I live in the small rural community of Preolenna/Meuna in the North West region of Tasmania and write to draw your attention to our concern of the decimation of the Preolenna and similar communities by plantation development. Moorleah, Calder and neighbouring communities and other farming areas over the whole region are threatened or already being bulldozed for planting. Since 1997 over 10% of Tasmanian family farms have been acquired by plantation developers denying a future for many in high value agriculture.
At Preolenna we have lost 13 of our 14 dairy and cropping farms to plantation developers who have purchased those properties at prices farmers can not hope to match when they don’t have the same direct government tax subsidies. Our population has declined by 50% in three years and the economic contribution our farms make from this area alone to the local regional economy each year (est. $4m) has now been lost and will not be replaced by absentee developers.
We are faced with losing basic services such as the school bus, the mail delivery, repairs to regular power and phone outages and road maintenance by a council which finds its income from the area slashed brought about by the devaluation of the land through the demolition of houses and destruction of farm infrastructure by plantation developers. This year four houses and seven dairy complexes have been demolished in our area.
Even more of a concern is that in a diminished community, finding local volunteers to keep the fire brigade functional becomes a matter of great urgency.
We are asking people to look for the effects of plantations on regional and remote rural communities when they would be tempted to invest in such schemes. Fine basalt derived agricultural soils are now locked up for 35 years and will probably never produce food products again. Certainly, our communities in the rural areas of north west Tasmania have lost our greatest resource: families and access to prime agricultural land for family farming.
Plantation development proceeds unchecked and unplanned: please understand, and investigate the facts from the communities affected before investing in such schemes to understand the real human and economic cost to local regions.
Yours sincerely,
Colleen Dibley
http://www.tassie.net.au/~cdibley/