'A dust storm a week'
The skies of Mildura in far north-western Victoria turned red in November 2019.
“We were having a dust storm a week, and some of those were leaving us in the middle of the day in complete darkness. They actually had ploughs out on the highway, ploughing the sand.” Deborah Bogenhuber, Mildura resident
High winds swept the dry topsoil into the air, making . The topsoil blowing through the air came from drought affected farms around Mildura, right across to the South Australian border.
The region is in the Murray-Darling Basin, and is one of Australia’s food bowls. But in 2019, the soil was parched. The two-to-three-year drought there was .
Can we still live here?
Ecologist and sustainable food advocate Deborah Bogenhuber said at this point, she almost left Mildura for good. She said the dust storms used to happen once a year, but now they were happening weekly. For Deborah, it was a reality check.
“This could be the future of Mildura, of this region. And if it is, we can't live here.”
Mildura resident Deborah Bogenhuber helped set up the Food Next Door Co-op.
When I think about our region in a climate changed future, I think about those dust storms [in the black summer of 2019-2020]. If we want to continue, not just farming here, but living here, we have to change the way we farm. We do not have a choice.Deborah Bogenhuber
Bill McClumpha is a grape grower who's lived in Mildura all his life. He has farmed for over sixty years and is now concerned about how the changing climate will affect his livelihood.
“We've been very lucky so far. We've had a lot of severe heat waves, but they haven't been in the critical week when the grapes are in formation. You just feel like nature's gonna pull it out from under you at any moment, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
Bill says he’s glad he won't be in the industry for too many more years.
Grape grower Bill McClumpha Credit: Kyla Brettle
Climate change and food supply
The pandemic of 2020 was a wake-up call to the vulnerability of our food supply. Urban agriculture researcher, Hannah Thwaites, says that when people were feeling powerless during the pandemic, there was a sudden spike in google searchers about how to grow your own food.
Since then we’ve all felt the rising cost of living and continued supply disruptions, wild price hikes like and .
Mildura is a regional city of about 30,000 people. It’s on Ladji Ladji and Ngintait Country, sitting on the flats of the Murray River, in desert country. Thanks to nineteenth century irrigation, Mildura is one of Australia’s food bowls. It grows 80% of Victoria’s grapes and also supplies citrus, avocados and almonds.
Even in an agricultural region like Mildura, food security is an issue because most food is exported out of the region. Deborah Bogenhuber says that if residents couldn’t buy imported food in Mildura, “we’d run out of food in two weeks.”
So Deborah helped set up the as a way to make sure local people had access to local produce, and to grow food organically, in ways that restore health to the soil - making the soil less likely to blow away in the next storm.
A food cooperative or ‘co-op’ is owned by the community. Cooperatives are run by volunteers and provide seasonal, local and often organically grown produce to their members.
The Mildura co-op started a trial weekly veggie box scheme for three months. It hoped to buy 30 boxes of locally grown fruit and vegetables each week, and sell the boxes to the local community.
But at first, the co-op fell short. It just couldn’t fill those thirty boxes.
How could they get more local, organic fresh food and make the co-op work?
Migrant farmers without land
Jocelyne is a member of the Burundian community. She fled civil war in Burundi, East Africa, and spent thirteen years in refugee camps before migrating to Australia.
Joselyne Majambere chatting with Kyla Brettle, host and producer of Everything We Need Credit: Deborah Bogenhuber
And the most important lesson her mother taught her about farming? “No work, no eat”, Jocelyne says. You won't survive without food.”
Although Jocelyne and her family wanted to farm when they arrived in Mildura, it wasn’t easy. They didn’t own land, and “we couldn’t find a way to grow food, even though we see many parks that’s free land.”
Eventually, the Food Next Door Co-op came up with a win-win situation. Deborah Bogenhuber helped match property owners like Jennifer Douglas whose agricultural land was unused, with farmers like Jocelyne and the Burundian community.
Jennifer Douglas donates her land for Mildura's Burundian Community to farm. Credit: Kyla Brettle
I'm always like, ‘Yay! I'm a farmer.’ I can have food for myself, for friends, and for the bigger community.Jocelyne Majambere
Mildura's virtual water hero
In Mildura, you can’t grow anything unless the land is irrigated. Sourcing water for your land comes at a price, and water allocations are traded for profit. Farmer Bill McClumpha points out that the wealth in Mildura often comes from water trading.
The water licence system is “a bit like the stock market”, and the prices can get crazy.
“The price of water goes up and down based on supply and demand. Water prices can reach as . Which is what we saw during that summer. [2019-2020],” said Deborah.
Bill has benefited from this system of water trading, but he recognises that it’s not sustainable into the future. When Bill retires, his water will be worth far more than the property itself. He says this means that “the community is a loser.”
