‘’The biggest problems of agriculture comes not from the agri part of that word but the culture part of the word.’’
Jennifer Mortsen, who is researching at the present identifying periods of significant change in conservation funding, within her time has seen the issues of overgrazing and agriculture on Australian land.
‘’They (cows) will eat these until they are pretty much bare, and then move onto the less palatable, but still edible species.’’ She said, pointing out that it doesn’t allow time for plants to grow back before the cycle begins again, therefore ruining the areas growth cycle.
‘’With this pattern of behaviour, it doesn't take long for the environment to shift towards favouring unpalatable species, to the relative exclusion of all others.’’
After every crop is harvested the salinity within the soils rise causing issues, as well as when livestock trample on the grass.
According to ecoresources, Overgrazingis one of the main pressures on biodiversity in Australia. Grazing and various agriculturalimprovement strategies have modified vast areas of grasslands and open grassy woodlands.
With this knowledge, it is time to put the solutions into place before it is too late to save the Australian land and ways we can do that is through increasing money into research.
’’Increased funding for environmental science will come in two ways - people vote for it, and vote based on it.’’
‘’We can study animals and plants, and learn more about how to care for them, but without funding, we cannot carry out that research, and we can't act upon the required actions in the scales that are needed.’’
We need functioning ecosystems within Australia to control pests and keep native animals from going extinct.
Jennifer pointed out to me that agriculture isn’t just a biodiversity issue, it is a farming issue also.
‘’The removal of deep rooted vegetation has also increased salinity in many areas, but drawing up water from the water table, and bringing along salts in the soils along with it, which has made some lands unusable for most agriculture, so it's not just a biodiversity issue.’’
The issue with agriculture and overgrazing doesn’t just effect mammals and humans, it effects many creatures and without fixing this issue it will lead to many extinctions of species.
According to Parliament of Australia Between 1983and 1993, land clearing led to the deaths of at least a billion reptiles, or more than 100 million reptiles on average each year.
However, also overpopulation effects the land not just extinction which needs to be dealt with more so.
‘’The dingo fence and the poisoning and killing of dingoes below the fence leads to an overabundance of kangaroos, which also leads to overgrazing.’’ She said.
‘’But the biggest problem we face is not having a better method - the biggest problem is how to change a culture, how to change the expectations, and how to change what farmers on the whole do.’’
She pointed out that farming is the main issue when it comes to overgrazing, without a solution or a change in ways to which farming is done the problem will catch up to us.
According to the conservation website livestock Farmingcontributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide
Marcus Johnson a farmer from rural victoria is very aware of the issues farming can bring to our land.
‘’I am aware of the issue. Its obviously a big issue and can be a big contributor to the loss of biodiversity.’’
‘’We do take measures to prevent this, like I said we have plenty of room, plenty of paddocks to move them around.’’ He said.
Marcus on his property makes sure to have a lot of room for his livestock so they don’t overgraze on there property. The animals switch from different paddocks so they just aren’t eating the same grass.
‘’We are lucky enough to have a lot of room, there is a lot of grass for them to eat and we also feed them hay …’’
On his farm they do experience damage to the soil and grass, due to extreme weather conditions.
‘’I mean not long lasting, its just in the summer months it gets pretty dried up. But it all grows back pretty well.’’ He said.
The best way to resolve this issue us to give money into environmental research to be able to figure out reasonable and realistic solutions to this problem.
We need to create a bond with these creatures on our land rather then keeping them at arms length if we want to change the culture of farming.
