wheatbelt of southern WA, our _soil_ here requires a jackhammer to dig *at all.* So at this point, we build raised beds on top, creating bio-diverse, healthy, living soil, in the hope that this will affect what's underneath in time. But as the old NY proverb says, "Time takes time." It can't happen overnight.
Perhaps you should look to the open pit mines for those lakes, and find out where those greedy bastards dumped what they've taken out for your "mountains".
Have you ever seen actual mountains from a distance in person? I think you can build hills, but a mountain requires Mother Nature, and Gaia to form. But hills will do the job.
Food waste and green (and brown) waste will compost and create soil. There is no need to turn compost, except to accelerate the process. Look to the tip to find what you need until you can get people to do what's needed.
All luck to you!
*Pam* {Tom's wife}
Good approach by scientists to grow the drought resistant plants to change soil pattern
You are correct. Mexico has had an agrarian interaction in arid lands for centuries which included the use of agaves and cacti which thrive in the desert. Furthermore, this plants are cultivated which extends the prolificity. They are directly edible by man or fed to stock.
Finally, listening to one if not the oldest culture on planet Earth. 🤔 Might have been a good idea from the beginning. 🧐
Unfortunately, the colonisers were too busy gen0ciding the indigenous people to listen to them
Really who do you think cleared the land by burning over tens of thousands of years eh.
@peterjones4180
It takes a d..b bag to blame the Natives. At the start of the video, the guy clearly stated that the land vas covered by forest.
People including Australian Aborigines today, are not interested in living a Stone Age lifestyle. No one who ever came out of the bush decided to back there.
Speaking of societal age, one can listen also to the Khoisan then. Wonder how much they would agree? Seriously though, in societies that have kept no objective records, the deep past that they call the “Dream Time” is all conjecture. While there may have been people provably living there for 50,000 years, that time span may have covered hundreds of minor civilizations growing, colonizing, and destroying each other leaving the current residents to invent all their collective memories within say the last two centuries.
I'm not a farmer or a expert but I saw a video about Allan savory about holistic planned grazing Management in Simbabwe and other areas. It worked but "every grass has to be decayed biologically until the next rainy season is coming ". He uses lifestock to graze the land but not over grazing it. They poo and pee on the soil and break up the hard soil to let rain soak in instead of running or evaporatoring of
As you can tell no not enough water holding practices are used
In order to store water it needs to come from somewhere
Use beavers.
I lived in Merredin for 5 years in the late sixties and early seventies. It used to average about 13", (325mm).
Some years were less than that and the crops suffered. There were salt pans everywhere where the farmers had removed all the trees. Merredin was known as "Heart of the Wheatbelt", but it's more like Edge of the desert.
Cows roam along the roadside because they are naturally nosey. There were 20 cattle on the station next to the one I worked on in WA. 100;000 acres and they were always by the only tarmac road through the property.
LOL nosey is a funny word for a cow, curious may be the same, but still
The grass is greener in the bar ditch, due to the runoff from the improved surface
In Australia this is known as grazing the long paddock. The margins of roads often are well watered by tarmac runnoff.
You just earned a new subscriber SLICE Earth!
*Pam* {Tom's wife}
Ohhh thank you so much Pam!
Its a pity the recent floodwaters couldn't have been diverted into the desert through the mountain ranges
There was a guy 100 years ago that proposed this and they have been arguing about it ever since it seems so logical ,yes pump the water to somewhere where it's actually going to be useful but they won't do it because they keep arguing about who's going to pay for it and what do they get for their money. they don't realise that the damage caused by the floods every year are costing way more than any infrastructure would cost . In South Australia we put a thousand kilometres of water pipes in the 50s in so I don't see why other states can't do that
Farmers who build dams on their properties get charged for that rain water. They'd probably build more if they didn't have such huge water bills.
Here in Michigan we are blessed not only with the Great Lakes but with many glacial lakes as well. I’m close to Lake Superior but I live nearer to a Glacial lake that’s 13 miles long with plenty of fish. It also has beautiful islands scattered throughout. Some are private islands compounds. One even has a float plane . That private Island is huge with many buildings.
