Vision Statement

The economy of North Queensland is heavily reliant on tourism (40% regional GDP); fishing, farming and grazing (8% regional GDP). The dangers of over-reliance on a few commodities have been highlighted recently in tourism by September 11th, the Bali bombing and SARS, while in agriculture the sugar and dairy industries are struggling to remain economically viable and the tobacco industry has planted its last crop. The need for ‘Diversification' has been mentioned frequently in the media and by Government, but how can it be achieved? It's clear that it will require both collaboration and innovation by individuals, entrepreneurs, companies, a host of old and new organizations and by Government at the Local, State and Federal level to create "Sustainable Futures".

Vision for a productive and diversified landscape

Imagine the change to the landscape if widespread agricultural diversification were to occur. The ranges would still be well covered by forests, but the farmland could look very different, with the more marginal soils, the creek banks and the coastal fringe covered with tree crops. Broadacre monocultures will still be common, but they may be aligned more along the contours and separated by mixed species plantings of new crops (many of them tree crops for fruits, nuts, cut-flowers and foliage, and other products including pharmaceuticals, essential oils and timber). Such plantings act as traps for soil and agrochemical run-off to the rivers, improving water quality, a key outcome called for in the Wentworth Report (2002). This outcome would also reduce damage to the reef and the tourism industry. These trees would also restore and maintain the soil biodiversity, which is critical for soil fertility, as well as provide environmental services like carbon sequestration. Tree plantings are expensive to establish and do not provide economic returns in the short-term, so in their early years they can be inter-planted with cash crops like cut flowers, vanilla, vegetables, fibre crops, bush tucker, etc., selected from a database of worldwide tropical knowledge. This rapidly adds diversity to both the economy and the farming system, creating an infinite number of management options, to suit the pocket, the market and the labour supply. These options will also reflect the interest, financial and social situation and the capacity of the household to implement them. The essence of successful diversification is to maintain profitability by growing high-value products with an adequate market demand; while maintaining the landscape as both a mosaic of different farming systems at different stages in their cropping cycles, and where possible, to develop integrated crop mixtures. The lower grade soils may be inappropriate for any form of commercial cropping, but if revegetated can provide habitat for wildlife and support ecosystem health and resilience.

Ecosystems working with agriculture

Plantings like those described above can be added in small areas each year so that the landscape develops sequentially over time and becomes a dynamic series of patches made up of the array of cultivated species (the planned biodiversity) interspersed with all the native vegetation and associated wildlife (unplanned biodiversity) that will fill the ecological niches created by these plantings and increase the resilience of the rest of the property. To avoid the situation where these areas become a refuge for pests and diseases, their connectivity and configuration in the landscape should be such that they provide wildlife with corridors to the forest. In this way the populations can be maintained in ecological balance, so that the food chains are not broken, and the pests and diseases are subject to the natural checks and balances provided by predators and natural enemies. The combination of integrated pest and natural soil fertility management reduces the input costs of these more ecological approaches to farming. In Queensland, where flying foxes and certain bird species are serious pests on fruit farms, this will pose a management challenge. Changes in orchard design will take time to have beneficial effects and will have to be done on a large enough scale to promote ecosystem function.

Agroforestry for ecologically sustainable agriculture in North Queensland

The above vision is very different from the current over-dependence on high input monocultures driven by external prescriptions. It represents a shift away from inappropriate temperate systems of farming and the uptake of individual innovative land use systems much more in tune with tropical ecosystems and their soils. Tropical soils and agroecosystems are fragile and easily degraded by intensive, high input European farming systems. In this connection, it is interesting and highly relevant that throughout the world, a similar change is in progress in tropical countries where monocultures are being abandoned and agroforestry is becoming the recognised approach to sustainable agricultural production. Agroforestry is an approach to developing an agroecological succession, which mimics the ecological functions of natural ecosystems, but is based on the integration of commercially valuable species into the niches of a mixed farming system. Some excellent examples of this type of agriculture have been developed in a number of tropical countries around the world. The challenge facing Queenslanders is how to adapt these concepts to larger-scale, mechanised farming practices