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Government launches A$20m project for relocating industry

The worst drought in more than a century has forced Australia to consider moving farmers from the country's parched south to the rain-sodden tropical north, hailed as one of the world's last  agricultural frontiers.

This week a federal government taskforce will begin studying the prospect of encouraging farmers to bow to the harsh realities of drought and climate change, and abandon the dry-as-dust south.

Farmers in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia face ruin as the lifeblood of the three states - the once mighty Murray and Darling river system -  is slowly bled to death by thirsty crops and record  low rainfall.

The tropical north, in contrast, promises almost unlimited rain and ready access to Asian markets for agricultural produce.

'Northern Australia is one of the last agricultural frontiers left on the planet,' said Bill Heffernan, the senator who is chairing the A$20 million (HK$124.4 million) taskforce. 'Because of the way Australia was settled, it really hasn't been tapped. As countries like China and India start to face water scarcity, this represents a huge advantage for Australia.'

The pioneering plan envisages opening up northern Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory to cotton, rice, citrus fruits and other crops.

While older farmers would be reluctant to leave land their families had worked for generations, their sons and daughters were increasingly willing to embrace a fresh start, said Senator Heffernan.

'I've got dairy farmers down in Victoria ringing me up and saying 'when can we go?' It's a case of go north, young man,' Senator Heffernan said.

The radical proposal is backed by towns across the undeveloped north, a vast belt of tropical savanna known for its lingering frontier feel, remote Aboriginal settlements and deadly saltwater crocodiles.

'Someone needs to make a hard decision and say, 'let's move the people to where the water is,'' John Wharton, the mayor of Richmond Shire, northern Queensland, said.

Proponents of the grand vision say the region's proximity to Asia - Darwin is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney or Melbourne - would make it profitable to grow  speciality vegetables for  Asian markets.

But history carries some sober warnings for farmers who think northern Australia is an  agricultural bonanza just waiting to be exploited.

Just east of the town of Humpty Doo, in the Northern Territory, is a vast lagoon, where storks and herons pick their way among lily pads. In the 1950s it was  the Humpty Doo Rice Project.

Despite rich soils and plentiful water, it was a disaster. Magpie geese ate the rice seed, feral buffalo bulldozed the paddies and seasonal rains proved erratic. Within a decade, it was abandoned.

'The idea of the north as a potential food bowl for Asia is largely a mirage,' said Stuart Blanch, a tropical rivers expert with WWF-Australia. 'Although we get a lot of rainfall, it's erratic - we never know when the monsoon will start. Even during the wet season, it may rain heavily for a week, then we get nothing for two weeks.'

Some in  northern Australia  are tired of having overly ambitious projects foisted on them from  far-away Canberra.

'The general feeling up here is that southerners don't have a clue what they'd be letting themselves in for,' said Jemma Walshe, a researcher  at Charles Darwin University, in Darwin.



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Australia

Farmers urged to go north as big dry strangles the south