Moving water at Sydney Uni

The Liverpool plains is one of the best (and maybe the best) agricultural regions of Australia with deep fertile black clay soils and sufficient rainfall and sunshine for production of durum wheat, sorghum and many other crops. It is also a region which has regularly been in the news. First it was related to the over allocation of groundwater to the local irrigators, but more recently because the area is underlain by a rich coal seam. The NSW government would like to sell the mining rights, and, understandably, the local community is none too pleased. All this is understandable, I would not be happy with mining in my backyard either. So basically we have a trade-off between mining and agriculture. But the real question that arises is what the best solution is for Australia and the Australian society in terms of sustainability, resilience and future prosperity. I will try to answer this question from a philosophical point of view rather than going into the specific details of the case. I have commented on this earlier

We just had our annual research symposium of the Faculty. And the theme was the same as the title of this blog post. It is of course an area that is quite near to my heart and I was keen to hear the different talks. I am not sure if I now know what sustainable agriculture means and therefore I thought I should spend a blog post on this topic with my random thoughts.

The dilemma I often struggle with relates to nature conservation. I will use the Murray Darling as an example. I know I have written about this before, but during my last trip to south west NSW it again occurred to me that there is a tricky problem.

This year will be my 10th year of participating and organising the annual Landcare activities at “Arthursleigh” near Marulan, NSW. The property “Arthursleigh” was bequeathed to the University around 1980 and came of a 99-year lease. The property suffers from significant erosion in many places. Students and staff, from the Faculty of Agriculture and the University have been active in revegetation for approximately 15 years funded through different grants and organisation. I quite enjoy the trip and the activities but I always wonder about the impact that we have on the actual problem of erosion.

In my second year unit in the Bachelor of Land and Water Science, I asked the students to run some on-line debates as part of their assessment. The small group of students worked on two debates: 1) whether land degradation was mainly due to climate variation or due to human impacts; and 2) Environmental flows are they really beneficial or just a placebo. In the debates they were split in a “for” and “against” team. The idea was to have them explore the scientific literature and dig out some of the controversial and contradictory statements. In addition, it would help them better understand the weaknesses in both sides of the argument. I hope this will help them in the future when they are employed as environmental professionals. I will try to summarise the main points of the second debate as I thought there were some interesting comments. Please note that this was set-up as a debate for assessment in a unit of study and the submissions of the students and views expressed in the debate are not necessarily the students’ views or my views.

I think I should start a campaign against bottled water. The picture in the SMH last week in relation to the aftermath of the riots in Thailand I think explains everything that is wrong with bottled water. Five people are resting and sitting around after the riots, but most striking are the stacks and stacks of plastic water bottles which are everywhere and these will probably all end up in the landfill. Clearly water was supplied to these people in these small individual bottles and all were just thrown on the ground after use. I know I commented on this last week as well, but I want to talk about it a bit more.

Interesting was the call by a columnist from Bloomberg news to look at water as the next employment opportunity for unemployed bankers. Given the money that Coca Cola is making from bottled water he is probably right.

As I mentioned earlier, I am currently in the Netherlands for a workshop on “Roots an interdisciplinary link?” My interest is of course in how plants use water, as transpiration by plants is one of the largest components of the water balance. The workshop is at Wageningen University, which is 10 km from my parents’ home. So every morning I cycled through the lovely “Binnenveld” from Rhenen to Wageningen (see picture).

This is the little river that flows through the middle of the “Binnenveld” and drains the peat and clay area. It looks like a beautiful natural place. But is it really? How much of nature is really “natural” and how much of it is man-made?