42 / Here's an idea: Turn prime farmland into housing - yeah, right!
It has been reported in the paper (SMH - Warning on danger of building on farmland) that the Government has given the green light to building 400,000 new homes. Where are they to be built? It is incomprehensible - but they are to be built on prime agricultural land in the Sydney basin.
Sydney is home to appr. $1b worth of vegetables grown in 1050 market gardens; about half of them would be lost to the developments. What would the effect be? Firstly, veggies will become much more expensive; secondly, people will stop eating them and resort to unhealthier foods; thirdly, veggies will have to be imported, carted around in plains, trains and trucks. An environmental disaster.
Here are a couple of enlightening figures: Research from 2006 shows that the return from agricultural production in the Sydney basin is $5,433 per hectare, whereas the average for the entire state is $136. Who in the Government is doing the maths here?
So in whose interest is all of this? Not in mine, not in yours. Some developers will benefit, as well as some farmers, who'll sell their land for a pot of gold. But the point is that food production everywhere in the world needs to be increased, not decreased. Residential (and industrial developments) need to be moved to areas unsuitable for market gardening … that's a no-brainer, isn't it? How come these developments are even being considered?