Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Commercial kangaroo harvest contributes to sustainable regional communities and rangeland environments by bringing social, economic and environmental benefits. However, the South Australian kangaroo industry is not delivering these benefits to its potential capacity. South Australian harvest rates are lower than any of the other st ....

There are many changes occurring in rural and regional communities in the Murray-DarlingBasin as a result of climate change, water availability, water trading, global markets, populationmovements and ongoing social changes. Basin communities will respond to and be affected bya range of these drivers in combination with their adaptive capacity, re ....

Agriculture, fisheries and forestry industries are an important source of employment for Australia's indigenous people. Around 4 per cent of the indigenous workforce is employed in these industries but this represents little more than 1 per cent of all people working in agriculture, fisheries and forestry in Australia. Little is kn ....

The Australian dairy industry has recently experienced a policy reform that involved the over-night removal of all price support mechanisms. It was an unusual event because policy changes are usually phased-in or announced with several years warning. In this case farmers had limited time to prepare for the effects of the reform. Consequently the ....

Human society depends on healthy ecosystems. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have emerged as an incentive-based tool to protect and restore ecosystem-service flows, which are being degraded at regional and global scales. Through PES, users of ecosystem services pay landowners who supply these services through land management. This ....

Twelve case studies demonstrate how the irrigation industry is rising to the challenges of sustainable use of water resources. The case studies are of water use planning on a cotton farm in Moree NSW, subsurface irrigation on a tomato farm in Rochester Vic, salt interception to reduce salt flows into the River Murray from a citrus ....

The current debate on the use of property rights as an instrument to progress ecologically sustainable development in rural Australia is circumscribed by agricultural fundamentalism, by commodification, and by command and control processes in rural programs. This reinforcing loop makes the creative processes that are essential to p ....

The Australian Government is meeting the challenge of water scarcity and climate change through significant on-farm infrastructure investment to increase water use efficiency and productivity, and secure longer term water supplies. However, it is likely that on-farm infrastructure investment will alter energy consumption and therefore generate co ....

The Cicerone Project was set up to study the long term profitability and sustainability of three different input and grazing management systems. The Cicerone Project consists of three farmlets each with management systems contrasting in inputs (levels of fertilisers and pastures) and grazing management. Farmlet A has high input, hi ....

Towards the end of the past decade, signs were emerging as to future challenges associated with impending intersections between the ageing of global rural populations and their impacts on agricultural production and food safety. In a landmark paper for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Iaquinta et al. (1999) made a ....

Australia's inland agricultural areas have experienced steady population decline over the past 40 years, largely as a result of structural adjustment in agriculture, policy reform, service and infrastructure rationalisation, and diminishing employment opportunities. This article provides an overview of the patterns and processes of ....

With some 23.3 percent of its population born overseas and 19.2 percent Australia-born people with at least one parent born overseas, Australia has a greater proportion of its population made up of migrants than any of the OECD nations. Although immigrants make up a disproportionately small percentage of the agricultural workforce ....

Multifunctional agriculture, including value-added agriculture, has drawn the attention of different stakeholders (government, farmers) interested in maximising the potential of farming operations and strengthening rural communities. This preliminary study aims to investigate value-added agriculture, including the extent to which food growers con ....

Facilitating change in pest management practices, and ultimately the implementation of IPM (integrated pest management) is a significant challenge for research and extension practitioners. The field crops entomology group within the Queensland Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEEDI, formerly Department of Primary ....