BATTLE lines are being drawn and a war on red tape is about to begin.
The National Farmers Federation is ramping up its push to see farmers properly recognised for the good environmental work they do, rather than being constantly hit with a big regulatory stick by multi-tiers of government.
NFF wants the Federal Government to clearly spell out where farmers and agriculture fit into its broader environmental priorities and start working with them with appropriate incentives, rather than lumping them with layers of costly red tape - proven to have perverse environmental outcomes anyway.
With farmers managing 60 percent of the Australian landscape, and countless reports recognising the good conservation work farmers carry out every day, NFF chief executive officer Ben Fargher says the Government must step up its commitment to the environmental stewardship concept and put some serious money on the table if they want farmers as part of the solution.
He said for every activity a farmer undertakes, there are countless pieces of legislation and planning laws at every level of government hovering over a farmer's every move. For example, it is believed there are 200 different pieces of laws and red-tape restrictions governing water use in NSW alone.
"This is a war on red tape, but we've also got a solution. There's a better way than all this, and we know there's another way to get these outcomes," Mr Fargher said.
In mid-2007, the previous government committed $50 million to an environmental stewardship pilot program to pay farmers for conservation work which protects a certain threatened species community.
The concept was supported when the Rudd Government came to power also, but Mr Fargher said after 18 months of the pilot program reaping huge benefits for both farmers and the environment, it was now time to get serious.
He said there was a raft of government strategies and consultation papers regarding biodiversity and national park management, and it seems the Govern-ment has an opportunity to go one of two ways - more regulations or incentives.
"(Minister for Environment) Peter Garrett can go down a very regulatory approach which is going to continue to cause angst in farming communities, and we would argue this would not deliver the most effective outcome," Mr Fargher said.
"Or the Government can embrace its pilot environmental stewardship program and actually put some serious money into it in next year's budget and expand it to more species, which would deliver not only a better environmental outcome, but also a better production outcome, with more engagement with the farming sector and less angst."
Mr Fargher said farmer awareness of the Federal Environmental Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation Act (governing farm practices in relation to threatened species) was not high.
He said there were compliance issues, yet farmers were not looking to do the wrong thing deliberately.
"Half the time they are not even aware of their obligations and responsibilities, and that there is a much better way to do it through the stewardship program," he said.
"The time to do something is now. All these different biodiversity strategies are out there - pull them all together and let's do something good for the farm sector and the environment."
In late 2007, the Productivity Commission's report into regulation and red tape said in the case of native vegetation, overlapping pieces of legislation were actually delivering a worse environmental outcome, not a better one.
An Australian Farm Institute report on value in environmental management systems, published in late 2006, said Australian governments "need to give stronger support to a recognised voluntary environmental management system" and doing so would give the government an opportunity to forego additional regulatory control over the farm sector.
"We've got farmers every day trying to come up with new sustainable farming systems," Mr Fargher said.
"They know better than daresay the bureaucrats in Canberra the importance of these environmental assets and they know how to protect them because they manage the land every day.
"All the Government needs to do is back them with the right policy settings and some funding through stewardship."
While the concept stage has broken the four-year funding cycle model, he said the Government still seemed hesitant to commit to longer term contracts of 15 years or more.
"So far $50m has been allocated to protect one ecological community - to protect others will take a lot of money over time. We're talking billions.
"We've heard anecdotally that the Government sees this as an expensive project, which just strengthens our argument that delivering wider community expectations on biodiversity should not be borne purely by farmers."
While both Minister for Agriculture Tony Burke and his environment counterpart Peter Garrett were unavailable for comment this week, the Department of Environment did provide a fact sheet that is available for farmers to help them understand their environmental obligations.
Mr Burke has previously outlined his commitment to reduce red tape on farms, and said publicly last month that he was sick of farmers being depicted as environmental vandals.
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