MIS schemes.

[acropolite]

I attended a very informative lecture by Robert Belcher of Sustainable Agriculture Communities Australia (http://www.saca.org.au/index.html)on monday night. Some of you may be aware of the concern in Tasmania over excessive logging and tree plantations which are destroying our bio-diversity, air quality and way of life (not to mention completely stuffing our transparency for most of the year).

I felt that this was a problem mostly prevalent in Tasmania but apparently it's Australia wide. Robert explained how MIS schemes, introduced by the Howard government, are distorting our economy and decimating our rural sector.

Robert is a farmer and has a degree in economics. He went on to explain that John Howards vision of 3 million hectares of tree plantations by the year 2020 is estimated to cost the taxpayer of Australia 20 Billion dollars in lost taxation revenue and other costs and will diminish waterflows in our catchment areas as well as doing incredible environmental damage.

There are transcripts and podcasts for download on the SACA site if your are interested.

If you get a chance to listen to one of his lectures don't pass up the opportunity.:thumbsup:

[duncan]

Yep!!! Look at what we've done to the Murray Darling basin.
Admittably not just Howard but his predecessors as well.
We have a lot to learn!!
Carl Sagan ( do we want Earth to go the way of Venus).
Cheers,
Duncan:P

[skairey]

Cree Indian saying

"Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realise we can not
EAT MONEY"

That saying applies more than ever today. It has already started, over fishing, polluted rivers, de-forrestation. Might as well go the bank now and start munching.

[xelasnave]

Tree plantations are a con in my view in that they are able to get money from the Tax payer due to the fear generated by the Global Warming thing..

Who could see any problems with tree growing..and who would even bother to look close at what is going on...no one...and it is out of hand.

I can not see the sense in knocking down a diverse forrest so as to plant one tree type... Look at the T Wee island scheme..28 thousand hecters.. 6 shipments of trees and the investors looked as thought they would have to bear the losses (6 million how can you loose 6 million..did they do no sums at all?)..but the Government bought their silence by topping up their loss...with 6 million of tax payer funds) why? why? why did the investors get bailed out?? what other business investors gets bailed out when they loose on a poor investment none so ask what nonsence is going on behind closed doors here?...what farmer gets his looses paid if the price of his crop fails to give a profit... what is going on ..ask yourself..they are skining your money....and they can because no one bothwers to look...its a scandel.

The trees are crap... no good for milling ..some that were presented for milling around here the guys at the mill laughed after they ran a few thru...not even good fire wood...so why grow trees that are usless and give the companies such a subsidy..becasue it is a con... and when the trees are finally harvested and proove to be a failure..it will be the market that gets the blame etc etc..but the CEO's will get a couple of million goldern handshake... the creditors and the shareholders will get zip... place what I say in a time capsule and check it in 20 years.. and also they buy farms..place the real estate (the only thing that has a chance of making any money) in another company..who owns that company I wonder..Uncle Harry?... and the business is all about growing trees... sounds so good but there is no money in trees if you can not use them... paper maybe... but given the trees that will be available for paper I doubt if the market will pay anything like the projects these tree companies claim in their prospectus..it is all about getting the subsidy..it is not about growing trees...it is about grabing the subsidy ...have a look at any of these forrests after the original plantings...weeds and extreme fire hazzards ..they need to be looked after but there is no subsidy for looking after them I guess...otherwise they would.

Trees like any crop need care..do they think they come back in 20 years and there will be a wonderful forrest there...well it dont work like that... except in the prospectus
alex.