Head-in-the-sand simply isn't climate adaptation

"While farmers groups are saying that climate change is the biggest threat to our agriculture, the government claimed in the Senate today that the Rural and Regional Committee does not have the time and resources to look into the issue," said Senator Rachel Siewert today.

"There is much more to Australian agriculture than the irrigators in the Murray-Darling. Claiming that the PM's back-of-the-envelope water plan already offers the solution to climate change is ignoring the plight of our dryland farmers and short-changing rural communities beyond the basin," said Senator Siewert.

"Last month in Senate Estimates, ABARE (the Australian Bureau of Resource Economics), who are meant to be our leading agricultural resource economists, confessed that they are only just starting to address the issue of climate change, and are a long way from being able to model its impacts - despite years of drought and decades of warnings," she said.

"The Government needs to put serious resources into agricultural research into adapting our farming systems to climate change and developing profitable new industries to suit our changing climate," said Senator Siewert.

"Given that there can be a lag time of over a decade to develop new plant varieties and farming systems, and longer to develop new industries - the sooner we start the better."

"The Prime Minister's approach to the threat of a possible six degree rise in average temperature is to suggest that Australians will have to get used to being less comfortable - but farmers know that even a small increase can radically alter the profitability of their crops and larger increases could result in massive shifts in productive zones," she said.

"Putting your head in the sand may be a novel way to test for soil moisture, but it is no way to respond to the threat of climate change to the viability of our agricultural sector and the future of our rural communities," concluded Senator Siewert.