Der Speigel comes asking questions

Talking to the world's most powerful magazine on a bad hair day.

Klaus Brinkbaumer called from Sydney to ask could he visit. He has come out from Germany to cover the story of Australia's water crisis for Der Speigel. Wikipedia says Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is Europe's biggest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of around one million per week.

We were interesting because of the images of drought that accompanied our 'adoptasheep' appeal. He arrived mid-afternoon on a Saturday with photographer Tasso Taraboulsi. Far from drought, what we had was water water everywhere. (Our hydrology is very constirpated.) Klaus is a seriously charming man who is dedicated to his work. He travelled for 3 months with African refugees as they made their way across the Sudan and on into Europe seeking refuge and a better life in Germany. He is an admirable journalist, the closest thing to George Orwell I'll ever meet. (Orwell joined the hordes of the poor tramping across England seeking work and handouts during the Depression.)Klaus's book won an important award.

We talked mainly about the Carbon Coalition's work and the power of soils to sequester. He is personally pessimistic about the future, having seen the worst cities in the world as they sink under their own refuse. We told him we are optimistic because we have the solution to the world's problems: laughter (and soil carbon).

Tasso is a brilliant Australian freelance photographer who operates out of New York. He took some twilight shots you will see in later posts.

Economic irrationalists and dodgy bookkeepers

This letter to the editor of Australian FArm Journal in response to comments by the high profile farm economics consultant Phil Holmes of Holmes & Sackett. He described those of us engaged in regenerative farming as 'wild eyed zealots' who are afflicted by some pagan religious frenzy.

Dear Patrick,

Phil Holmes is right to say that a primary producer must know their profit drivers. He is not right to describe 'the basic outcome in your farm business' as short term profit. The single-minded drive for financial results for more than 200 years has driven the progressive degradation of the basic plant and equipment of all agricultural enterprises: the natural resource base. This cost to business has never been included in the P&L. Scientists estimate that conventional land management techniques have cost the nation 50% the topsoil and 70% of the soil carbon. Soil degradation reduces productivity and increases costs as fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides are needed to deal with the consequences of 'profit-only driven' management. As the global community is waking up to a massive bill for cleaning up the mess we made of the atmosphere by using it as a free garbage disposal system, it's clear that the traditional bookkeeping for agriculture has had a column missing: a cost of production that is still unrecorded. It's like having two sets of books. Either you assign all the costs of production to the enterprise in a disciplined, economic rationalist way. Or you wallow in the mediocrity of capitalising the profits and socialising the losses. Commonsense demands a clean set of books. Best practice in business today is the triple bottom line: balancing financial performance against social and environmental outcomes. Why do Microsoft, Toyota, and IBM report on their triple bottom lines? It is because, as Phil Holmes remarked in his article, financial success cannot make up for losing your health and your loved ones. Corporations know they can't make money if the environment and society are crook. Regenerating the natural resource base, which is the source of wealth in agriculture, is the only sustainable way forward. The alternative - 'mining' the soil and our waterways while not paying the full costs of production - can have only one outcome. The Cree Indians"Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that you cannot eat money."

Michael Kiely
"Uamby"
Goolma