18 February

The hay runners show that ‘the bush’ is more about national identity than about farming. Look at the flags. Agriculture is in terminal decline worldwide, mostly because it’s an absolute bloody disaster. Agriculture is the greatest threat to both civilisation and also all life on Earth. Just for starters: 1) it uses up to 90% of every country’s water 2) it uses more than 50% of the land 3) it uses more than half of the antibiotics, creating resistance 4) it destroys habitat and species at a much greater rate than climate change 5) it exports about 80% of its products, and is often foreign-owned, so is really foreigners mining our soil and water 6) it destroys soils that took thousands of years to create, and 7) it’s hugely subsidised to do all of this by the taxpayer.