agriculture definition

Gunnison River, where water is diverted via tunnel to irrigate the Uncompahgre Valley, Colorado I wrote this post a few weeks ago about the conflicts between ag interests and natural gas extraction in Australia.  The New York Times reports today on similar conflicts in the United States.  Kirk Johnson's story focuses on the competition for water between farmers on the one hand and oil and gas interests on the other.  His dateline is Greeley, Colorado, and the headline is "For Farms in the West, Oil Wells are Thirsty Rivals." Johnson reports that oil and gas interests in Colorado are paying record high prices for excess water that they buy or lease from cities.  While farmers have tended to pay between $30 and $100 for an acre foot of water (about 326,000 gallons), depending on scarcity, oil and gas companies are now paying as much as $1K to $2K for that amount of treated water purchased from cities.  Farmers say they can't match those bids.  Peter Anders...

Among the agriculture and rural development issues I have become aware of during my time in Australia is the growing conflict over coal seam gas (CSG).  Coal seam gas, you ask?  That's what Aussies call the natural gas released by fracking, and Aussies are beginning to debate the practice as hotly as we are in the United States.  But the Australian context for this debate--which has evolved into outright conflict in several locales--is different in various regards to what it is in the U.S., including the legal schemes for regulating the practice and the extent to which farmers and others in rural areas can prevent it. This February 2012 piece by Bond University law professor Tina Hunter summarizes several of the issues, including who has the power to regulate or prevent the practice.  In short--it isn't the individual land owners.  Hunter's headline speaks volumes, "Food security v energy security:  land use conflict and the law. "  She writes: The d...