I'm inclined to extend Peter's caution here to include the ubiquitus 'we' in the subtitle. In framing the sentence 'Farmers' and 'Nature' are rendered as its objects, yet the subject 'we' as usual remains as elusive as ever. The reason I refrained from responding when the article was first posted is that I needed a few days to digest what was actually being said.

Who precisely are these 'we' that 'us' farmers, environmentalists, land managers, all the rest of 'us', can go talk to finally to find out the reason our funding is always being cut without explanation, why people on the ground trained and working on these 'problems' that 'we' define can never hope for career tenure, certainty of employment beyond the next funding round, or acknowledgement that we even exist beyond the next state election?

There is good reason to study formal philosophy, linguistics, language development and literature, especially concerned with the way state systems impose the universal subject 'we' on their appropriated object constituencies.

But I have to say that we (our we not your 'we') are people, citizens of the Commonwealth. If we are not to be included even in the most preliminary discussions but rendered instead as objects of the discussion, as some sort of Other, there is no hope of resolution.

It comes as no surprise that so many projects bog down in the irrational and absurd, when the way the powers-that-be up there in the city somewhere are unable to conceive of farmers even as fellow human beings.

Sorry, we have families to raise too.

My own view is that the city might well decide finally to get up off its fat arse and come out and give us a hand finally. The system that allows all those millions of people to have whatever food they want withour ever being held responsible for its production or the often vastly extended and high energy consuming supply lines to get it to them, is what we really need to be looking at.

So, it's politically incorrect. Good. As much as I worry over the prospect, the years of the Great Depression forcing people out of the cities and back onto the land may finally be the only answer to making them wake up. It may well come to that, though if it did that would be the final catastrophe.

Again, way past time to change the focus of these discussions back toward reality. The cities worry about 'the environment' because that's what they are all being indoctrinated to worry about, but I predict here and now that the cities will collapse long before the environment does. Collapse of the cities will be the triggering event leading to final environmental collapse.

Worry about yourselves first, stop pointing the finger at us.

It has already happened time and again in the past, leading whole diaspora populations to colonise and exploit entirely new tracts of land, except this time there is none left. Humans have used it all up. There is nowhere to go.

Wasting trillions on space exploration trying to find inhabitable plants is no solution. Spending more on national security trying to 'protect' what we have is no solution either. Even recently rapidly escalating food prices have led to large scale riots in cities around the world.

That's what will happen first. That's what needs to be addressed first. As Peter also points out, factoring us back into the equation, allowing us a steady income and employment certainty into the long term so we can get on with the job, while at once allowing us holidays and time with our families as anyone might reasonably expect, is what needs to be done first.

That's the far cheaper option, by a long chalk the most cost effective strategy with the greatest likelihood that positive outcomes will be achieved. We are not your enemy. We have already done it. The simple task is firstly to get the bureaucrats and their agencies to cooperate with one another (I still have signed deeds in my files), to liaise, share information, attend each other's meetings, and more importantly network out into the farming districts. It works.

We even had Peter Andrews over here for a week talking to us about his Natural Sequence Farming, through all the ridicule and abuse, who has finally been recognised for his efforts with an OAM. We worked with Ron Watson for years.

Then, lo and behold, some political scientist, some academic, decided it was inefficient and introduced his entirely new "machinery of government" that threw everything into chaos, destroyed trust and confidence and with it carefully worked-out networked relationships with skilled practitioners in the field, and it all went pear-shaped again.

I grew up on the Murray-Darling, from 6 generations there. I was writing papers on it over 20 years ago. It's not that big a problem that it can't be sorted out with a bit of good faith and common cause.

Ah, well, what the heck, we've been over this time and time and time again.

Let's simply cut the 'we' and 'them' approach and starting talking about 'us' instead. That would be good.

Ah yes, the Royal "We".

"Us" have watched this used repeatedly over the years but it is not just the State that uses it to effect, the Greens have mastered it and more.

Did our use of the "Greens" in the preceding sentence strike a note of discord when used in the context of a criticism? This is because they have effectively appropriated the "high moral ground" and therefore inherently they must be right; right? A powerful tool in dis-arming dissent.

In the early 90's I attended one of a series of community consultation forums on river management. These had a simple formula based around expert presentations outlining the issues then breaking up into smaller working groups tasked with coming up with a community consensus on policy priorities. I noticed in our group a young well groomed bloke who spoke concisely and often, with the "we" prominent in his sentences, he effectively dominated our groups discussion and directed its outcome. That is until I spoke and using his own "tools" together with some common sense argument (and a feral smile directed at him that he seemed to find disconcerting) brought the discussion back into balance, then opened it to those less articulate and bold in the group to actually have their say.

This chap became increasingly agitated so that when we broke for lunch he immediately cornered me and demanded to know which farm group had employed me! He was particularly concerned about this because and stated it was the first time "they" had come across another professional working in opposition to their own mandate in the forums and if the farmers groups had twigged to their tactics "they" needed to know, and I should tell him one professional to another! (I should have felt flattered...)

Given he had already convinced himself of my reasons for being there and my affiliations I played along for a bit and told him "the group who engaged me" suspected what he was up to and I had already noted his colleagues "working" the other groups there today, so that he could not expect such smooth sailing in the forums left to run. This led to a stunningly frank admission by this guy made in the context of trying to convince me of how clever they were and that I had left my run too late...

