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

the association of the group with a sole producer
organization, a department or even a personality.
- An additional factor which must be emphasized is the
potential role of women in Land Care groups. The contribution
of rural women to the secretarial aspects of community work is
well known, but their special talent for taking the long term
view of permanent production systems as a basis for on-going
family security, has not been adequately tapped in Land Care
groups to date. This matter was put to the Country Women's
~ssociation of Queensland (Roberts 1986a) and has received a
positive and growing response. It is indeed heartening to
witness the increasing number of women being elected to key
roles in recently elected Land Care committees. Their role is
of particular value in nurturing a sense of permanence and
balance in the coming generation of landholders, which has
every reason to include as many female as male managers in the
coming years of increasing automation of farm activities
(Roberts 1989a) .
PROPERTY PLANNING AND LAND CAPABILITY
What is land capability? It is that level of yield that
can be maintained in the long term. So in land use planning
we have always aimed at two goals:
(i) To use each section of land according to its potential.
.
(ii) To protect each section of land according to its hazards.
In other words we aim to make full use of the productive
ability and at the same time ensure that we don't degrade the
land by producing higher short term yields at the expense of
the soil's stability and future productivity.
Land classes are used to map sections of land according
to their suitable intensity of use and to their need for
conservation measures. This approach has been used with
success since the 1930s and in essence, it distinguishes
between deep level soils suitable for annual crops without any
soil conservation measures, and steep shallow soils suited
only to natural vegetation and its careful use. The basic
evaluatien of whether land is arable (cropping) or not,
determines whether land is suitable for clearing and
cultivation. If this first decision in property planning is
wrong it is often impossible to stabilize the land by whatever
choices of cultivation practices are selected thereafter. As
a rule of thumb in the summer rainfall zone, slopes above 7%
should be classed as non-arable. However, in semi-arid
regions even level terrain may be unsuitable for. clearing if
the rainfall is insufficient to produce enough stubble for
effective stubble mulching.
In this era of enthusiasm for tree planting, it is
important that the role, and thus the location, of trees in
the Land Care programme is carefully evaluated. Trees have a
number of important roles to play in combination with other
soil stabilizing techniques in the property plan. So each