More investment needed to make city a food bowl again
Kellie Tranter
More investment needed to make city a food bowl again
Independent candidate for Maitland Kellie Tranter has called for increased government investment in agriculture, including giving farmers more control over production land.
But the starting point is more investment in education, and encouraging young people onto the farm.
Ms Tranter said Maitland was an ideal location for renewed interest in agriculture with Tocal Agricultural College, the University of Newcastle and a CSIRO branch, as well as available farming land, within close proximity.
She said experts had reported that while Australia was a net exporter of food, a fall in production in the past decade meant the nation was becoming reliant on imports.
“It hasn’t hit us yet because the supermarket shelves are still full,” Ms Tranter said.
“We need to get young people interested in careers in agriculture and ‘keep them on the farm’.
“We need to value farmers, pay them a fair return for what they do for us and be willing to listen to their advice about what needs to be done to safeguard our future.
“We have the capacity to create and support a farm knowledge export sector.”
Ms Tranter also called for a royal commission with open terms of reference into the planning system to discover and close all loopholes that resulted in “agriculturally destructive developments”.
“Recommendations made by the commission can then be used to develop a more community focused planning process,” she said.
