TasFarmers Matters - Agriculture holding the key to state's future prosperity

The year is rolling steadily on towards its festive conclusion with yet greater uncertainty over Tasmania’s future.

While the debate over the stadium wobbled one way and the other over the past two years, those with an eye to where Tasmania needs to be in five and 10 years’ time will look on with a mix of horror and amusement at that and how progress actually progresses in Tasmania – or not.

There can be no doubt that agriculture holds the key for future prosperity in Tasmania.

Our so-called major industrials are rapidly reaching their end of useful and commercial life and have been built on importing raw materials and value adding them with our cheap power.

The practicalities and economics of this no longer fit into Tasmania’s future.

Tasmania, however, should be taking the raw and primary products we grow here and further value adding them.

We do a lot of this already – such as the McCain and Simplot processing factories, abattoirs and many on-farm packaging and distribution enterprises.

We add value to the salmon industry by processing some of the feed here and preparing the final fish product for a range of different markets, and we tinker around the margins with forest products – but just converting low-quality timber into woodchips isn’t quite the value adding the state needs.

But whatever that downstream industry looks like in the future, we need a political process that enables things to actually happen.

Tasmania often snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, often due to poor process rather than poor projects.

If we reflect on the last big project that tore the state asunder, the Bell Bay pulp mill, and the Wesley Vale pulp mill before that, they both fell foul of poor political and decision making processes.

This then flows on to something which should be quite benign, the building of a sports stadium.

Yet most Tasmanians as a consequence of these protracted process debacles, have lost confidence in any side of the argument.

If you are opposed to a project, you will likely feel you aren’t being heard.

If you are for a project, you will likely feel that the noisy minority are bringing it to a halt before it even gets going.

The term “bipartisan” rarely gets to be part of the rhetoric in Tasmania because those intractably opposed to any form of human development make such noise that others just give up.

But it is a bipartisan vision that this state desperately needs. Pulp mills, mines and footy stadiums are apparently very divisive, but surely, we as a state can all lock in behind agriculture.

Farmers, after all, are among the most trusted people in our community.

If Tasmania has any hope of developing anything without a cacophony of contrasting choruses, we need a future economic plan that all sides of politics can join.

We have the best soils, the best climate and the nation’s best avail able water for irrigation, which is all very skillfully managed by the nation’s best farmers.

We know what the future food, fibre and pharmaceutical needs are for this country and others, the technology is clearly available, and we have the brown field industrial sites already here to provide the best locations.

All we need is some vision, some planning, and the willingness to actually all get behind something and get it done.