Sun rising over Jervis Bay last week

Today’s Media Tosh

A coincidence? Yesterday I recommended Deconstructing Dinner’s podcast on Fox News and its attack on the Obama government’s water mismanagement. Today in The Australian, p4 of the print edition, we have the emotive article on the citrus farmer forced into poverty by government water mismanagement.

What is missing from the on-line article (below) is the photo of ‘Riverland citrus grower Mick Punturiero refusing to leave his Cooltong property despite having to bulldoze acres because of government water mismanagement’.

I have, as usual, selectively quoted from the article and added comment in italics. This reporting is puerile.

“Growers ‘slaughtered’ in food bowl” The Australian, 16 November, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/growers-slaughtered-in-food-bowl/story-e6frg6nf-1225798004235

MICK Punturiero is angry and in full flight as his face contorts with rage over the state of the country’s food bowl. “You city people need to know we are being slaughtered here,” the 49-year-old citrus grower in South Australia’s dying Riverland district says.

He stands in the middle of an empty paddock on his 20ha Cooltong property near Renmark, where there once were rows of healthy orange trees. The trees have been bulldozed as he fights to stay on his land while those around him are forced to take federal government handouts – so-called exit grants – and, like hundreds of others have done during the past three years, uproot and leave the district.

Water mismanagement by federal and state governments continues to drive growers off the land, while corporations turn their backs on a regional economy searching desperately for a lifeline. What is this ‘water mismanagement’? We are given no clue.

If the Riverland dies, so too does one-third of Australia’s fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables. The district is the engine room of the wine industry, too, producing 30 per cent of the national crush. … The federal small block irrigators exit grant this year offered up to $150,000 as a special payment to about 2500 Riverland irrigators, with about 10 per cent approved to rip up their crops and leave their land. This is very similar to Deconstructing Dinner’s reports on the California drought.

Mr Punturiero, whose family business grows, packs and exports oranges, lemons and limes, saw a 60 per cent loss in income last financial year. “I have two empty paddocks I decided to clear of trees because there was no water,” he said. “But no one is going to force me off my land. Everyone just looks so disheartened. They have nothing to talk positive about. It’s a bit hard to be positive when your leg has just been cut off.”

The SA government believes the answer lies in tourism and retirement villages. It’s a message met with anger and disbelief from growers, small business owners and those recently retrenched.

The Riverland received another blow last week with news the Berri Juice factory would close after three generations, taking the number of jobs lost at the factory in the past two years to 200. The Berri fruit juice factory was well-managed when I visited in 1976 but was then:

• Under threat from the importation of US citrus concentrate that was remanufactured into ‘fresh’ juice.
• Citrus growers were pumping salt-heavy water for irrigation to flush the salt –- the logic of this escaped me.
• The land holdings were too small –- the outcome of soldier resettlement schemes that appeared sound at the time but never took into account the negative history of irrigation agriculture. It eventually fails due to the lifting of the water table and rising salt.

Ken Webber, 49, has worked at Berri for almost 35 years. Mr Webber and his wife Sharon, 44, were born and grew up in the district, and have three children. “I thought I was going to work my life at the factory,” Mr Webber said. “I have to find a job. It’s not going to be easy because wineries are closing as well. Some of the big wineries are not even taking locally grown grapes this year.” I sympathise with Ken but not with the emotional cant written by The Australian – it is very similar to that broadcast by Fox News. Ken must have been aware for years that his future at Berri was limited. He will have to migrate as rural workers have done for centuries.

Like many in the region, the couple are angry with Karlene Maywald, a Nationals MP who represents the Riverland but sits in the state Labor cabinet as Water Minister. They believe she is too focused on critical water for Adelaide and that the Rann government has given up on the Riverland as a food bowl.

Today’s Podcast

“Germany’s literary changes after the fall of the Berlin wall”, The Bookshow, 9 November, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2735022.htm

No respite from the babbling Ramona. In this interview she asks the same question three times, without drawing a breath. I wish the ABC would send her on some interview techniques training.