SYDNEY: Australia’s drought-hit farmers must embrace change to cope with climate change, including considering the increased use of genetically modified crops, agriculture minister Tony Burke said yesterday.
As official data showed 2007 was the sixth hottest year on record in Australia, Burke said the country’s farmers needed to face up to climate change.
He said prime minister Kevin Rudd’s recently-elected centre-left Labor government planned to overhaul drought relief payments to farmers worth billions of dollars.
Burke said the emphasis was on improving farmers’ ability to deal with climate change, rather than simply propping them up financially while they struggled through the worst drought in a century.
“What I don’t want to see is situations where some people can go onto the system of relief and have no incentive during that time to actually improve the property to better deal with climate change,” Burke told commercial radio.
Questioned later on public radio about what farmers could do to help make their properties more drought-resistant, Burke pointed to genetically modified crops as one possible solution.
“There’s some answers that may well be provided through genetically modified crops in different parts of the country,” he said.
“There’ll be some places where there’ll be specific water strategies, where there can be changes in ploughing methods.”
Australia’s federal government has committed more than A$3 billion (K7.75 billion) to drought relief since 2001.
But the Australian newspaper reported yesterday that the recently-elected Rudd government did not want taxpayers to subsidise farms that were not viable in the long term.
Burke said individual farmers, not the government, would decide which areas of the country were suitable for sustainable farming.
“We certainly won’t be in the business of telling farmers what they can and can’t grow on their properties,” he said. - AAP