We took and took and never gave back
if giving back was a profitable commodity, wall st would be trading in shares.
I mean it does but they don't see resources, they see money, and money blinds people, imagine if communism was positive or something like it, the community of communism, not a oligarch@@yaddahaysmarmalite4059
So what are you doing?
They’re European descendants alright
NO-!!! They took & took-!!!😉
😂Australia was aridified after the first Homo sapiens arrived around 50-60 thousand years ago. They caused the extinction of of over 90percent of fauna including megafauna that previously were vital in cycling nutrients maintaining the vegetation and ecosystems that maintained hydrology.
Australian ecosystems eventually stabilised under deep Aboriginal management but everything was destabilized and further degraded again after the next human invasion by Europeans. I have described this in my book 'Ecoagriculture for a Sustainable Food Future' based on my PhD thesis looking at human impacts on Australian ecosystems since the Pleistocene. Dr Nicole Chalmer
It’s not “man’s greed,” it’s our need to eat every single day.
In the U.S., the prairies were turned upside down by the plow. That was a harsh lesson.
@@lisaschuster686I don't think that has been the case for like 60 years. It's about greed nowadays. Shift from food producing societies to industrial city societies transformed the purpose of food production. There is 8 billion people and global distribution of food and every year there is enough food produced to feed 12-16 billion people and much of seeds for example stay edible to eat for many years. If not for human consumption then also for animal feed. Like 20 years ago harvested seeds. So there's probably enough food to feed 20 billion people every year, maybe even more? It's about capitalism. Greed of the stock exchange market, greed of the supermarkets, greed of the ultra processed food giants. All of this and the greed of some of the farmers that pushes the crop prices down so rest of the farmers have to also boost their crop yields to get the money back or use better management practises.
What happened to all the water from the 100-year floods?
Degraded land cannot retain and it rushes to sea along with top soil
Much of Australia's internal drainage system has no outlet to the sea. Water percolates down to the aquifer and/or settles into a 10,000 square kilometers drainage basin known as Lake Eyre. Lake Eyre is up to 15m below sea level and can hold many cubic kilometres of water.
Typically after floods the lake fills, then, when dry times return, it dries out over a couple of years, leaving behind vast salt flats.
Lake Eyre whether it is full of water or dry is a spectacular sight.
For a years they have been arguing about an idea of piping that water into the middle of Australia and the stupid politicians keep arguing about the cost despite the fact that every year the floods create massive damage. South Australia a state with very little money built a thousand km of water pipes but the biggest states refused to it so the water ends up going out into the ocean .
@@jimgraham6722I thought he was referring to the eastern states floods and asking where the water from that is going
Time to rewatch ‘Walkabout’! 😮
Lesson Number One : NEVER ignore the wisdom of the people who have lived and thrived in harmony with the land for uncounted centuries.
This documentary is all true at various levels all over the planet. That's why, slowly but surely, gardeners and farmers are finally rethinking their approach and starting to work WITH the natural processes. No More Man-Made Chemical Fertilizers, pesticides and designer genetically plants for one. Strategically planting a variety of trees and bushes as wind breaks, Enabling the germination of dormant natural pastural grasses and other nutritious forage. Smaller pasture enclosures for rotating and controlling grazing so the livestock can fertilize the ground and the earth and plants can rest. Most important in all this, making sure the soil's microbial concentrations are brought back to sustainable and self-sustaining levels.
This is how we must producing food for humans and forage for the animals with flavor and much higher levels of nutritional value once again.
****As for Soil salinity it's a case-by-case problem but not always irreversible. It's not easy but it can be overcome.
who are the people you speak of?
The Aborigines have been setting fire to the land for far too long and the farmers have dropped the Artesian water to levels where the trees can't reach it anymore so there's not much we can actually do
If the Chinese and the Israeli can turn the desert into vegetation with running water why can't the Australian. Different mentality and corruption in the Australian government is the problem.
