Permie Practices Take Over WA
 

We did a bit of travelling in the Wertern Australian wheat belt a few weeks
ago (did a circuit from York to Corrigin to Wickepin to Narrogin, then across
to Mandurah and Perth) and were interested to see permie things taking root,
so to speak, on broadacre farms.

There is a new (and plainly recent) fad for swales, belts of natives, and I
even saw something that looked suspiciously like alley cropping -- single rows
of trees with wheat belts one harvester wide planted between them. It's very
odd to come upon all this hippie stuff in Ironbar Tuckey country!

The reason, we discovered, was salination. The wheat belt was originally
forest, and clearing and planting to wheat has raised the water table to such
an extent that low-lying patches are visibly swampy and infertile (they are
evil-looking brown areas, like something out of the Lord of the Rings). The
remedial work, familiar to anyone who's read any permie stuff, is working, and
is working quickly, too. The problem isn't gone yet, but there has been a
noticeable improvement, and the locals are hopeful that they can produce grain
sustainably over the long term.

Thought you'd all like to know. WA is viewed by most Easterners as populated
almost entirely by racists and conmen who believe anything that moves should
be hunted down and anything that doesn't should be chopped down or dug up.
Plainly, it is not!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Life is like a cigarette -- smoke it to the butt." -- Harvie Krumpet