"0tterbot" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message

who just haven't got the first idea about anything! but the onus
is
on
country people to stop whingeing & educate them. the two lots are
entirely
interdependent, but you wouldn't know that from observing them.

Having lived in the country for the majority of my life, I
strongly
think that country people have more idea of the interdependance
and
the realities of life than city people do. We've been in drought
for
6 whole years but it is only now that the major metro papers seem
to
have woken up about it and only then because the cost of food is
really going to bite the city residents.

as a regular reader of city papers (and ex-city dweller), that's not
really
so, actually. it's probably fair to say that all individuals have
now woken
up to the problem all of a sudden. as an issue, it's just _exploded_
recently, and equally for everyone. i mean, sydney people (and those
in
other places) have been experiencing the reality of water shortages
for 5
years, haven't they?

Oh come on! Sydney people wouldn't know a water shortage if it bit
them on the arse. They only think they do.

the fact that most of them don't grow primary produce
only means that for them the situation isn't _dire_ in terms of
livelihood
in the short term; but they have been well aware of it for quite
some time
city peeps are generally better-educated

????? Not in my experience. They know a lot about some things and
naff all about other things.

and have a much broader view of the
world,

Again, not in my experience. They lack the sort of curiosity and
solution orientation of country people. They have everything handed
to them on a platter and so don't have to come up with innovative or
real life solutions or have to spend time thinking about things that
country people do. This country approach I have always found flows
over into broader mainstream approaches to world politics and foreign
affairs.

their world is just bigger than ours is.

Busier I've found but not bigger. In fact I've always been astounded
at how restricted are the lives of Sydney people in particular.

i believe it's equally
impossible for most country people to have any idea of what's really
going
on in the rest of the country. certainly the media is more
accessible, but
it seems to matter less when it's a long way away - it seems a
problem
removed, but it's not (as we all live here together).

????? I know of farmers who know of what is going on in other parts
of the rural world across the country.

Lord knows where they
thought (if they did think at all) of where their food came from.

again speaking for sydney - most fresh food there is grown in the
sydney
basin - it's local :-) (for now, anyway). again, it seems to take a
crisis
(farmland possibly being taken away for development) for people to
realise
what might be lost. argh!

Not so! You have either not been out of the city long enough or have
just proved my point about where city people think their food comes
from.

Water and how much of it is available has really been much lower
down
the agenda because in comparison to the country, our major cities
are
relativeley well supplied and taking it from miles and miles away
into
the cities..

a critical mass of people gives benefits, that's true. many services
iin the
country are crap - it's not just a water thing. (sigh). we don't
exist, you
know ;-)

Well certainly not for the Iemma or federal governments..

They've been doing soemthing about it for many more than 5 years
with
a few exceptions (like Cubbie).

Farmers were talking about Global warming and climate change long
before the bulk of the population. Only the real lunatic city
fringe
were talking about those things when I knew of dead boring and
very
conservative farmers who'd noticed the impact on their land.

that's a good point you make unintentionally

My point was intentional.

- one problem that both farmers
(as a group, not individually - i'm being very general) and
"greenies" have
is seeing the other side as the enemy,

You are talking in generalisations and it is only the case for some
farmers.

when _really_ they're obviously on
the same side. but farmers will NOT accept something a greenie
said - the
farmer's association has to say it, & _then_ it's true. anyone can
be undone
by their own limited world-view, both farmers & ecologists are no
exception.
and yet, "green" farmers are fully accepted (by all parties) on
their
results, and so many ecological issues are now entirely mainstream
anyway,
so why is there not more cooperation and dialogue? it's not green
groups
refusing to speak to farmers, that's for sure! it's just both sides
not
thinking about who their allies really are.

I suggest you do two things. Do some reading up on P.A. Yeomans. He
was a farmer whose published material goes back to the mid 1950s. The
second thing is to look at the 2006-07 copy of the ABCs "Open Garden
Scheme", page 22 on Lyndfield Park. That farmer started work on his
farm in 1982 and even then what he was doing was not unique. All that
knowledge was around even then.