Essentially he and three others were "professional community group groomers" all with social science degrees engaged by a coalition of green groups to ensure the outcome of the community consultation process reflected their employers aims. The same four had been attending every community forum as it traveled around the catchment (4 being the minimum that had been determined to "weight" the balance to the desired outcome). This last bit of information was all I needed to bring them undone, as I immediately went to the organisers, gave them the story and pointed out its authenticity could be checked against attendance sheets. Lo and behold these four characters turned up on every one...This caused much (internal) consternation as it meant all the previous forums outcomes had to be discounted (ultimately abandoned) and the whole process itself was brought to a halt at the time.

No one dreamed that the level of sophisticated and deliberate manipulation of policy could be going on, since then us have noticed both similar technique's and more insidious deeper infiltration of select government departments in order to get particular outcomes. An environmental "fifth" column if you like, reflecting the will of a small minority but with disproportionate power.

Thus hiding behind a facade of bureaucratic mediocrity (it is easier for the public to believe government servants are stupid to explain their marginal decision making) they work to undermine funding programs that are achieving results but that do not match their world view, any good extension staff with awareness and understanding are put on short tenures. This is also why successful conservation organisations like Greening Australia who actually work with, not against, farmers and have proven runs on the board are being slowly strangled and can't seem to pull government funding anymore despite their success in engaging farmers in biodiversity planting and re-vegetation works.

So Gil, now you know why on other posts "us" reckon getting some unbiased and experienced social scientists more heavily involved in the debate would be a fine thing...especially as despite the short election cycle the "government" always gets in...

Ah, yes, onto it. I've studied with these guys, sat in on the same lectures, tutorials, seminars, conferences . . . at the end of the day you have to treat it like another field trip, observing them and taking notes.

The tricks they get up to are unbelieveable . . . nah, not here . . . .

Better to focus on the reality. I have an enduring quote on one of my web pages that I have attributed to Hugh McLeod Gordon, the GREAT teacher of veterinary science in post-war Australia who died at a good old age only about 2002, "Telling people what to do will not meet the case . . . you must show them with all due skill."

Another of our greats was Ken Yeomans with his Keyline Systems . . .

My admonition was accordingly, OK, pull on your wellies and oilskins, there's a big storm coming in tonight. Bring torches and we'll go see what's happening in the catchment while it's pouring rain. This is our window, it'll be out to sea in 12 hours and we'll miss it.

What? Yer mad . . bloody eccentric . . we can check the gauges in the morning . . . .

Well, I'm not talking about precipitation, but what it does in the landscape during a downpour. You were arguing that dams fill from upstream, having a stupid go at me for trying to say water runs uphill when I did not. How do we settle this? Do our homework, go and see for ourselves.

What we have is clear observation that dams fill from local runoff entering the stream right here at the perpendicular, not from upstream. If we built a string of dams, up on the ridge too if you like, or midslope, they'll all fill at once during the same downpour. If we don't do it, in the one storm we'll lose 50-80-100 gigalitres . . . .

Next conference they're all looking at you, damned eccentric, nutcase, potty old fool . . . Gil, the rule of thumb is 5% at best . . . . it gets worse than that.

Devastating bushfire when through that country just before Christmas, with chronically dry forest cover now over summer and no water anywhere to fight it, that didn't have to be trucked in . . . . assuming you're going to get such wildfires in a water-retaining catchment management scheme.

Just don't go there, better to ignore it, feel sorry for them because they miss all the fun, and just go back to work, file your reports, keep doing it . . . ;-)

Before long the bright young minds coming through their Honours year will find them and go argue with their supervisor about why hasn't all this field data been taken into account?

Some parliamentary enquiry somewhere will demand to know why nothing was done to prevent the tragedy?

It's like that . . . .

Another great mind unfortunately lost to us earlier this year was Jim Johnson, a hydrogeologist who led more than 25 major UN groundwater missions and had no peers in Australia, which meant he was ignored over here.

He wrote a report on the MIA as a junior in the then NSW Water Resources Commission in the 1950's which raised the likely possibility of serious salinity arising across the large areas of the catchment, in part through then current irrigation practice but more importantly as the many dams and weirs along the course of the river had permanently lowered the natural groundwater gradient, reducing hydraulic heads that drove normal lateral flows, thereby forcing water and salt to the surface as it could no longer get away fast enough. He was asked for his resignation for such scaremongering. He then went on to form Australian Groundwater Consultants who proved up many mine water supplies all over the world. The ones in WA were done even though the department over there swore there was no water to be found....

It was his observations on micro catchments and the effect of contouring, road cuttings and general behavior of erosion gullies and their effects on surrounding side slope vegetation that we found of greatest value in managing our own property, he taught us the use of shallow dams and cutoff walls in badly eroded gullies to restore local soil water levels.

I agree with your comments Gil, the lack of understanding of water movement across the landscape at the ordinary ridge level or even the role of the soil fungal mat continues to astound and depress us.

And yet as you rightly point out the knowledge is out there...

Well that's it then. That's the message needing to be sent back, let's cut the crap finally . . .

We were white-anted over here on an insistence that we adhere to the "Uncertaincy Principle", which means in practice that unless 120% certain there will be NO "harmful environmental effects" there will be no funding.

But that's impossible, of course. Such policy generates nothing more than paranoia, and as we have experienced over the past ten years a culture of paralysis and fear. That's why we adhere to best practice with constant monitoring rather than perfect practice. I didn't even mind our books being audited, good.

My rejoinder has always been that if the Uncertainty Principle was applied to itself we would quickly see the thing disappear right up its own arse, right where it belongs.

But they don't like you saying that . . . ;-)

I was born in Griffith, BTW.