Carol Richards

The environmental enigma: Why do producers professing stewardship continue to practice poor natural resource management?

Abstract Despite a wide acceptance that primary producers in Australia subscribe to a stewardship ethic, land and water degradation remains an ongoing problem. Recent calculations suggest that the economic cost of Australias environmental degradation is amounting to more than

Social networks in arid Australia: a review of concepts and evidence

A3.5 billion a year with an estimated cost of managing (not overcoming) problems of salinity, acidification, soil erosion totalling

Beef Production and the Environment: Is it really ‘Hard to be Green When You are in the Red’?

A60 billion over the next decade. This paper argues that stewardship itself is an unsatisfactory concept when looking to landholders to respond to environmental problems, for rarely does the attitude of stewardship translate into behaviours of improving natural resource management practices on private land. Whilst there is some acceptance of the environmental problem among primary producers, a number of external constraints may also impede the uptake of conservation-orientated practices. In light of the prevailing accounts of poor adoption of sustainable practices a number of policy options are reviewed in this paper, including formal regional partnerships, regulatory frameworks and market-based measures. It is concluded that the contentious nature of some of these new opportunities for change will mean that any moves aimed at reversing environmental degradation in Australia will be slow.

A toothless chihuahua? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, neoliberalism and supermarket power in Australia

Arid systems are markedly different from non-arid systems. This distinctiveness extends to arid-social networks, by which we mean social networks which are influenced by the suite of factors driving arid and semi-arid regions. Neither the process of how aridity interacts with social structure, nor what happens as a result of this interaction, is adequately understood. This paper postulates three relative characteristics which make arid-social networks distinct: that they are tightly bound, are hierarchical in structure and, hence, prone to power abuses, and contain a relatively higher proportion of weak links, making them reactive to crisis. These ideas were modified from workshop discussions during 2006. Although they are neither tested nor presented as strong beliefs, they are based on the anecdotal observations of arid-system scientists with many years of experience. This paper does not test the ideas, but rather examines them in the context of five arid-social network case studies with the aim of hypotheses building. Our cases are networks related to pastoralism, Aboriginal outstations, the ‘Far West Coast Aboriginal Enterprise Network’ and natural resources in both the Lake-Eyre basin and the Murray–Darling catchment. Our cases highlight that (1) social networks do not have clear boundaries, and that how participants perceive their network boundaries may differ from what network data imply, (2) although network structures are important determinants of system behaviour, the role of participants as individuals is still pivotal, (3) and while in certain arid cases weak links are engaged in crisis, the exact structure of all weak links in terms of how they place participants in relation to other communities is what matters.

Agricultural production and the ecological question

Abstract The statement, ‘it is hard to be green when you are in the red’ is commonly used by primary producers to explain the necessity of placing a greater emphasis on financial survival rather than longerterm environmental sustainability. The subject of environmental sustainability on pastoral properties was explored during face-to-face interviews with cattle graziers in the Fitzroy Basin area of Central Queensland. Findings from the study suggest that whilst economic factors are important, they are not the only determinant in whether a landholder prioritises environmental sustainability. Rather, social factors such as knowledge claims, beliefs, attitudes, values, peer pressure and social sanctioning, constructed and enacted within the productivist paradigm of primary production, play a crucial role in how landholders manage their natural assets. This suggests that the edict that ‘it is hard to be green when you are in the red’ is inaccurate and does not explain why conservation-focused pastoral management is not yet occurring on a large scale.

The impacts of climate change on Australia's food production and export

Abstract During the Senate Inquiry into ‘milk price wars’ in 2011, Senator Nick Xenophon accused the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) of being ‘less effective than a toothless Chihuahua’. This follows the ACCC’s lack of action regarding the reported abuse of market power of Australia’s supermarket duopoly, where an extensive inquiry into the competitiveness of retail prices in 2008 found grocery retailing to be ‘workably competitive’ despite numerous claims to the contrary. How can farmers’ submissions to the inquiry that cite market abuse be reconciled with the ACCC’s finding that all is well in the food supply chain? Following an in-depth examination of 53 farmer submissions to the inquiry, we conclude that the findings of the ACCC are commensurate with the neoliberal economisation of the political sphere, where commercial entities ‘legitimately’ govern beyond their corporate boundaries, often using disciplinary measures that were once exclusive to governments. We argue that such clear structural inequalities between farmers and major corporations is reason to re-regulate markets and reinsert a stronger role for government to ‘level the playing field’.

