Corangamite Shire has been warned to "prepare" for pressures on its agriculture industry to "get worse".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The comments came from central ward councillor Geraldine Conheady and coastal ward councillor Jamie Vogels at the council's monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 23.
Councillors voted to release for public comment the Grow Corangamite Agricultural Strategy Background Report and Timber Plantation Impacts Discussion Paper.
The two documents, which analyse the strengths and challenges of the shire's agricultural sector, would be used to develop the Grow Corangamite Agricultural Strategy.
Cr Conheady said it was a major step forward.
"I actually think (this) is probably one of the most important projects this particular council has undertaken," Cr Conheady said.
"We certainly do have pressures ... including competing land use from the renewable and timber industries and certainly I think that's probably going to get worse and we need to be preparing ourselves for managing those pressures."
Coastal ward councillor Jamie Vogels said it was clear there were multiple challenges unique to the shire which were culminating to "push farmers out".
"We need feedback from people on the ground running farms and businesses to tell us what the real situation is," he said.
"We need to be able to address the issues suppressing agriculture, in this report it talks about workforce shortages, housing shortages, land use changes.
"... most importantly, and currently, agriculture is playing second fiddle to the subsidy farmers in the form of wind factories, solar factories and carbon credit schemes through the plantation of wood pulp trees.
"The tree industry is moving in at a rapid rate, in this shire alone the number of new plantation development notices is skyrocketing.
"...The economic and social impact to the shire will be of major concern reducing the economic output of the shire and more importantly the money going into local communities and reducing the number of jobs.
"Adding to this we have the state and federal governments pandering to the Greens in effect punching down on farmers with regulation overburden that is already adding to the cost of doing business and pushing traditional farmers out.
"And the final work specially on timber plantations, it's clear the recent purchases are distorting the markets with developers grabbing low-hanging fruit, what that does is stop expansion and consolidation of farms, this is something we really need to be aware of and make sure communities are aware of this problem."