So Deb and the Food Next Door Co-op installed a kind of ‘safety valve’ into this system of water distribution, as a protection for the local population. They formed a community water bank.
It works like a bank account, where farmers like Bill McClumpha and others can donate their water allocations to it and know that water will be used to support local people.
The Water Bank guarantees a water supply for small scale farmers who are growing food for the region. The Mildura Community Water Bank is like a safety net, “it ensures small-scale farmers have the water they need," says Deborah Bogenhuber.
Deb says that the demonstration farm isn't just about veggies. It's about unity, healthy soil, and a sense of belonging.
LISTEN TO
Mildura locals innovate to safeguard food and water in a changing climate
SBS Audio
21/04/202419:20
Guests in this episode of Everything We Need
Deborah Bogenhuber, Hannah Thwaites, Bill McClumpha, Jocelyne Majambere and Jennifer Douglas
Credits
Kyla Brettle: Research, recording, editing and sound
Jane Curtis: Story editor and consulting producer
Music: Rob Law, with Uncle Paul Chapman playing the yidaki
Additional Landscape Recording: Andrew Skeoch
Photography: Carmen Bunting
Produced with support from the SBS Audio team, Caroline Gates and Joel Supple
This series is based on an earlier series called Climate Ready Stories commissioned by Dona Cayetana and Geoff Caine as part of the Victorian State Government's .
Transcript
This podcast was recorded on Latji Latji and Ngintait Lands and produced on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. We pay our respects to elders past and present - thanking them for their care of Country - and extending this respect to all First Nations People listening.
Deborah Bogenhuber: I almost left. We were having a dust storm a week, and some of those were leaving us in the middle of the day in complete darkness. There were all sorts of breathing issues. There was an increase in admissions to the hospital. And if you drove out to the west here, which is where our prevailing winds come from, uh, you could see where all that dust was coming from… So all of the farmland between here and the South Australian border was blowing away, and they actually had ploughs out on the highway ploughing the sand.
Ecologist and sustainable food advocate Deborah Bogenhuber was living in Mildura, during the black summer of 2020, when top soil from drought affected farms turned into desert sands and dust storms. This used to happen maybe once a year, now it was happening weekly.
Deborah Bogenhuber: For me, that was a reality check, that this could be the future of Mildura, of this region, of where we are, and if it is, we can't live here.
So why did Deborah stay in Mildura, and what did she and others do to adapt to the changing climate?
Deborah Bogenhuber: We are developing the tools we will all need in the future
I’m Kyla Brettle and you are listening to ‘Everything we need.’ a climate podcast about making change in our lives for the better.
With stories about people pushing back on business as usual - exploring other ways of doing things - and rethinking what we all need to thrive, now and into the future.
Hannah Thwaites: So you can do a Google search trend and there's this real big spike at April, 2020, and that's when you type in the phrase, How do I grow vegetables? And so people were suddenly like, I want to be able to do this. And they suddenly like thought, oh, I need to find somewhere to be more resilient in this system - especially when there were things happening around them that they could not control.
Urban agriculture researcher at the University of Adelaide, Hannah Thwaits.
For many of us, 2020 was a wake up call - not just that climate impacts are here now - but to the vulnerability of our food supply. Since then we’ve all felt the rising cost of living and continued supply disruptions - wild price hikes like $10 lettuces after the 2022 floods and and then the potato chip shortage.
So what can we do to not just buffer ourselves from this - but rethink our food system and deal with the problem long term.
This is an urgent question for us all - even for people living in agricultural areas like Midura - a regional city of about 30,000 in the north west corner of the state - which grows 80% of Victoria’s grapes and also supplies citrus, avocados and almonds…
Kyla Brettle: I love the big skies you get out here.
Bill McClumpha: Yeah. Yeah. Big skies, big sunsets.
Mildura is on river flats in desert country. It’s Latji Latji and Ngintait Lands - the First Nations people who thrived for millennia on its rich soils and abundant wildlife.
The colonisers who took over this land didn’t understand it so well - they struggled to survive before coming up with a radical plan and a technological solution…
Bill McClumpha: All this is just all Mallee, the whole lot of it. Then the Chaffees came and put in the pumps and transformed it into a massive irrigated oasis. It's an amazing story. What time you going tomorrow…
This amazing story is how two Canadian men, the Chaffee brothers, brought irrigation techniques from the other side of the world to Australia.
They created conditions that let a few generations turn the desert’s water into food - and then food into wealth by exporting it to other places.
But this left their future generations - ie. us - with a depleted river system and an archaic way of sharing and valuing water.
Bill McClumpha is a grape grower who's lived here all his life.