(Re)assembling Neoliberal Logics in the Service of Climate Justice: Fuzziness and Perverse Consequences in the Fossil Fuel Divestment Assemblage

Environmental degradation is a worldwide phenomenon. It is manifested in the clearing of forests, polluted waterways, soil erosion, the loss of biodiversity, the presence of chemicals in the ecosystem and a host of other concerns. Modern agricultural practices have been implicated in much of this degradation. This chapter explores the connections between the form of agricultural production undertaken in advanced nations – so-called ‘productivist’ or ‘high-tech’ farming – and environmental degradation. It is argued that the entrenchment of productivist agriculture has placed considerable, and continuing, pressures on the environment and, second, that while no new options for a more sustainable agriculture and new policies are being proposed to tackle the existing problem, the underlying basis of productivist agriculture remains largely unchallenged. The prediction is that environmental degradation will continue unabated until more dramatic (and possibly less palatable) measures are taken to alter the behaviour of producers and the trajectory of farming and grazing industries throughout the world. The ‘ecological question’ we pose is straightforward: is it possible for modern agriculture – one currently wedded to a regime of petrochemicals, pesticides, weedicides, insecticides, artificial fertilisers, crop monocultures and intensive animal production – to become sustainable? BACKGROUND TO THE ISSUES Environmental issues have been recognised throughout recent history. Soil fertility depletion was a major concern, for example, in Europe and North America during the forty years of the mid-1800s, prompting social thinkers like Karl Marx to theorise the role of capitalism in environmental decline (Foster & Magdoff 1998).

The chicken game: Organization and integration in the Norwegian agri-food sector

The global food system is undergoing unprecedented change. With population increases, demands for food globally will continue to rise at the same time that agricultural environments are compromised through urban encroachment, climate change and environmental degradation. Australia has long identified itself as an agricultural exporting nation—but what will its capacity be in feeding an increasing global population as it also comes to terms with extreme climatic events such as the floods, fires and droughts, and reduced water availability, experienced in recent decades? This chapter traces the history of Australian agricultural exports and evaluates its food production and export capacity against scientific predictions of climate change impacts. With the federal government forecasting declines in the production of wheat, beef, dairy and sugar, Australia’s key export commodities may well be compromised. Calls to produce more food using new technologies are likely to generate significant environmental problems. Yet, a radical reconfiguration of Australian agriculture which incorporates alternative approaches, such as agro-ecology, is rarely considered by government and industry.

Food Security in Australia in an Era of Neoliberalism, Productivism and Climate Change.

Socially motivated divestment from the fossil fuel industry is occurring at a rapid rate. Banks, pension funds, universities, and philanthropic organizations around the world are divesting vast amounts of capital. Based on empirical data from face-to-face interviews with key divestment actors in the UK and Australia, this chapter explores the entanglements between the divestment and neoliberal assemblages. By approaching this topic through the analytical frame of assemblage, we highlight the perverse consequences arising from the mobilization of the responsible citizen subject through free market mechanisms. That is, whilst the divestment movement achieves its aims in disrupting flows of capital around the fossil fuel industry, it unwittingly reproduces neoliberalizing logics by reinforcing a shift away from the state as the key corporate regulator.

Supermarkets and Agro-industrial Foods

Up until recent years, all agricultural production in Norway was strictly regulated through spatial policy (location), production quotas and other price and market regulations. Prices and products were handled by the farmers’ cooperatives. International (e.g. WTO agreements) and domestic pressure has gradually loosened the governmental regulation of chicken and eggs. Economic (e.g. new ownerships), technological (innovations throughout the whole chain), political and institutional (liberalization) and cultural (e.g. in consumption and farming) changes have reconfigured the landscapes of chicken meat production, opening up new opportunities for the chicken industry. Chicken therefore makes a particularly good case for exploring recent major changes in the agri-food system. In this chapter, we investigate evolving rules, risks, challenges and opportunities in and around chicken meat value chains. Empirically, we build on interviews, document studies and statistics on the structural development of the chicken industry and we discuss how these changes are developing in other parts of the Norwegian agri-food system.