Chinas faking it
What a glorious world it would be if all the ranchers were reborn as cattle and the cattle reborn as judges and jurors.
Yes, but we would also have to include the human consumers of animal stock in this scenario as well.
Rain water harvesting, artificial rain, increasing suitable vegetations, controlling animals, replication of the proven technology from outside, local technology development are a few measures to combat against desertification
Can we please have documentaries without constant music?
They need to build little swales and beaver dams and restore the ground water
Also collects sediment and branches
Perth is planning for it never to have rain again, already getting a fraction of what it had.. damn
I know that hit me too
Another desalination plant is planned. With such a huge coastline, WA has plenty of sea water from which the salt can be extracted.
27:02 "Our future planning assume no rain ever again."
The wildlife has been in crisis for a long time
We starve our dingoes
And leave Brumbies with no water
We have the longest fence in the world to keep all the other animals in the desert, we keep dingoes out on a sandy island to try and find a lizard on the beach, no-one is allowed to feed them its illegal, we think they are murderers, but that's bloody questionable
We are sick and its
horrifying
Ita all bloody flooded now! Highest ever recorded rainfall. People missing in flood water. Two more cyclones forming in the top end, God help us.
I agree, eat the camels and rabbits. Forget eating cows.
Good Documentary.😊
Thank you so much!
Still they got millions of feral rabbits, camels, emus and kangaroos. That's lot of meat.
AMEN!!
YUMMY
Rabbits & camels aren't natives. Camels are being exported to Middle East having originally being imported from Pakistan, India & Afghanistan in the mid 1800's, to transport goods through the dry interior whilst the railway & telegraph lines were being built.
@suecollins8199 they'd still be great food sources while they're being culled
@@emmahelps1188 rabɓit, kangaroo & feral goat is good meat, but I've not eaten camel nor emu.
In this documentary not once have I seen or heard about the application of "Permaculture", sad! Many bad scenes ARE reversible.
The wild camels , rabbits problem, could have been easier solved if Australians started to eat them, and export the over supply as delicious bio products . No chemical food supplements, antibiotics etc in their food.
Quite! But farmers are not known to be imaginative 😂
@@juliesheard2122 well, then let the government promote businesses that use camel, rabbits meat with a huge Subvention from tax payers. Those who prefer beef, chicken nuggets, wings etc okay. It's their problem. A hamburger from the likes of McDonald's or Burgerking with camel or rabbit, should become normal.
People don't understand we're talking about a thousand km of absolutely nothing there's no refrigeration in a lot of these places and refrigerated trucks are very expensive to run so by the time you get the meat to a capital city it's off . Despite modern Australians thinking we're all dumb most of these ideas have actually been thrown about before and dismissed
That's a brilliant comment. It deserves a thousand thumbs up. But, in the TH-cam comment section it seems people want to focus on the problem more than any solutions.
To shame and blame. Or, to get stuck in hopelessness. You may have noticed, playgirl, at this moment in time, that's what gets thumbs.up and multiple replies.
I'm glad the trend didn't keep you from commenting.
@@gardengeek3041 Mate you just talking shit. You're just raving on and you don't know anything about the outback of Australia obviously because you live in a city
it is completely irresponsible to release cows to graze on rocks in the desert. Farmers destroyed the land. Farmers should improve the soil to make it fertile and useful for all of us humans, animals and the planet. The cow is completely usable by nature for humans. All products and parts from it are completely usable. I really hate the fence across Australia. We cannot change the past, we can change the present and the future. The country has one big problem: it is not rugged. Hills, mountains, valleys, elevations, which create different climatic conditions, water retention, circulation and cold air. It is not at all suitable for cattle breeding. This country needs a special water retention solution. Increase biodiversity through various special programs and solutions.
Should have taken a look at the awesome permaculture projects in Australia
Yes but they are not in arid areas where beefs are being grown ! And sheep, and goats to prune the last of the vegetation !
