Opinion

Out Here

Farmers, too, can learn from Apple

Posted: 25 Aug 11 | The great success of technology manufacturer Apple contains lessons for farmers in the way they manage their supply chain, writes Matthew Cawood. |

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NBN just one of life's necessities

Posted: 05 Apr 11 | FOR more than a decade now, with a minor interruption, I've been working for Rural Press from an area of northern NSW that standard road maps portray as mostly blank. |

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Leading the charge away from fossil fuels

Posted: 04 Mar 11 | Australians were at their best during the recent floods and cyclone: selfless, supportive and innovative. Pity that the evolutionary path that gave us great crisis reflexes didn't do much to equip us for crises of a more slow-burning nature. |

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Consulting the tea leaves, post-flood

Posted: 26 Jan 11 | Rural Press science and environment writer Matthew Cawood peers into the future to find out what comes next following the floods. |

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Whatever the outcome, farmers deserve GM choice

Posted: 11 Jan 11 | STEPHEN Marsh mightn't be happy, but the contamination of his organic farm in WA by genetically modified canola is no bad thing for the farming community in general. |

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Time to build on our alternative agriculture

Posted: 08 Nov 10 | It is safe to assume that Australian agriculture will always ride on export-orientated commodity food production. The mathematics of producing food enough for 60 million in a country of 21 million says so. |

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Time will judge the independents' choice

Posted: 09 Sep 10 | It’s too early to judge whether Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott pulled the right rein in choosing Labor to govern the next term. The appropriate time will be in roughly 20 years. |

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Let's get serious about soil carbon

Posted: 19 Aug 10 | POLITICIANS of all persuasions have had a hard time being nice to farmers in ways that don’t upset larger, more vociferous and vindictive sections of the voting public. |

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Armidale beef forum demands democracy, gags dissent

Posted: 04 Mar 10 | The Armidale Beef Industry Forum began with a long prayer. That was the first unusual thing. |

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When soil carbon is not in the national interest

Posted: 03 Feb 10 | IN THE sporting phrase, the Coalition plan has soil carbon peaking too early. |

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Ag not in ETS, but definitely not out

Posted: 18 Nov 09 | Senator Wong is not a woman who does backflips, even in the privacy of her own home. Agriculture might not be “in” the ETS, but by no means is it “out”, either. |

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Climate change can pay for agriculture's inevitable evolution

Posted: 11 Nov 09 | The pressures that climate change policy will place on agriculture are not very different to the changes agriculture will have to make anyway. The difference is that under an emissions trading scheme, change might be subsidised. |

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Why the Climate Institute's paper is a burr under ag's saddle

Posted: 15 Oct 09 | The Climate Institute's discussion paper on how agriculture might participate in emissions trading is notable for two reasons: it exists, and it doesn't sugar-coat its ideas. |

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Toorale Carbon Research Park

Posted: 30 Sep 09 | Locking up Toorale Station is a waste of a resource that might help resolve some questions of pressing interest. Toorale Station should become Toorale Carbon Research Park. |

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Better food, not just more

Posted: 27 Aug 09 | The agricultural productivity equation should be about stacking more into each gram, not just more from each hectare. |

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Desperately seeking solid science

Posted: 15 Jul 09 | The debate on climate change science must be conducted through channels that discriminate between sound science and the rest. Otherwise, what should be a scientific debate comes down to faith that one side or the other has a monopoly on the truth. |

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Irrigators are people, too

Posted: 23 Jun 09 | Irrigators have become symbols of greed and wastefulness. Take a closer look, and they turn out to be just people trying to make a living. |

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Killing the volunteer spirit

Posted: 28 May 09 | The push for every NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer to get training certificates doesn't help the volunteer spirit that built Australia's fire brigades. |

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Reflections on a barbecued moth

Posted: 18 May 09 | Putting moths to work. |

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Agriculture fails emissions trading fundamentals

Posted: 18 May 09 | There was a glum irony plastered over the banners at the recent Australian Farm Institute conference on emissions trading: the event's chief sponsor was Land & Water Australia, which the day before learned it was getting the axe from Canberra. |

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