Car travel and a taste for meat fuel rise in greenhouse gas emissions

Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising in defiance of the Andrews government’s strong renewable energy push, mostly due to surging car and truck traffic, and from cattle, sheep and pig farming.

Victoria's greenhouse gas emissions tumbled when
the Hazelwood power plant closed in 2017 but are rising again.

A report on the state’s carbon dioxide emission levels reveals they fell about 10 per cent when the Hazelwood coal-fired power station closed in March 2017, but have been increasing since, with population growth and rising demand for meat major contributors.

Read the story from The Age by Adam Carey - “Car travel and a taste for meat fuel rise in greenhouse gas emissions.”

If edible insect are the future, use should talk about poop

TWO BILLION PEOPLE can’t be wrong—at least, not about the nearly 2,000 species of insects that make for good eatin’ around the world. But nobody has to pitch you on the benefits of insectivory, right? Easier on the environment, full of weird nutrients, and whoa, check out that feed conversion ratio: It takes half as much food as you’d give to pigs and chickens and a twelfth as much as cattle to get the same amount of cricket protein on the far side of the abattoir. If Earth might have to feed 9 billion people in the coming decades, insects are what’s for dinner. Ask the United Nations.

Insects for dinner?

But let’s slow down this Snowpiercer train a bit. Insects like crickets and beetles are, indeed, a very good source of protein and other nutrients. But the ones that humans already eat tend to be wild-caught and consumed in comparatively small numbers. That’s not the scaled-up future of insectivory that the UN foresaw in 2013. Factory farm facilities that can breed, raise, kill, and ship millions of critters require more food as input, output more waste, and raise thorny issues from entomology to ethics. “Actually, we don’t know that much,” says Åsa Berggren, an ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala who has been trying to sort out how sustainable an insect-based menu would be. “And people don’t know what we don’t know.”

Read the story from Wired by Adam Rogers - “If edible insect are the future, use should talk about poop."

The big dry: 'See us, hear us, help us’

Cattle and sheep farmer Bev Hicks breaks down in tears as she points out her dying trees.

Upper Hunter cattle and sheep farmer
Bev Hicks has never seen it so dry.

"My trees, they're 100 years old and I'm losing them," she says. "Things like that really do devastate you.”

Ms Hicks is based near Denman in the Upper Hunter region of NSW where many landholders are running out of water. And they are not alone.

Ninety-eight per cent of NSW and around two-thirds of Queensland is in drought or drought-affected, with pastures turned to rubble and the cost of freight and feed skyrocketing.

Read the ABC Rural story - “The big dry: 'See us, hear us, help us’.”

Drought forcing Queensland graziers to sell off cattle.

Water is a crucial issue in Queensland right now where graziers are having to sell off thousands of head of cattle as they stare down their sixth year of drought.

Six years of unrelenting drought is putting
pressure on Queensland farmers.

As parched conditions drag on in more than 30 Queensland shires food and water are dwindling for stock.

Graziers in the west are being forced to spend big money on adjustment to keep their animals alive or to simply sell.

Listen to the Radio National Breakfast interview by Hamish Macdonald - “Drought forcing Queensland graziers to sell off cattle.”

Cattle on the move as graziers give up on wet season in drought-stricken Queensland

There is an exodus of cattle leaving drought-stricken parts of western Queensland as graziers give up on seeing a wet season, two months before the rains are usually due to finish.

Mr Elliott waters his horses at sunset while out on the road, north of Winton.

Richard Simpson, 55, a stock agent in Longreach with 30 years' experience in the region, describes his client base as mature — with one grazier aged in his mid-80s.

Mr Simpson said neither of them had seen the region facing a total destocking of sheep and cattle as it was now.

"This region will be destocked ... I reckon you can put a zero on it — probably the worst you want to see," Mr Simpson said.

He predicted if there was no rain by the end of the summer, all cattle in the region would have been moved out and sheep would follow in the winter.

Read the ABC News story by Nicole Bond - “Cattle on the move as graziers give up on wet season in drought-stricken Queensland.”

NSW farmers urged to plan for dry season as lack of rain increases pressure on landholders

A sheep and cattle farmer from the New South Wales Hunter Valley says conditions in the region have not been as dry as they currently are in almost 40 years.

Large parts of NSW are in desperate need of rain.

The observation came as farmers were urged to plan for the warmer months in a bid to mitigate the effects of the harsh conditions.

Ian MacCallum has worked the land around Moonan Flat in the Upper Hunter for 60 years.

"For the cattle industry, it is particularly bad because our cows have just calved, and we've got young calves on the ground which are this coming year's income.

Read the ABC News story - “NSW farmers urged to plan for dry season as lack of rain increases pressure on landholders.”

Queensland farmers say drought should be declared 'natural disaster'

F

armers are warning the Queensland beef industry is on the brink of collapse and the dire and enduring drought needs to be declared a natural disaster.

Around 75 per cent of Queensland is drought-declared and graziers are coping with their third or fourth year of drought.

John Lethbridge completely destocked his 7,000-head cattle property to survive.

With no income, Mr Lethbridge is trying to sell up his land in Hughenden after a lifetime on the land.

The ABC story - “Farmers urge Government to tackle drought as natural disaster” – quotes a farmer who says, “Many farmers were not coping with the drought's relentlessness.”

El Nino returning this year - BOM

El Nino worsened Australia’s recent decade-long drought and now the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is predicting its return this year.

The likelihood of the return of this weather changing event is noted in a Reuters story headed: “El Nino likely in 2014, says Australian Bureau of Meteorology”.

The bureau has said the El Nino could occur during the southern hemisphere winter, May-July, and Australian cattle and grain farmers are already struggling with drought which has cut production.