@@linmal2242 cattle is raised not just in the arid parts of australia its raised in most of australia including the coastal area's that are not developed
Govt policy was to offer land which had to be cleared. It was a govt stipulation on the land. This went on for 150yrs til the mid ''70s. Desertification of the whole continent was well underway due to longterm weather changes which only made land clearing worse. There are still property developers subdividing beautiful lush areas on the East Coast today. Everyday. Climate change is only one factor in the destruction of Australia.
Poor farming from the get go! Refusal to listen to warnings of soil degredation from YEARS AGO! This is self inflicted harm.
The Aboriginals and their fire. They destroyed everything
@@ianmiles2505no they didn't. The European /English settlers came & destroyed the environment & brought on nonnative animals like the camels & rabbits which are contributing to the destruction of plant life. They destruction of plant life led to loss plant life leads to loss of water.
They need to erradicate the invasive animals & plants.
Please , show the date , the year . This could be 5 years ago or now . With this extreme land degradation , its important to observe the progression over time, accurately.
The documentary is from 2016, all the info about our documentaries is in description 😊
@@SLICE_Earth And yet the information is *still current!* What a terribly sad thing that is.
I hope that you can edit in any new information and release this again with a plea to Australians to call out to the ABC to have it shown on _Landline._
Because of the three time/strike rule... The first time I warned you, maybe you didn't hear me.
The second time, maybe you didn't understand.
If I have to warn you a third time, I *know that you're ignoring me!*
And *then* we can take it to social media.
Because the world is in more dire circumstance in 2024. People *need* some hope for the future.
*Pam* {Tom's wife}
"300 of [Richard Kinnon's] cows died from starvation and thirst."
No, Richard Kinnon made 300 animals suffer a cruel and inhumane death. He doesn't deserve to be a rancher, nor own the land he's destroyed.
But ranchers occur in the America's. Here we have graziers and pastoralists. Just so people know which continent we're talking about ;)
Good idea, let’s just legislate regular rainfall and jail anyone who disagrees. If anyone has a drought it’s their own fault. I can’t imagine what could go wrong under this policy.
I think you need to grow up bloody vegans are starting to really annoy people go away
@user-sc7fk5ys6x His animals didn't die of thirst because there was a drought, they died of thirst first because he has too many animals on the land, and second because he didn't slaughter them. Those are two choices he made. I grew up on a farm; I know all about hard choices. You're the only one talking about legislation, so maybe you need to have a good think.
He certainly doesn't appear to be starving
In the Netherlands we get plenty rain, but destructive farming practices are still destroying nature on a massive scale. Nitrogen pollution caused by the manure as well as the spread of dangerous chemicals for weed and pest control, and the spread of fine dust caused by large poultry farms is damaging nature and the public health on a massive scale. And the farmers own so much land that it is hard for the rest of the population to buy an affordable house. On a population of 18 million people there is a shortage of a million houses, resulting in waiting lists of 12 years for all the other people who can't afford to buy a house. A small empty plot of land that is only 1000 square meters costs on average around €350 000,- Euro. And that is a plot at a regular location that is nothing special. Most starters, or single people can't afford that.
But the farmers claim that it is their way of life, and when the government wants to do something about the situation the farmers only get angry and then they block the roads and highways, and they come up with all sorts of nonsense. As if all the other people do not have any rights at all. The farmers even refuse to accept what scientists have to say about it, because farmers think that they know everything better as everyone else. And as soon as they receive any form of criticism all that the farmers do is play the victim. The farmers get massive subsidies, and they have invested big in lobby groups who have more to say in politics as the regular population.
Here we have a woman who has no formal education about farming or ecology or science in general, but she is a populist and she picked the side from the farmers, and now she is in government. The news says that the industry is unable to meet the emission reduction limits that were agreed, but at the same time local governments are banning scooters and burning wood stoves entirely form cities, which only hurts the poorest people, and it is not even the biggest cause for all the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. And even judges ignore to apply the laws when it comes to violations committed by farmers.
