Don't blame cotton, rice
It's not cotton and rice that are using up most
of our precious water (A dry argument
and food for thought, April 15).
It's meat, wool and dairy.
According to Wayne Meyer, of the CSIRO,
one kilogram of paddy rice uses 1550 litres
of water, one kilogram of beef uses 50,000-100,000 litres
and one kilogram of clean wool uses 170,000 litres.
In Australia, the dairy industry tops the list of water use in irrigation
at 39.5 per cent. It takes 4000 glasses of water to
produce just one glass of milk.
[Name suppressed]
Monbulk (Vic)


THE letter reproduced above is from The Sydney Morning Herald's letters page. It angered us so much we fired off an indignant response to the Herald. We pointed out that, according to Dairy Australia, the nation's total milk production was around 9.223 million litres. If we assumed that 4000 litres of water produced one litre of milk (whether it's glasses or litres, the proportion is the same) it would mean 36.892 billion litres of water would have to be used to get this much milk.

Unfortunately for the letter writer, there isn't this much irrigation water available in Australia. In fact, it's more than double the 17.935 billion litres the Federal Government's Australian Natural Resources Atlas says is used each year. We also pointed out in our missive that the dairy industry has been in the forefront of efficient water use and recycling, both for irrigation and in dairies, for many years. And that farmers had been coping with less is more  --  both in farmgate prices and irrigation water -- for much too long.

Our letter wasn't published the following day and there were only a few responses, mainly relating to the water use figures for rice growing in Australia. But we were still miffed. Where on earth did these figures come from? We looked up the letter writer's surname in the phone book and got through to a male voice. He told us "Jenny"  wasn't there at the moment, but the figures were obtained from the CSIRO website and the figure of 4000 glasses of water to produce one glass of milk was definitely correct.

Bulldust, we thought. So we Googled her name and found articles on the Animals Australia website and a series of letters to newspapers on water use, the environment and issues to do with pet ownership. And here is a subject that the agricultural sector will eventually have to address. Serial letter writers have an immense influence on city-based media. And it's the cranks who get the most exposure. Thus, lies can be repeatedly published with no counter arguments being put to offset them.

For years extreme conservationists would pull figures out of the air about so-called land clearing in Australia. It was popular to quote the number of MCGs that were being "destroyed"  every hour. And it was all made up! If you multiplied the hours in a year by the MCG rate there weren't enough trees or even woody weeds to be cleared. Nevertheless, the figures kept being repeated.

They probably still are. And here's the thing: most of us are green at heart. We oursleves have been active against mindless clearing, especially the government-dictated clearing of the past, when in order to retain the lease buy rights to your block of farming land you had to clear a minumum acreage every year. We hate what over-population is doing to the planet; believe climate change should be addressed; abhor rampant development, and want the excesses of extreme capitalism addressed. We've planted more than a thousand trees on our block and maintain a remnant forest. So we are NOT anti-green.

But why do other green proponents have to lie? Isn't the situation dire enough without having to distort the truth?

To see just how pervasive the scurrilous bandying of dodgy figures has become, just look to a character called Oscar Brittle. He is the creation of Glenn Fowler, Christopher Smyth and Gareth Malone, a trio who proved that inventing statistics and facts for publication in various Letters to the Editor columns of major newspapers was easy.

"We didn't think we'd get many published,"  Glenn Fowler told ABC-TV on the day the trio launched a book of their fictitious character's so-called letters. "None of the letters should ve been published,"  he added. "Even some of the less outrageous ones contained completely invented statistics or quotes or people or book titles. " There's just no fact checking these days. You may be familiar with the ad on SBS television exhorting us to "Go Green, go Veg and Save the Planet". The ad claims that a third of greenhouse emissions come from cows (the other offenders are the power and transport industries) and exhorts us to give up eating meat.

A cultists group called the Supreme Master Ching Hai Association Australia funds the ads (which have cost close to half a million dollars so far). A spokesman for the group, Gerry Bisshop, was quoted in The Herald-Sun last year as saying each cow in Australia produces 300 litres of methane every day . Now, if you do your research, the mean figure usually cited is about 100 litres a day.

Yet, this person can make ridiculous statements such as "you can be a vegetarian and drive a Hummer and you're still more eco-friendly than a meat-eater on a bicycle".  The cult has a website (godsdirectcontact.org) that's worth a brief look for a laugh. One of the links is to an essay called The Truth Behind Your Food, puportedly written by a 17-year-old New Zealand schoolgirl by the name of Hui-Ming Toh. Now, we re opposed to world hunger, the burning of rainforests and cruelty to animals, just like the alleged Kiwi schoolgirl. However, when outright lies are used to promote vegetarianism it makes our blood boil. For instance, the essay claims that 130 million animals "are murdered annually in New Zealand"  for human food. This is plainly bunkum. The total number of sheep, beef cattle, dairy cattle, laying hens, cooking poultry and pigs is less than 60 million so how more than double that number be eaten?

It's time we defended rural industries against these deceptions from people with anti-agricultural agendas. Next time you see an inaccuracy, write to correct it. The more we agitate against untruths, the better for all of us.

By the way, we eventually heard back from Wayne Meyer, who is cited by our least favourite letter writer above. So how much water does it take to get a litre of milk? The "generally applicable number is 600 litres of water for every litre of milk", he told us.

Don't believe everything you read.