Carbon-Free Home

polaris

ultimately ... it's the attitude that has to change first ... most on this thread have the attitude that no matter how little they do - it will make a difference ... and that in the long run is what we need from everyone ...

congratulate everyone who has made changes to help mitigate our impact

Jeanie

Scubascott wrote:

Canola? My family grows canola as a dryland crop. No irrigation involved at all. Olives don't use much water either.

The two big ones are cotton and rice. Fruit and vegetables use a lot too.

Der Jeanie!! :rolleyes: Some days I don't know what I'm thinking, coz I've seen great paddocks of it!!

Is it gm free canola scott?

Ah yes, rice and cotton and the fruit that we send overseas. And suffer the cheap, shitty imports or left overs here. Or watch the growers have to bulldoze the lot into holes in the ground coz we can't get pickers.

Jeanie

thatirwinfella wrote:

i'm from geelong, and our dam is maybe 200k from the city.

the water travels in a mostly open topped aqueduct, which also has major leaks in it, but the water authority is refusing to cover or repair it because of the costs.

also, a major problem for us has been that the geelong water supply also covers torquay, queenscliff, ocean grove and barwon heads, all areas hugely popular in the summer, especially with campers.

for a few years, these people were absolutley ignorant to the water restriction despite huge efforts to inform them... somehow they have the right to shower three times a day, hose the boat down at night and water the grass on the campsites.

Typical of private water companies. No infrastructure maintenence until it's too late.

We often head down to Apollo Bay or Lorne irwin, and we've always been really concious not to use too much water, but I can quite imagine that you get a lot of people that come for holidays and don't give a shit about the locals or their water supply.

Scubascott

Jeanie wrote:

Der Jeanie!! :rolleyes: Some days I don't know what I'm thinking, coz I've seen great paddocks of it!!

Is it gm free canola scott?

Ah yes, rice and cotton and the fruit that we send overseas. And suffer the cheap, shitty imports or left overs here. Or watch the growers have to bulldoze the lot into holes in the ground coz we can't get pickers.

Yes, all canola grown in Australia is GM free still. I have no particular objections to GM canola though. The pros far outweigh the cons in my opinion.

The fruit growers are cutting their trees down at the moment because they have no water. To make the most of the left over water allocations that they do have they're trying to reduce the amount of leaf area on their crops and retain some moisture in their soil profile while still producing a small percentage of their crop. I watched an article on landline recently that showed a citrus grower in Mildura cutting down tree after tree with a chainsaw. Coming from a rural background it almost moved me to tears just to see it. Its bad enough for families like mine that have had to suffer several years in a row with no crops because there has been no rain, but at least we can pick up where we left off when it does rain again. The poor bastards growing fruit are going to lose years and years worth of income because they're losing their trees and it takes up to seven or eight years to bring them back into production.