I am getting sick and tired of farmers and politicians and judges who keep defending farmers. Here the farmers make huge profits, and they get a lot of subsidies, and about 99% of the products are for the export. They live in their big farms with nobody around them, while everyone else has to live packed together like a can of sardines. And the cost of living has skyrocketed in the past 50 years.
Fascinating, thank you!
Thank you for watching!
Australia has over 1 million will camels roaming thier deserts, while low in cholesterol and high in protein it tastes like beef. So go wonder why only 1 farmer in Australia is slaughtering and exporting is a mystery..
Mate, they are stations jn Straylla.
I really get annoyed when people fall for this I'm a dumb Australian thing given to you by the media so you will be dumb and fall for all of their tricks Australians were never dumb people we had bad dress sense but we certainly weren't dumb stupid people. And we didn't all talk like Steve Irwin we had quite normal Australian accents.
the aussie government appears mostly British bred. They seem likely to be part of the problem instead of the solution. Not much that Britain has been involved with has resulted in success.
Australia's desserts can be the answer and help solve the continuous global warming and rising sea level,, using desalinated water, Australia should build lakes and water reservoirs in different parts of Australia's vast dessert with irrigation systems,,turning them into an arable lands, rainforest and habitable region in the southern hemisphere..
A question.
How would the toxic brine from the desalination process be disposed of?
@@kieranh2005 Dams do not make water. Irrigation worsens salination. You can't farm like a European if the rainfall is so non European. Think again.
@@kieranh2005depending how toxic the brine is… seaweed can survive in higher salinity than land plants; maybe something can be bred/ engineered to even higher levels of salt tolerance.
Australia's interior has the space and often quite good soils. However, over much of the country it lacks rainfall sufficient for the surface water needed for anything but desert agriculture.
Large scale desalination is definitely a possibility. A 4GW nuclear power station coupled to a comparable desalination plant could generate a fresh water stream comparable to Australia's largest existing river.
First of all where are the billions of dollars going to come from to pay for the de-sal units which are extremely expensive to buy an operate ? And piping water 2000 km , Then you need vast amounts of money to pay off the Aboriginal activists that will tell you you're not doing anything on their land until you pay them off , Before you even get to planting anything
Super Beitrag. Dieser Baum ist faszinierend von seinen Fähigkeiten und Eigenschaften.
Aber wie soll man ihn im Zaum halten? Die Idee so eine vitale Pflanze in Wüstenregionen zu pflanzen ist faszinierend.
Aber dieser Baum soll ja auch nach anfänglicher Förderung von anderen Beipflanzen diese dann später doch unterdrücken, wenn der Bestand erstarkt.
Es wäre interessant, ob dieser Baum in seinem Ursprung in Südamerika sich auch so verstärkt ausbreitet.
Was gobt es für Methoden ihn kontrolliert anzubauen?
After a short road trip in Australia I have seen all of this. We have destroyed so much of the forests and land for farming and housing in this country now crying for drought I don't care about it. Don't get it why we blame petroleum companies only for damage of nature and climate change.
White People to be exact
Didn't Australia have a scheme where they turned the river's round to go inland instead of to the sea ? I am sure such a plan would work today with modern technology, or desalination plants where appropriate. Australia being a rich country could surely afford the price of it.
The only thing that has changed in our Atmosphere is Co2 and Methane levels! The science community told us 45 yrs ago this would happen!!
The Aboriginals destroyed most of the forests by regular burning thousands of years ago thereby greatly increasing the amount of grassland for herbivores to hunt.
When Cook sailed up the East Coast south of Sydney he escribed it as looking like English Parkland
that is open grassland with a few large eucalypts.
Now that area is thick scrub and forest.
Because its not being burnt regularly.
