A Whole New Way Of Seeing Green  

Paul Sheehan has an interesting article in today's Herald about "Holistic Management" and how it can be used to help regenerate the soil in inland Australia.

King treats his Cessna like a family car, popping often between his family company's two properties and far afield to the Northern Territory, to buy cattle. It means he has spent a lot of time reading a lot of countryside. And the more he has seen, the more he has moved across the gulf that exists between dominant perceptions and the reality of what is happening to this country. The void. Terrorism is not the biggest long-term threat to Australia.

In the process of studying the fundamental structure of the country, he has become a radical, despite the cockie's uniform of broad-rimmed hat, denim shirt and blue jeans. "Our politicians and bureaucrats are still illiterate about this environment. They have no concept of the foundation blocks of ecosystems. And Bob Brown is one of the worst. We're still treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. Droughts and water shortages are just symptoms."

Despite the recent rains, which have left the brown land carpeted in khaki-coloured cover, the horizon is covered with brown haze. "We've been in a haze for the last hour," King says. "It's just appalling. In a healthy landscape we wouldn't be seeing a permanent dust haze. But it's coming off exposed soils and scalded country."

He then proffers this mild criticism of our environment's protectors: "The National Parks and Wildlife Service is, by far, the greatest environmental vandal in the country."

King is not one of those hot-air machines who has never run a business, never turned a profit, never revitalised a landscape. He's 32 and since taking over management of the family property, Coombing Park, between Bathurst and Cowra, carrying capacity has increased by 30 per cent, costs have fallen by a third, and it had permanent ground cover through the drought.

On the day we flew around the state, newspapers carried reports from the Australian Productivity Commission that there are 46,000 fewer farms than there were 20 years ago. Agriculture employs just 4 per cent of the nation's workforce. King believes this is exactly the opposite to the direction in which the country should be headed. He is a member of a growing worldwide movement that follows the Allan Savory method of land management. Savory and his supporters don't like land simply being locked up in order to save it. They want more people on the land and more animals.