Bill McClumpha: I know people, people know me. I've got some sort of history here. I, um, I exist here, whereas if I move away somewhere new, I pretty much don't exist.
After farming here for 60 years, Bill knows this land well…. And sees the changing climate is a direct threat.
Bill McClumpha: We've been very lucky so far, we've had a lot of severe heat waves, but they haven't been in the critical, you know, week or so when the grapes are in veraison - when the grapes start to get juicy, they go from soft to hard - they're particularly vulnerable to, um, heat damage. And you can, you just feel it, when you're out there in the vines, and you just feel like nature's gonna pull it out from under you. At any moment… and there's nothing you can do about it.
Well, you know that feeling is getting stronger and stronger and stronger, and I'm glad I won't be in the industry for too many more years because it's gonna happen.
While there is stuff we can’t control about climate change - there are a lot of things we can we do to stay safe - like making sure we have access to food and water - which - ironically for a major agricultural area - is a lot less secure here than you’d think.
Deborah Bogenhuber: It’s known as a food bowl - almost all of that produce is exported from our region - if we lost access to imported food in Mildura, we would run out of food within two weeks.
So Deb helped found the Food Next Door Coop - initially as a way to ensure local people had access to local produce - and food grown organically in ways that restore health to the soil - making it less likely to blow away in the next storm.
Deborah Bogenhuber: We started a trial weekly veggie box scheme for three months. We limited it to 30 boxes a week. And, we could not find enough produce to fill those boxes. We needed more people to be growing that produce.
Jocelyne Majambere: In Mildura, you find everything’s sad because it’s dry area. My name is Jocelyne Majambere, I’m a part of Burundian community moved from the city to Mildura.
Burundi is in East Africa, and Jocelyne immigrated to Australia in 2005.
Jocelyne Majambere: I left my country because of the war - so I was in refugee camp about 13 years before I come to Australia.
Jocelyn knows a lot about growing food without chemicals and living in challenging conditions
Jocelyne Majambere: I start to grow food when I was five years old - so growing food all my life.
Kyla Brettle: Who taught you how to farm back at home when you were five?
Jocelyne Majambere: My mum. My mum is always on a farm and as little baby, you go with her, they never left your home. So yeah, she's like, you do this, you do this, and then she keep watching you behind and then she end up giving me, this is your space. You never move. Plant beans, plant peanuts. We'll see how we grow.
Kyla Brettle: What was the most important lesson that your mum taught you about farming?
Jocelyne Majambere: She is like you. No work, no eat. You, you won't survive without food.
Jocelyn and her family wanted to farm when they arrived in Mildura - but at every turn a new block - from language, to not having access to finance to just not being familiar with how things work here…
Jocelyne Majambere: We couldn’t find a way to grow food even through we see many free land - so we were there - as a people who can grow food, but not space.
Deborah Bogenhuber: When we discovered this community of farmers, small scale farmers who had always grown food organically here - living in our community not practising farming - and we didn’t even know they were here - so now they are running the coop.
The food next door coop grew as a concept and as an organisation - they solved the problem of not having enough people producing food for the local market - by supporting landless farmers like Jocelyne and her community - and matching them up with property owners whose agricultural land lying fallow and unused.
Jocelyne Majambere: When we get land here, we start to grow food in our own way back home - so it's like, oh, we don't miss nothing as we in Australia.
It’s a win win situation - only it had one major flaw…. water
Jocelyne Majambere: No water - no food
And a system for sharing it that the Chaffey Brothers laid the groundwork for - all those years ago - when they irrigated the desert….
Bill McClumpha: You know, you've got people like me stuck here by ourselves now and um, you know, with a few larger scale growers with multiple properties.
As I drive with Bill around the back blocks of Mildura - I see lots of unused paddocks - or free land - as Jocelyn saw it . These properties have irrigation pipes installed and could be farmed - it’s just that the water has been turned off.
Bill McClumpha: There's another dried off property. Pretty horrible, isn't it? Really? You know, and half the bloody district, it was dried off at one stage and it's, it's pretty much the same now….
We also see lots of signs of wealth
Bill McClumpha: the highway's extremely busy. There's B doubles going up and down, nonstop. New four by fours all over the place. All that activity, people and money flowing around is courtesy of water trading. That's where it all comes from. That's what made it possible.
The way water works here is difficult to fathom - you can’t grow anything unless the land is irrigated - but water allocations aren’t linked to land - instead they’re traded about for profit.
Deborah Bogenhuber: So the water market is a bit like the stock market. It goes up and down based on supply and demand and water prices can reach as high as a thousand dollars a megalitre for temporary water which is what we saw during that summer that I was describing with the dust storms.