@@peterjones4180 Are you using all of your reasoning capabilities......? Fire has been apart of nature for much longer than the aboriginal people. Look at the 🌞 today?? Methane has turned our perfect yellow circle ( Sun) into a blurry orange Blob. And the skyline also. Because Methane blocks blue light waves creating the orange that is becoming more and more prevalent. Big Oil has completely removed any hope of fighting to save life on earth? They own and control everything they want. So they create confusion about the scientific facts concerning Co2 and Methane. They turned global warming into Climate change. And they never even gave Humanity a reason for "'this Climate change ". The only thing that's changed is CO2 and Methane levels. And look at what Co2 and Methane has done to our sister planet Venus. OUR IGNORANCE AND REFUSAL TO THINK BEYOND THE TV SCREEN HAS COST US THE WORLD.
What would happen if we piped all of our sewerage into the unoccupied desert instead of the ocean?
I like that idea
I generally look at these programs with a pinch of salt. However, Google putting a climate warning increased the credibility hugely.
lol good one !
yes hopefully satire... (that isn't lost on me -2 pinches of salt then)
Google the one who is causing climate change by getting adults to purchase toys from they're biggest customer China
Interesting/informative/entertaining.
The solution was discovered by Allan Savory 50+ years ago in the African desert. . Gabe Brown has adapted those techniques to create a highly profitable system with the aid of university researchers to rapidly rebuild thriving ecologies all over the world.
Let's hear it for 'excited trampling', Australia needs to introduce lions into the wild to chase the stock around..
@@jimgraham6722 Don't you think that dingos do enough "stock chasing"?
Very interesting. Thanks.
Camel meat is pretty good. Start a Camel burger business. A slice of Pineapple on it, Yum! 🤗
It;s the transport distances that make it difficult.
The humankind need to learn How to terraforming the desert!
One thing I never, ever understood is why the hell you would bring western farming to the place but NOT hedgerows.......
Greed
Even Hobart is in warmer latitudes than southern France.
There definitely are bad aspects of Australia's dry country management historically and in the present - BUT documentaries designed for activism are able to make it appear a whole lot worse- ie..cherry pick footage from; droughts - or drought stricken areas, overgrazed feedlots, then contrast with wonderfully curated "native wonderlands" demonstrating the end of the wet in the Tanami - or something...
Australia before colonialism, civilisation and cultural diversification - or conquer, pillage, rape and plunder, however you look at it, was NOT a perfect larder of abundance and plenty across the length and breadth.
"Indigenous" settlers - Nomads and unlanded, scarcely survived across much of the terrain (droughts existed then too) - the "dreaming" mapped the waterholes so an initiate may survive harsh times, though to others ("foreign" Natives indigent nations included) the wilderness was a place of scarcity and horror. - Just like in modern times, the bulk of the population was coastal - relying on fish, mussels and fresh water streams to water the garden crops...
Says a colonialist/coloniser, whichever you are!
@@hydrolifetech7911such an intelligent reply. Your mother must be proud.
@kadmow and yet the Inland or Central Australia supported many hundreds in different tribal groups, if you read the diaries of the early explorers (available at any good library or online).
It's always the ones that write the longest responses that talk the most crap now there are plenty of desert Aborigines ,type in western desert Aborigines if you'd like to see them in action . maybe a bit more content and a bit less looked at me I've just written this amazing thing lol
And what's this bulshit about watering crops when they didn't have any pipes or way of doing that they only had wooden dishes you're just talking crap . Next time you're in one of those Aboriginal community centres which I'm sure you're a part of go and have a look at the map you'll see there are tribes all over the country
If they hadn’t made mistakes, we wouldn’t know better. We cannot blame our ancestors for the long learning process.
Wonderful documentary. We should ask our Indigenous people to manage our national parks, and to teach as part of the university agriculture degrees.
Thank you so much!
I think that they should be handed back the land that the empty cattle station sits on, so that they can *teach* the rest by example. Perhaps the bank that has foreclosed can be reasoned with.
They can build a _camp_ where they hold classes and generate income in that manner.
It's a shame that _Landline_ would never run this doco...but I would love for the ABC to prove me wrong in that.
