They’re fed up with being the “whipping boy”
for problems associated with the drought,
from journalists like myself.
In a statement, Cotton Australia blamed the
drought for affecting the river system.
They say that the cotton industry was also
suffering; they forecasted that their harvest
this season would be half of the previous
year’s.
“The recent fish deaths in the Barwon-Darling
river system at Menindee was a devastating
sight. However, it is wrong to blame cotton
growers for this incident.”
Even though doing so probably wouldn’t
position you that far off from the truth.
Hemp as an Alternative to Cotton
36% of the world’s clothes are produced from
cotton lint.
As alluded to earlier, there are disadvantages
to cotton; namely, the plant is highly averse to
natural flows of the water system.
Cotton can be a disaster for water quality.
The major production areas of cotton, such as
the Murray-Darling, are often in water scarce
regions in the world.
For the sake of their own financial security
(and the future of the environment), growers
could switch over to a fibrous plant like hemp
for the production of goods (such as clothes),
with far less of an impact on the land they rely
upon for a living.
As of now, this is not possible for many
growers, due to the ambiguous legal situation
surrounding hemp plants. Yet, things seem to
be moving in the right direction.
According to government data, South
Australia’s fledgling hemp industry will be
worth $3 million annually within five years,
with the crop expected to grow very
successfully in the South Australian climate.
This is a crisis that has no fix-all solution.
Regulatory practices must change, for one.
The government must rethink the
environmental targets – and irrigators must be
forced to stop taking water that is there for
natural systems.
Water meters must be enforced, requiring
decentralised workgroups on the ground, who
answer to a rigorous and independent
scientific body, tasked with actively
measuring the ecological impacts on the
basin.
Using other natural crops for the production
of textiles may decrease the impact on the
environment, given the lower water
requirements of many other plants.
One of these plants is our friend hemp,
already used in the past by humans, including
convict Australians.
The water footprint (WF) of industrial hemp
is less than one third of the WF of cotton
(10,000 l/kg vs. 2,719 l/kg); as such, it
functions as an excellent substitute for cotton
cultivation.
Of course, the gaping cracks in the Basin Plan
could still be filled.
The 2012 deal could yet be realised; we could
actually save the basin.
To achieve this, however, authoritative and
informed decisions must be made, followed