Formerly Productive Farm Belts Of NSW Turn To Dust As Drought Bites - SMH

[hatrack]

The pastures should be green, the lambs fat and the wheat a golden stubble. But the creeks have stopped running, the dams are drying up and the crops are failing. This is Gundagai, where farmers like Nick Keatinge move through a cloud of dust left behind by years of gruelling drought. In good times, Gundagai has more rainfall than many other farming regions in the state, but this year it is one of the worst hit, receiving less than 20 per cent of its average annual rainfall.

Mr Keatinge's land can't sustain his stock numbers so he plans to sell half of his 5000 ewes and several hundred cows. He could receive as little as $15 a head for the sheep, compared with $80 a head a year ago. "If this goes on for another year it won't be just me. It will be thousands of farmers looking for other work," he said. "In the past, our dams would have been deep enough to last us two years but we have had five bad years so there are only reserves for about eight months left."

Drought across 89 per cent of the state will raise food prices and hit household budgets this summer, says the NSW Government. In the state's south-west slopes, of which Gundagai is a part, a combination of more and drier days and heavy frosts has led to a huge loss of soil moisture and subsequent crop failure, says the chairman of the rural affairs committee at the NSW Farmers Association, Alan Brown.

"The subsoil here is bone dry," said Mr Brown, who has given up on all but 70 hectares of crops out of 200 hectares on his property near Wagga Wagga. He said as many as 75,000 sheep were being sold in the region each week, compared with a third of that figure on the market last year. "We are seeing stock in Wagga that is of no value. There will be some farmers who will have to shoot their stock and there will be a lot of stock that will starve to death," he said.

EDIT

http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/dry-as-dust-and-set-to-hurt-city-pockets/2006/10/15/1160850814467.html