Agriculture & Mining Co-existance

Governments and the resource companies say that mining and agriculture can co-exist, but most farmers and graziers disagree.

About three years ago, after Arrow Energy produced a 6,000 page EIS (Environmental Impact Study), Joe Hill, from Miles in Queensland, attended a meeting at Cecil Plains. ‘Eight so-called experts told us that agriculture and CSG could coexist,’ said Joe. ‘After a while I got up and asked “How many of you know anything about agriculture, farming and livestock?” And not one of them knew a thing about agriculture. “So you blokes are out here telling all these people how we can coexist and you don’t even know how a farm works?” They didn’t know what to say to that. I don’t care who someone is, if they talk a lot of bullshit I get stuck into them.’

‘I have always maintained that filthy, stinking resource companies can’t coexist with clean, green agriculture,’ said Joe Hill. ‘The only landholders who say that mining and agriculture can coexist are those few farmers who have been paid mega dollars to be a mouth piece for the resource companies. Initially, they told everyone how good it was and how much money they were making, but now their places are buggered and they have moved to the Gold Coast.’

‘I asked a politician if he would go into business with someone he didn’t know and didn’t like and who has proved to be a bloody liar. He said no, so I asked, why does the government expect us to go into business with them? Politicians talk about how we have to double our agricultural production but how are we going to do that if the mining companies stuff up the water and dig up a lot of the good country?’

‘We were told that everything that happened in America wouldn’t happen here, but it has. Tap water lights up, creeks are bubbling gas 20 kilometres away from wells, whereas in the USA it was six kilometres. There is no way the gas companies can make good. That’s been proven. We are only dumb farmers but you don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to work out that if you drop the bloody water table it must do something.’