Assessing the Viability of Agriculture and Energy’s Co-existence Model

The author’s intention is to determine how energy industries coexist when these companies seek to develop in highly productive agricultural areas.

The reason for the author’s area of study is that the property that they reside on sits above one of the largest thermal coal and coal seam gas reserves on mainland Australia.

The basis for coexistence is that the development of the resource and the agricultural industries can operate within a region while maintaining or possible enhancing the condition of the environmental, social, cultural, human and asset within a region (Energy resources from a food bowl. Identifying and managing cumulative impacts of mining and agriculture, 2013).

The challenge for stakeholders is to manage the significant scientific, technological and social barriers while trying to achieve sustainable outcomes between agriculture and resource extraction.

The author suggests that the ultimate challenge is to initiate effective governance and adaptive management utilising a region-specific management technique.

The impact on Australian agriculture:

• Cumulative impacts unintended, often irreversible with regard to land and water.
• Disclosure and transparency with regard to the key process of strategic management strategies regarding the resource and natural assets.
• Providing positive contributions to both the regional areas, the resource companies and the local townships while managing the strategic agricultural lands in a sustainable manner.
• The differentiating factor across many sites visited was that the discussion needs to be transparent in nature and a strategic development of working relationships between CBM, mining, oil, gas and agricultural industries would need to be enhanced to ensure sustainability of all the industries involved