By Sid Astbury Jul 15, 2008, 5:14 GMT
Collarenabri, Australia - Everything must go at Denyer's general store in Collarenabri, a shrinking country town on the Barwon River, 790 kilometres north-west of Sydney.
It's closing down, a victim of the population drift to larger towns like Moree, 145 kilometres away.
Despite the ravages of a 10-year drought, the sheep, wheat and cattle farmers who down beers at Tattersals Hotel across the road from Denyer's are staying put. They are confident of meeting the challenge of drier soils and costlier fuel and fertilizer.
Thunderstorms in June brought enough rainfall in northern New South Wales to plant what some are predicting would be a bumper wheat harvest.
'There's a lot of hope there,' wheat farmer Keith Perrett said. 'Everyone's pinning their hopes on this year, that the price will stay up, that there's a yield there and that people get out of trouble.'
Australia, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, could harvest 26 million tons of grain at the end of this year - twice the amount that filled the silos last year.
In anticipation of a record harvest, though, grain prices are down by up to a third on their level at the start of the year. However, Australia's farmers are seeking to adapt to the price fluctuations and changing climate.
The Kirby family, who has been farming near Moree since 1884, have at different times run sheep, grown cotton, tended citrus groves and pressed their own olive oil. This year, the cotton has been ripped out, and a winter wheat crop gone in.
'It's whatever we can get the best price for,' William Kirby said.
There's a sentimental attachment to the land among Australia's 130,000 farming families but not to agricultural practices or particular crops.
New technologies are taken up quickly. Global positioning systems mounted on tractors take the guesswork out of sowing fields. Farmers see themselves as managers with much work contracted out to specialists.
Craig James, an adviser to dry-land farmers, said the application of technology would lead to what he calls 'precision pastoralism,' in which ever-smarter technology would monitor land, water, livestock and vegetation.
'Using satellites and other forms of remote sensing, the rangeland manager can see far more of a large property at a glance than is possible from a vehicle, aircraft or horseback,' he said. 'You can see what the effect of rain has been across a huge area.'
James predicted that remote-sensing systems - even drones for rounding up sheep - would take the sting out of higher fertilizer costs and labour shortages - and take the guesswork out of what to plant and when.
'These technologies don't replace skill, experience and other monitoring techniques but compliment them with more timely and better quality background information,' he said.
It's what goes on in the laboratory rather than in the field that might have the biggest impact. Within 10 years, Australian farmers could be planting the world's first transgenic wheat seeds - drought-resistant strains that could raise yields by 20 per cent.
'To see genetic innovation in a major crop like wheat for drought is very exciting,' said German Spangenberg, a biotechnologist at Melbourne's La Trobe University who is leading the research.
With modelling showing climate change would result in a rainfall reduction of 40 per cent in inland areas, farmers would be obliged to move to the north, where rainfall might increase. Dairy farmers, who a generation ago shifted from the rainy coastal fringe to inland irrigation areas, are likely to shift back to the seaside.
'Adapting to climate change will involve everything from changes in crop varieties through to improved seasonal forecasting,' said Mark Howden from the government research body CSIRO.
His Climate Adaptation Flagship report, rather than being all gloom and doom, spoke of winners as well as losers.
He had good news for the wheat farmers propping up the bar at Tattersals in Collarenabri. Howden predicted that better water management, smarter crop selection and harnessing the latest monitoring techniques could keep them in business.
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