The great Australian rural city divide

Farmers, it seems, are feeling badly done by. City people simply do not understand them. If this refrain seems familiar, it should be. It is the same story that has gone the rounds these past couple decades if not longer. Now, the National Farmers Federation (NFF) wants to rectify the supposedly negative view of farmers with a protracted campaign to change public perception.

You have to admit that there is some truth in the NFF's assertion - urban populations are, by and large, ignorant of life on the land and of the farming practices that produce their food. But in the interest of balance this should be put in its proper context by acknowledging farmers are equally ignorant of the priorities, challenges and benefits of city life. Ignorance is not a property of city people alone: it is a two-way phenomenon.

There is little doubt that improving urban perceptions of rural life would be beneficial, however if comments made in the press about the NFF's proposed public education campaign are any indication, any educational value is likely to be overridden by antagonism. Rather than education, we could end up with yet another bun fight in the media.

Comments made by former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson do not presage a promising start to the campaign. They smack of the wedge politics more common to his Liberal masters. Instead of adopting an inclusive, conciliatory voice and building empathy among city people, Anderson resorts to unsubstantiated stereotyping. He asserts, to The Courier-Mail journalist Nicollette Burke, it is unidentified "ideologically driven green extremists [and] very thinly disguised propaganda" that is behind the supposedly-negative image of farmers. He cites - also unidentified -"environmental vandals" that have been presenting - also-undisclosed - negative material to school children.
 
We all know that there are dogmatic and unthinking environmentalists. Griffith University sociology academic, Bill Metcalf, calls them "eco-zealots". But who are these "green extremists" Anderson alludes to? Unfortunately, he does not identify them, and to do so would call for the presentation of factual information, something politicians are not necessarily all that good at. Is it the Australian Conservation Foundation, which has tried to work with farmers in addressing environmental issues? Is it the rural environmentalists participating in Landcare programs? Is it soil conservationists and scientists who warn against inappropriate and damaging farming practices?

To call someone an extremist today is a serious assertion and a politically useful framing technique to discredit them. To have any credibility, the assertion should be backed up with specifics. Anderson’s inflammatory statement provides none. He would do well to think about the great number of urban people who identify as conservationists and environmentalists, and rather than antagonise them, consider how they could be an asset to farmers. His name-calling is an unfortunate disservice to farmers that is likely only to reinforce negative ideas about them. Let's hope the NFF's "education" campaign takes a less-confrontationist line.

And this is the fear. Will the proposed campaign be genuinely educational or will we see the NFF trot out a bunch of spin doctors to promote their line to a public that’s tired of being a market audience?

Acknowledge errors

Farmers have a lot of work ahead of them and mounting an antagonistic or defensive campaign without acknowledging the impact of agriculture on the Australian landscape will do little for their credibility. Past errors must be acknowledged but contemporary farmers cannot be blamed for them. However, now that we know how things went wrong on the land, we can do something about it. The NFF should be seeking city support for this remedial action.

The Courier-Mail interview mentions farmers being blamed for "using all the water, getting all the handouts [and] causing all the salinity". There is undeniable evidence that agriculture is responsible for land degradation. Bob Beale, one-time Sydney Morning Herald science and environment editor and co-author of the recent book, Going Native, told an audience at the Byron Bay Writer's Festival in August this year: "Agriculture has had the biggest single impact on Australia. It is just ruining the country ... It used 70 per cent of our water. Issues such as the logging of Tasmania's Tarkine forest are small beer in comparison."

Despite this, Beale is no doom-and-gloom merchant or enemy of farmers. He is ready with praise for those on the land who are trying new approaches that are more in tune with Australia's soils and hydrologic cycle. Instead of looking for scapegoats in the environment movement, Anderson would do better to highlight the work of these innovative farmers.

Beale told the story of such a group near the West Australian town of Narragun. There, farmers have formed a co-operative and are planting tens of thousands of blue mallee, a small tree - the clearing of which contributed to the region's severe salinity. Not only will this initiative help reduce salinity, says Beale, but the farmers will reap the benefit of sales of eucalyptus oil, which is marketable as a powerful industrial solvent as well as a pharmaceutical. The burning of the coppiced branches will be used to generate electrical energy and to produce charcoal used to purify water. The project would attract carbon credit investment from the Japanese.

Indulging in mythology

John Anderson really should focus on initiatives like farmers doing something positive rather than engaging in another tiring bout of wedge politics. Unfortunately, his comments in The Courier-Mail article are not encouraging as he indulges in yet another favourite media tactic of the spin doctor: allusion to mythology.

After blaming the present population drift to the cities (in part because of the decline in rural livelihoods due to economic change) and increased immigration, Anderson goes on to tell Ms Burke "we're rapidly losing touch with our cultural roots … [This] has caused a disconnection with the traditional relationship Australians have with the land."

What cultural roots and what traditional relationship with the land is Mr Anderson talking about? We are a people of metropolitan centres and rural cities and towns. It is understandable those in smaller rural centres feel affinity with the land, especially if they have a livelihood linked to agriculture. But for most Australians whatever empathy they feel for the bush is probably largely a hangover from the early days of Australian nationalism, as popularised by the likes of Henry Lawson.

Certainly, there is sympathy for farmers suffering drought and distress, as the generosity of city people in making donations to various appeals has shown, but the same sentiment was evident following the Indian Ocean tsunami of late-2004. Maybe it is because he is an ex-politician that John Anderson can stand up and make such allusions to popular mythology in the most urbanised country in the world, a country that has been urbanised since first settlement by Europeans and is increasingly so today, as the research of demographer Bernard Salt (in his book, The Big Shift) and the 2001 Census shows.

Better approach will win support

A more sophisticated approach is what the NFF needs to take in its proposed education campaign. Wedge politics, based on vague allusions that stereotype environmentalists, is not what Australia needs because there is no basic disjunction between environmentalism and good farming practice. If the NFF is serious about garnering urban sympathy, then it will do better to focus on the real contribution that agriculture makes to our culture.

As a starting point, the NFF could point out the economic benefits. That's not hard. Employment is harder as it is in decline. Then there are the innovative farmers who are trying to do something positive rather than whinge about city people not understanding them - farmers in Western Australia, for instance, or the organic farmers opening new, lucrative markets with great export potential. The NFF might also promote discussion about saving the productive agricultural lands of Sydney's urban-rural fringe, given their importance to the state's fresh food supply and the supply of local foods to Sydney. They can raise, too, the issue of how Australian farmers are dealing with economic globalisation and its flood of cheap food imports. They could even promote a "Buy Australian" campaign to boost the prospects of farmers.

These are the topics that will endear the country's farmers to city people. Let's throw out the antagonism and conflict with the stereotypes and get down to the reality of recognising our mutual dependency.