A Million Acres A Year

Streaming video - 2015

A Million Acres A Year describes the epic history of post war agricultural development in Western Australia and the personal journeys of some country people - a rural vanguard which has come to acknowledge that current forms of agriculture are not sustainable, and that the limited solutions we are trying to implement are not enough. Their story unfolds in the remaining mallee/heath lands of WA's 'Wheatbelt', most of which were released to agriculture after WWII through the War Service Land Settlement and Conditional Purchase Schemes. Farmers, milkmen, policemen, painters, miners, even a dress shop manager from Woollongong - lured by advertisements promising the cheapest land in Australia - followed their dreams from the east...ern states into the 'newlands' to try and farm one of the most ancient landscapes in the world. They bear witness to the postwar holocaust of mass clearing, to the "breaking of virgin country" on the sand plains, to the spectacle of tandem bulldozers linked with anchor chains, thousand acres clearing burns and the brutal root rakes that produced so much wealth... and affliction. They describe the agricultural prescriptions, the ideologies and values that propelled 'newland' farming, and explain slogans like "a million acres a year" and "get big or get out". They recall the winds that massed sand dunes where bush once grew and speak of rivers running to salt, wetlands dying, the Ï continuing loss of more plant and animal species than in any comparable region of the world... the growing silence of the landscape. And for what? This massive agricultural expansion peaked early in a brief golden age that crashed, just a decade after its birth, into a biological and economic nightmare. All these are trials in the journey that led some farmers to their moments of truth. They describe episodes that were turning points away from industrial farming, and speak of how they succeeded in changing themselves and the way they work with the land. But A Million Acres A Year does not just look backward, it proposes that real and lasting change does not hinge on technocratic solutions. It is about honest self-reflection, taking risks, restoring the place of nature and finding a place in it for ourselves. It is about ethics and public responsibility. It is clear that the people in the documentary have transformed themselves not because conventional agriculture has failed economically, but because in their view its consequences are morally unacceptable... and more importantly, because they have grown to love the bush - whose remnants still compromise one of the planet's top 25 biological hotspots. Awards Winner 2003 ATOM Awards - Best General Documentary Science, Technology & Environment Category. more