The Unbreakable Motto Must Be: No Bare Soil

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday September 30, 1994

By ERIC ROLLS

Drought ought to mean regeneration. Because too many Australians do not yet know their country, it means devastation.

The present drought is the hardest and longest on record. But that is European record. Undoubtedly there have been longer and harder droughts in the past. There will be longer and harder droughts in the future. There must be -that is the way Australian soil rebuilds itself.

Smell the red sand in the Simpson Desert when the first drops of rain hit it. There is an immediate release of chemicals. One smells life. Seedlings break the surface in three days, in three weeks native spinach stands 70 centimetres tall.

"What this land could do if it had water |" state the lovers of irrigation. It would do nothing more. The sudden wild growth exhausts it and it takes 10 to 15 years for sun, wind and frost to remake the chemicals.

This natural action cannot be replaced by artificial fertilisers. There are too many chemicals involved. Not all of them are known. The soils in the present devastated farmland will have a hard time restoring themselves.

They have been too much tortured by overstocking, overcropping and overwatering.

In Aboriginal Australia no drought ever caused bare land. Termites, the principal grazing animals of the north, sealed off their mounds when drought set in, sealed in humidity and waited for rain. Kangaroos, the principal grazing animals of the south, stopped breeding. If water dried up, they died. The soil could always restore itself under cover.

When Charles Sturt ventured out to the Darling River in 1828, the country was probably drier than it is now. Even Aborigines were dying of starvation. The land protected itself savagely. In trying to master the land, in telling a soil that lives by fits and starts "you will produce continuously", we do not bring about our physical death, we destroy ourselves financially and spiritually. We destroy the land.

The grossly deranged far west of NSW has been overstocked for a hundred years. In the drought of 1902 NSW lost 30 million sheep. Thousands of millions of rabbits died with them. Before they died, they bared the land.

Yet, after World War II, when big stations that had adjusted their stocking rates were split up for soldier settlement, a stupid government regulation fixed a stocking rate based on "normal carrying capacity". That definition excluded drought years.

Recent CSIRO studies have found that the western country can support sheep at one quarter the present stocking rate. That is not a figure to be pigeonholed. If the recommendation is not followed, millions of hectares will become wasteland, then the soil will restore itself at its pleasure.

In the more closely settled farming districts, where expenses are so much higher, social disaster is acute. People on towns and on farms are suffering with the soil.

Banks are partly to blame. They lend too much at the wrong time. I know would-be farmers who have bought in at 30 per cent equity in good years. They would need 20 more bumper years to succeed. Any farmer with less than 90 per cent equity cannot weather a drought. He has insufficient buffer.

Bad farming is mostly to blame. There has to be an unbreakable motto: NO BARE SOIL. That means much better machinery than we have now, cultivators that will go through crop residue, no matter how heavy it is, and leave it on top of the ground. It means that livestock that cannot be sold have to be yarded or put into small paddocks to be fed so that vast areas are not eaten bare.

Our soils are regarded as resilient. But every spring finally loses its tension. Under the present methods of farming, all soils will lose resilience.

After a few months of good rain, anybody who exults "the drought is over"has learnt nothing. The next drought is on the way.

What the drought ought to do is tell people in city and country that water is so precious that it must be used drop by drop. We do not have the resources to water lawns or lavishly flood-irrigate cotton. Water must be measured out to the exact requirements of plants. Native plants that are careful with water should replace exotic lawn grasses.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA

1895-1903

Probably Australia's worst drought to date in terms of severity and area. Sheep numbers reduced by half to 50 million on cattle by 40 per cent. Wheat yields exceeded eight bushels per acre only once and bottomed at 2.4 in 1902.

1918-20

Major drought conditions throughout NSW

1939-45

Drought persistent in pastoral areas of South Australia and severe on the coast of NSW

1958-68

Most widespread and second only to the 1895-1903 drought in severity. NSW hit hardest from 1964-68.

1982-83

Extensive drought affecting nearly all of eastern Australia and severe in south-eastern Australia. Lowest recorded 11-month rainfall from Victoria to southern Queensland. Estimated losses in excess of $3 billion.