Dealing with salinity in Wheatbelt Valleys - Department of Water

WHEATBELT VALLEYS IN DIFFICULTIES
The Wheatbelt in 1929
Something of an early zenith was reached in 1929,
the year of the State’s Centenary. The proportion
of the State’s population living in these areas had
hit a peak, which was never to be reached again.
In absolute terms, some shires (see Table 3) never
reached their pre-Depression populations again.
Table 3: Population trends in the Shire of
Narembeen (Source: Bristow 1988, 191-192)
Year Population
1925 2,100
1933 1,471
1947 977
1954 1,329
1961 1,558
1966 1,590
1971 1,384
1976 1,450
1981 1,330
The onset of the Depression
The most significant feature of the Depression for
the wheatbelt valleys was the dramatic collapse in
the price for the main product – wheat. In 1925/6,
the price was $23 per tonne. This price declined
each year to reach $8 per tonne in 1930/31 (Black
1981). In 1930, the Premier, Mr (later, Sir James)
Mitchell was still looking to the wheat farmers for
the solution, as demonstrated in his exhortation:
"...the world’s food requirements are at once our
opportunity and our danger – opportunity to people
the country and reap a rich crop of annual wealth,
danger because a hungry world is looking for ideal
land on which to grow more food ……. To get the
last acre selected and the whole of the cultivable land
put to its fullest use is the aim of my party." (quoted
in Black 1981, p.416).
The farmers responded. The crop of 53 million
bushels (approximately 1.4 million tonnes)
produced in 1930-31 was not exceeded until 1960
(see Tables 4 and 5).
The collapse of the wheat market shattered
wheatbelt farmers and their communities. The
low wheat prices did not allow the new farmers to
service their debts for development and many
– 5 –
Frost and Burnside
were forced to leave empty-handed after less than
10 years farming. Hundreds of wheatbelt farmers
abandoned their land in the 1930s. The
Governments, which had done so much to get
people ‘on the land’, had to provide further
support to reconstruct the abandoned farms into
larger units – up to 4,000 acres, which were then
in the hands of the survivors, being those who had
the resources to be able to stay. This process of
Government adjustment and reconstruction was
not completed until 1950 (Burvill 1979c).
Year
Table 4: Trends in Wheatbelt production
1930-1950 (Source: Burvill 1979b, p.43)
Area
Cleared
(m Ha)
Area sown
for grain
(m Ha)
Wheat
Production
(m tonnes)
1930 5.8 1.6 1.46
1940 6.4 1.06 0.57
1950 6.8 1.29 1.36
The collapse of the wheatbelt valley was a human
disaster – a number of shire and other histories
have stories of people being sold up and moved on
with no reward after years of toil and after the
promise of prosperity which induced them to
these lands (e.g. Bristow 1988; Bolton 1994;
Snooks 1981; Webb 1988). For the survivors, it
was a time of struggle – coping with poor seasons
in the mid 1930s, very low prices for wheat and
the continuing need to service debts. Confidence
in agriculture in general, and the value of wheat
growing in particular declined severely as the
wheatbelt valleys experienced hardship and
genuine poverty (Bolton 1994).
Wartime stresses
The onset of World War II in 1939 simply added to
the difficulties. Labour shortages for farming
became acute and production levels and product
prices were highly regulated. The cropping
industry, which was trying to move from a
dependence on horse power to fossil fuels was
hampered by fuel shortages – with charcoal fired
gas producers a common sight on tractors.
In summary the development of the wheatbelt
valleys, commenced with such enthusiasm in the
1900s, stalled and struggled for two decades from
1930-1950 as shown in Table 4.