Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Don't know about you, but there seems to be something unsustainbale about some new ideas about paying farmers to do the right thing? Are farmers warming to ecosystem services ? what do you think ?
""Dr Williams, the former head of CSIRO's Land and Water department, says there needs to be a better matching of water, nutrient and carbon flows with Australia's landscape capacity. But he says it's no longer acceptable for everyone to demand that farmers pay for it. "I think the days are past when we can expect farmers to continue to provide cheap, green food and at the same time be the custodian for all the ecosystem services that we in the cities need and benefit from and currently do not pay a cent for," he says. "Clean air, the clean water, the carbon sequestration, the habitat and the salinity minimization are well within our capability,"