Redesigning Animal Agriculture

22 M. Alston
transport for business profitability. Despite
this, an examination of Australia’s rural
communities suggests that many rural communities
are under stress and unable to service
the needs of rural producers.
Rural Communities
Two-thirds of Australians live in capital cities
and 84% of the population live within
50 km of the coast (Hugo, 2005). Only 16%
of Australians inhabit the vast inland areas
of this large continent and these are the
people most likely to be critically engaged
in or dependent in some way on agriculture.
A sharp distinction needs to be made
between rural coastal communities, which
are experiencing population increase and
the associated pressures of rapid growth,
and rural inland communities dependent
on agriculture, 40% of which are in stasis
or decline (Tonts, 2000). While regional
‘sponge cities’ (Salt, 1992) are growing
beyond a depend ence on agriculture and
mining communities are experiencing some
prosperity (Hugo, 2005), rural inland communities,
particularly those in areas where
mixed cropping and livestock farming are
practiced away from major cities are under
significant stress (Hugo, 2005). In these
communities the pressures on farm families,
including drought, a changing policy environment
and the impacts of globalization,
rebound, creating unemployment, a loss of
families, an erosion of services, a loss of professionals
and a widespread general community
malaise (Alston and Kent, 2006).
The loss of population in many rural
areas occurs for complex reasons including
the reduced employment options on farms,
the loss of professionals and their families
as services close down, a drift of population
to the coastal regions for lifestyle reasons
and a decline in the size of rural families.
However, one of the more critical factors
associated with rural depopulation is the
loss of young people from rural communities
as they leave in search of work and higher
education (Alston and Kent, 2001, 2006;
Alston et al., 2004). This rural out-migration
of young people is highly gendered as more
young women leave, their local choices more
constrained than those of young rural men.
Yet this gendered drift leaves a higher proportion
of young men in rural communities
unable to find partners. This social issue is
compounded by the decline in the numbers
of young professionals – teachers, nurses,
allied health professionals (usually women)
– entering rural communities, as rural health
and education services are reduced. Keeping
and attracting rural young people remains a
vexed issue when employment options are
limited and social networks sparse.
None the less there is a small but
counter-trend of people moving to rural areas
– the ‘tree-changers’ noted by Salt (2005), or
the ‘downshifters’ noted by Hamilton and
Mail (2003, p. 8), who are defined as ‘those
people who make a voluntary, long term
lifestyle change that involves accepting
significantly less income and consuming
less’. Many are retirees who may move to
small rural communities for low-cost living
and lifestyle. For example several houses in
Blackall, Queensland, have been purchased
by Victoria retirees who spend their winters
in the hotter climate (Alston and Kent,
2006). Burnley and Murphy (2004) make an
important distinction between downshifters
who are ‘free agents’ – those retirees
and workers who make the choice for lifestyle
reasons – and the ‘forced relocators’,
those often welfare-dependent people who
must move to escape the high cost of city
living. Whatever the reason for the escape
from the cities, these people offer some
hope of a turnaround in population drift.
For agriculture, a potential bright spot is the
‘tree-changers’ who return to take over the
family farm mid-career or those relocators
who move into farming for the first time.
Capturing this demographic depends on the
attractiveness of the area, the services such
as education for children and the lifestyle
offered to families. However, demographic
data suggests that health, welfare, education
and employment are areas of disadvantage
in rural areas.
Representing ongoing stress in the
hinterland, rural Australians continue to
experience poorer health, mortality rates