Futures for the Wheatbelt―Is 2030 already here?
Fiona Haslam McKenzie A and Daniela Stehlik BA Curtin Research Fellow, Graduate School of Business, Curtin University of Technology.
Email: F.mckenzie@curtin.edu.au
B Director, Alcoa Centre for Stronger Communities, Curtin University of Technology.
Email: d.stehlik@curtin.edu.au
Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 56(6) 537-551 https://doi.org/10.1071/AR04197
Submitted: 26 August 2004 Accepted: 28 April 2005 Published: 24 June 2005
Abstract
The Western Australian Wheatbelt has experienced significant social, economic, and environmental changes over the last 25 years, which have affected the viability of the broadacre farm businesses that dominate the Wheatbelt economy as well as the efficacy of the communities that have supported the agricultural industry. This paper considers the consequences of these changes and how the agricultural industry and the people living in the Wheatbelt region have responded to the challenges. As well, the future of the region is considered, based on potential market and capacity building alternatives. It is contended that many of the social, economic, and environmental indicators of the future have been in place for some time and that industry diversification and social options are already being trialled. It would appear that industry and individual resilience and creativity are keys for the Wheatbelt’s survival in the future.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics (1996), Census of Population and Housing, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, Cat. 2015.5. The trends show that more than half of non-metropolitan residents had been in the current region for 10 years or less and a third for 5 years or less. The survey suggested that about a third of people who move to the regions come from Perth and a quarter from overseas or interstate. The remainder move from within their current region or from another Western Australian region. This survey has not been replicated and more up-to-date information in the same format is not available.
3 Up until the 1996 census, women were not formally counted as rural workers. Ironically, just before some Australian women became among the first in the world to get the vote more than 100 years ago, the government decided to officially ‘hide’ the fact that women laboured in agriculture, fearful that this would send the wrong message ‘home’ to England about the industry’s viability in Australia.
Lake (1987) The Limits of Hope, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. When formulating census categories, government officials decided not to classify farmer’s wives as engaged in agriculture because of the shame it would bring on a progressive developing country like Australia to admit that ‘women were in the habit of working in the fields as they are in some of the older countries of the world’ (Lake 1987, p. 179). For these reasons it has been difficult to properly ascertain the number of women working on farm enterprises.