*Pam* {Tom's wife}
Watching about longreach, rural property prices have skyrocketed in the decade since this was filmed.
Those poor animals😢 disgusting behaviour from the farmers. Gotta go small, just for ourselves. Any laws on animal abuse?
we have plenty of laws regarding it and most farmers dont let their animals starve they will send them to market early for a loss or if they cannot buy in feed for them they will cull them the feed is not normally the problem its the water that is more of an issue as they cant buy enough water in to keep them watered in the remote regions and the cattle are spread out so far it hard to round them all up for water. we have some cattle stations here were they use helicopters to round up the cattle not just spot them some stations are as big as some euro countries
Really if you understood what you are talking about you would know that here you have to go VERY LARGE, Sidney Kidman understood you have to own enough properties in distant locations in order to shift stock around to follow the rains.
Prior to European settlement droughts have been recorded lasting thirty years based on lake core sediment data longest in my lifetime has been twelve years.
reading the comments from idiots defending ''animal rights'' when talking about ''walking meat'' meat that they'll put on their plate too, is hilarious!... we don't need ''excuses'' to hate others!... we can be honest enough to admit the truth... ''we hate each other just because we feel like it!...''
Only the indigenous will ever know how to live with this land for thousands of years
What a load of BULLSHIT. Arable land in Australia is a little over 4% and it's been that way for a bloody long time. The idea of asking for help from the aboriginal people who have been on the country for 65,000 years and done nothing with it is absolutely absurd.
Video didn't show cattle drowning after floods in the outback. At least it mentions Goyder.
Yo yo
Done nothing with it? Blow me down, mate, this is the runaway fave for the Most Ignorant Comment of the Decade Award. What an utterly stupid and arrogant comment.
Arable generally means land growing crops, not cattle grazing
you can't apply your cultural assumptions onto ecology. A region's ecology doesn't care about what you think people should be doing. There's a lot of cheap land in Antarctica. Why don't you go build a city there? people like you are absurd.
Most of the desertification occurred after the Biblical Flood and the break up of the continents. Climate change has been an on going problem ever since.
However, the aborigines that migrated there after the Flood, and not 40 thousand years ago, did an excellent job at maintaining a balanced environment. It is true that the arrival of Europeans made the situation worse.
Bullshit. Keep the biblical crap away from the truth.
The Book of Genesis is a fairy tale meant to teach a moral, not a historical document
Australia still has massive amounts of arable land, ESPECIALLY for its population size.
I think it's funny there's only 5 million people in western Australia northern territory and South Australia about 20 million in the rest
@@James-kv6kb yeah haha. East coast dominates Australia's population
The variability of the rain fall is the problem that this discussion is missing. Trees just die in the dry times. We can not use "Average Annual Rainfall" as it is a useless concept. Trees can not survive a 10 year drought.
Australia is not Europe. The "Greens" keep telling the city dwellers that if you plant trees, the trees will make it rain. If there is no rain, there is no trees. Where there is reliable rain, the trees are already growing in Australia.
Hope this helps.
No shit I've been saying it for years man should be urbanisation of Longreach and the coast left for farming
Sadly, most of our agricultural produce (just like our minerals) is exported with little benefit to general populace.
Well, I think food security is a big thing. No one is expected to starve to death in Australia. Wast areas of the globe, that security does not apply
It amazes me every time I see something like this, they still think they can farm the land!!!
I suggest they look at the Paani Foundation in India. Although it has been tried in Australia with great success.
Regenerative agriculture can restore the desert. Start digging swales.
Remove crust layer, add top soil ,plant salt tolerant plants.
Also the big drought broke and rain came back.
All the cattle in semi-arid regions should be replaced by feral camels. Compared with hard hoofed grass pulling cattle, feral camels do sweet FA damage with the soft feet & much more general diet.
I think if we were all responsible as citizens in an ecozone, for the health of that zone as our first priority of government as the ancient people did, we would heal in one generation. Use the principle and hone the practices. It's about changing how we live and relate to land.
Maybe?