In 2020, caught between the changing climate and the way water is shared and traded here - The future of Food Next Door coop looked pretty grim - and unlikely to help Mildura become food secure anytime soon.
Deborah Bogenhuber: So what we saw as a co-op was a number of small scale farmers cease farming. The choice was to let the crops die or to fork out this money.
Bill has benefited from this system of water trading - but recognises that it hasn’t been so great for everyone and isn’t sustainable into the future.
Bill McClumpha: When eminent retirement comes up. My water will be worth far more than the property itself.
The community is a loser in that, you know, the system of water distribution has enabled vastly increased plantings and vastly increased water use, and that extra water that's being used won't be available to the environment in the way that it used to be. So the environment's a massive loser as well. Then I suppose ultimately the health of the river will be, and then everybody will be a loser, you know, producers included.
Deborah Bogenhuber: You can look at this ridiculously complex system that's been created, but our fish are dying. And at the end of the day, our rivers dying. So, I don't know how, how do those two things meet? We, we have not figured that out.
The problem of fresh water and how to ensure the future livability of this region hasn’t been figured out yet - But Deb and the Food Next Door Coop have successfully installed a kind of safety valve into the system of water distribution - a basic protection for local people
Deborah Bogenhuber: We're, um, lucky enough to have support to be able to set up a community water bank. And we set it up so that that community water bank will always exist here solely to be used for small scale farmers who are growing food for our region.
The Mildura Community Water Bank isn’t a physical storage tank - it’s a virtual thing like a bank account - but it means that farmers like Bill McClumpha and others - have a way to donate their water allocations to it… and know that water will be used well.
Deborah Bogenhuber: When I think about Food Next Door and the Water Bank together in this landscape around us, I see some of those empty blocks being transformed into productive food gardens, market gardens, small scale farms…. It's about being food secure and our farmers who are growing that food being water secure.
I get a good sense of what Deb’s talking about when I visit the Food Next Door’s demonstration farm.
Jen Douglas: Come in my house is a bit of a mess. I’ve been away….
Where I met landholder, Jen Douglas.
Jen Douglas: And I've donated my land for the Barundians and the Congolese to grow vegetables. Who, um, I'd, I'd like to call my friends, but they feel more like family. Alright. We are on Peppercorn Hollow, which is my little farm in Nichols Point, and
This is the farm that Jocelyne and her community have been developing.
Jocelyne Majambere: Time I used to stay home, watch a movie. No more. I come here, I have fresh air, touching soil, and the food. Plus I will go home with fresh food, not from supermarket. So I contribute. I do what I like.
Jen Douglas: it's doing so many things. It's not just giving them healthy, organic food that's grown by people who love what they do that revitalises the land they own - but it’s also connecting them with all these beautiful cultures - so it's nurturing the land, but it's also nourishing the people.
Deborah Bogenhuber: What we've seen in just over a year now since we first sowed seed on that farm, the results are quite amazing. We are building capacity in regenerative farming. We are seeing our soils become healthier. We are seeing increasing connections between our new migrant farming community, their families, and the broader community.
Jocelyne Majambere: I'm always like, yay, I'm a farmer. I can have food for myself, for friend, and for bigger community.
Deborah Bogenhuber: When I think about our region in a climate change future, I think about those dust storms and that that dust was coming off farming country because of our current farming practices. And if we want to continue, not just farming here, but living here in a climate change future. We have to change the way that we farm. We, we do not have a choice.
It’s pretty remarkable… How a tiny community collective - like Food Next Door coop - can and lead the charge on doing something as vital as helping the city of Mildura to have a secure water supply for local food - Community groups can have a serious impact.
And a Big thank you to the coop and everyone who spoke with me for this story - Deborah Bogenhuber, Bill McClumpha, Jocelyne Majambere, Jennifer Douglas and Hannah Thwaits.
In the next story we take you to the sleepy, picturesque town of Maldon and meet someone whose woken up to it’s extreme fire risk and potentially lethal heatwaves.
So don't forget to follow Everything we Need on SBS AUDIO - or wherever you get your podcasts.
Everything we need is researched, written, recorded, edited and produced by me, Kyla Brettle with Jane Curtis as story editor, production support and on show notes.
All the music you heard was by Rob Law - with a Uncle Paul Chapman playing the yidaki.
Thanks too - to Andrew Skeoch and Listening Earth for providing additional landscape recordings.
And all made possible with support from the SBS Audio - and a shout to Caroline Gates and Joel Supple.
This podcast is based on an earlier documentary series called Climate Ready Stories - made as part of the Victorian state government's Climate Ready Plan for the Lodden Mallee - with Dona Cayetana as Executive Producer.
Thanks for listening, I’m Kyla Brettle see you next time.
