To the Editor Canowindra Phoenix,
I congratulate Bob Sherwood for maintaining the conversation regarding damming rivers for surface storage of water for use by people. For continuing conversation about the availability of natural resources allows many people to gradually gain a deep ecological understanding of how the Australian
landscape works as a self-organising ecosystem.
For over ten thousand years people have misunderstood the interconnectedness of vegetation density, the ‘economy’ of water and water availability in regions of the world. When will people stop learning only from people and start learning only from Nature?
The only way Nature allows people to increase the local supply of water in any region in the mid latitudes of the world where all man made deserts occur, is for people to store water sub-surface as in-ground water, away from evaporation.
To increase in-ground water, land owners only need to increase vegetation density over all land surfaces to reduce evaporation, increase soil porosity to absorb and retain more water from rain and dew and as well, use growing vegetation to sediment up all eroded gullies that drain/erode water, soil and species from entire catchments.
By using natural plant/animal systems the land, soil, water and all living species accumulate and co-evolve together locally as whole self-resourcing biological communities, as an eco-system. Whole self-resourcing multi-species communities as “Habitat in Common”, have no need for man-made
resources as Nature supplies all resources needed. Even climate is a regional phenomenon dependant on vegetation density.
As a long term freehold land owner resident within the Belubula and Lachlan catchments of the Canowindra district, my farming family and I are part of the rapidly growing ‘regenerative farming’ grass-roots movement that rejects consumerism, inappropriate technology and all industrial agricultural
practices. As farmers who regenerate soil, water, forests, grasslands, wild-life, farm crops and animals and natural energy on our own land, we are not consumers of resources, we are producers. We are not dependant on expensive outside sources of resources or financial assistance as we increase, use and re-cycle to regenerate all our own natural resources on our own land and regularly top the local sales with our surplus produce.
We are also training apprentices and partners in low input cost/high yield ‘regenerative farming’ in many parts of the state, so ‘future farmers’ can and will farm the natural land and water system ecologically, productively, profitably, sustainably and enjoyably.
Being dependent only on our own imagination and effort. The real economy is established by the ‘natural increase’ of self-replacing soil, water and living species that we retain and accumulate on our own land to support all of life, that is both our health food and our capacity to earn an income, through sharing abundant life with others.
Paul Newell