soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM

significance of the realities which confront our rural
development.
A useful starting 'wig -is Bolton's Spoils and Spoilers
which reminds us of:-&cultural developments and their
attendant attitudes at the turn of the century:
'In the dozen years before 1900 every government in
Australia set up a Department of Agriculture which included
among its functions the spread of information about sound
farming practices. By that time, starting with South
Australia's Roseworthy in 1882, agricultural colleges were
established in four of the six Australian colonies. Although
the staff of these colleges confronted the scepticism of the
practical farmer for the mere scientist, their findings were
often given widespread publicity through respected and
influential journals such as the Leader, Register,
Queenslander and Western Mail; but their total influence is
hard to guess.
Salinity was an expensive and complex problem which
would continue to grow during the following half century; it
was understandable that farmers and politicians did not
want to hear about it. Such attitudes were one of the
strongest impediments to environmental reform. They were
well to the fore in the story of soil erosion.
Like all their fathers before them the pioneers of the new
farming districts cleared the land with indiscriminate zeal,
spurred by the urge to render every acre productive and to
leave no sanctuary for vermin such as wallabies and
rabbits. Soil erosion and salt creep were the consequence.
In the late 1920s and 1930s complaints grew rife in
Sydney about the heavy dust storms thrown up by the
. summer westerlies. The public at large came to realise that
much of the New South Wales wheatbelt's topsoil was being
steadily blown out across the Tasman. In 1933 a
government committee was set up to monitor the problem,
and in 1938 a soil conservation service was created to
survey its extent* (Bolton, 1981).
The global picture.
In 1974 the author addressed extension officers as
follows:
Despite numerous warnings over the years, man has
recently been somewhat bewildered by the fact that Nature
has slapped him in the face for insulting her ecosystem.
(One of the best examples of this is at Childers in
Queensland, where a whole community of 70 families were
forced to abandon their eroded land after less than a
century of cane farming.)
Nature has answeWBa&&ck and Man has stumbled into an
ecological trap. C'bjikibqs have been living on promissory
notes for generatio_aSziiow they're falling due all over the
world. In e c o n o m ~ we ~ have , been living not off our
interest, but off our land capital.
The wriiing is on the wall but ignorance, vested interest
and complacency make Man go on doing what history has
clearly shown him to be wrong. Nature has sent us a final
notice - payment is due, and we now need to decide how
we shall pay, not whether we shall pay.
So we find that today the status of the ecological problem
is not determined by its age or academic merit, but simply
by its urgency. (Roberts, 1974).
The time factor has become a crucial element in our
efforts to control land degredation. If we do not get on top of
the problem soon, we shall have little hope of winning the
battle against erosion in several regions. Under the
circumstances, perhaps the local politician who suggested
in 1983 that the Declaration of a State of Emergency was
not as absurd as some thought at the time. As Jacks and
Whyte (1939) pointed out when referring to the Australian
situation '... the only way to combat erosion is to work
faster than it does, and this becomes increasingly difficult
as time goes on. "
Osborne and Rose (1981) have demonstrated the general
rate of land deterioration by comparing earlier estimates
with the latest erosion surveys. In 1946 Holmes estimated
that Australia has 18.8 million hectares of water eroded
land, requiring erosion works valued at $24.5. million. By
1975 the national erosion survey (Anon, 1978) reflected an
area of 57.7 million hectares requiring $41.5 million for
control works.
The attitude towards land and Nature was publicised
earlier this century by Gifford Pinchot in his book The Fbht
for Cunservation (1 947): "The conservation idea covers a
wider range than the field of natural resources alone.
Conservation means the greatest good to the greatest
number for the longest time."
A promising and interesting approach is that suggested
by Leopold when he writes:
"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that
the individual is a member of a community of interdependent
parts ... The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the
community to include soils, water, plants, and animals, or
collectively, the land."
I cannot avoid the compelling similarity between the
practicing environmentalist and the personality traits held
up for us by the great religions of the world. Indeed, the
similarity deserves our closest attention (Roberts, 1974). 1
shall return to this aspect of our land relationships.
Size of the land degradation
problem in Australia
The significance of soil loss, and the need for a change in
our attitudes towards the land is reflected in the findings of
the national erosion survey (Anon, 1978): "Fifty-one per
cent of the total area used for agricultural and pastoral
purposes in Australia was assessed as needing some form
of soil conservation treatment under existing land use. The
total value of fixed investment in this area subject to
degredation is of the order of $1 2 billion (at 1974 prices)."
Recognising the essential need for changing attitudes
towards the land, as the basis for combatting the land
degradation problem, the 3rd National Soil Conservation
Conference (Anon, 1981) unanimously resolved:
"This
Conference should warn that unless there is greater
awareness of, and remedial action against, this problem and
that unless more funds and effort are applied to
conservation of soil, it is inevitable that the production level
and stability of essential primary products will diminish."
Osborne and Rose (1981) quote Kovda's (1977)
estimates of Man having destroyed 430 million hectares of
crop and grazing land since agriculture emerged 7, 500
years ago. They point out that on a per capita basis,
Australians have destroyed 1 1.2 hectares, compared to 3.5
hectares in the U.S.A. since settlement.
There is a contradiction between the landholders 'love for
the land' and the degradation caused to this land. The
classic writer of Australian rural tales, Steele Rudd (Davis,
1934) wrote in sentimental tones of the deep joy the new
selector felt for his own block: "You'll ride all over it filled .
with a proud spirit of'ownership ... even the wild flowers and
darn stones'll be yours! How you'll admire it all."
It is the very same corner of Australia about which Rudd
waxed so lyrical, that some of the worst erosion in the
country is now occurring. This area, between Toowoomba
and Warwick, has been the subject of a special study. It
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