Rural People in Times of Recession

Rural “crises” have been a significant feature of our physical and social history since the early days of European settlement. Our landscape is both harsh and vulnerable, and the climate accentuates the vulnerability of that environment. In the beginning farmers imposed traditional English methods of agriculture on the land, including clearing and irrigating without any real understanding of the consequences these methods would bring to the landscape. Soil erosion and salinity are part of the heritage of those days which we will have to deal with for generations to come. Nevertheless, Australian farmers have developed techniques for farming this country that have been copied in other dry-land areas throughout the world.