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Fertiliser

Australia must have a national fertiliser industry

Australia must have a policy of National Food Security, both for our own citizens, but also because many tens or even hundreds of millions of human beings rely upon us, as one of the world’s largest exporters of food. Central to such food security is the development and maintenance of our national soil fertility, which requires the development of a national fertiliser industry, in concert with associated measures.

  1. In the short term, the Federal Government must immediately regulate domestically-manufactured fertiliser prices and subsidise imported fertilisers, so that farmers pay no more than what they did in January 2006, when the current hyperinflationary spiral really took off.
     
  2. For the long term, several other measures are required. Under the auspices of the Federal Agricultural Minister, the Federal Government should immediately:
    1. Create a Fertiliser Control and Development Board (FCDB) to develop a national fertiliser industry, with all necessary powers to ensure the reliable supply of all farm fertilisers;
    2. Nationalise all aspects of fertiliser production which are not wholly Australian-owned and operated, including nationalising all mineral deposits associated with fertiliser manufacturing, such to be administrated by the FCDB;
    3. Enact tariffs and related protective measures to support the development of a national fertiliser industry;
    4. Outlaw or nationalise foreign-owned corporations involved in Australian agriculture (which are invariably arms of Anglo-Dutch cartels), including financial cartels (e.g. the Dutch-owned Rabobank), which have consolidated their hold upon Australia over the last two decades or so of ruinous British “free trade” policies;
    5. Establish the required transport infrastructure, with an emphasis on rail; this will provide, inclusively, for the transport of fertiliser raw materials, as well as for the manufacturing and distribution of the final products;
    6. Establish generous tax concessions for wholly-owned Australian corporations or for Australian citizens investing in the manufacture of fertilisers.
       
  3. Furthermore, the Fertiliser Control and Development Board shall:
    1. Contract government-to-government trade agreements to secure any fertiliser minerals which Australia does not currently have, and, where possible and in concert with other Government agencies, develop such minerals domestically;
    2. Assist in the finance or purchase of machine tools, or other capital machinery required by the industry;
    3. Establish state-based Soil Science and Agronomic Institutes to increase the fertility of Australia’s soils, and to provide scientific soil and other necessary tests as a free service to all farmers.

Finally, our most precious agricultural resource is the individual skilled farmer and his or her family. Given that British free trade policies have destroyed tens of thousands of family farms, we must enact policies to maintain and increase this human resource, something similar to the “Danish Model” of developing high-tech farmers. This involves a five year college-based education, with a further five years on-the-job training, following which new farmers are eligible for a farmers re-settlement package of land, along with the equipment required to operate the land; providing the farmer stays and works the property for at least ten years, the title of all property and machinery is transferred to that farmer for 10 per cent of the value of the depreciated machinery and property.

Agriculture