Good question? The aul landlords chopped down much of the wild forests centuries ago and intensively farmed the place to feed an 8 million population here and sent the bulk of product abroad. The locals inherited a broken land and divided culture . . . i don't know the details but Tree planting is arbitrary although the lordy's lands are typically well wooded. there should be natural hedging but Line dancing cowboys brought home barbed wire which did away with hedge maintenance and planting.
Many sons went abroad as did the half the villages. Like the Farmer there said in the Vid - money has become tight - always was.
Also they haven't had to worry about erosion because the flooding wasn't so bad so regularly (But maybe ask MAFish about that
)
That's a shame, the way I understand things hedgerows are really important for the biosphere in Europe. Much prettier than the devil's rope, too.
Flooding like that is every other week in QLD. That's actually really mild compared to what we get here and I regularly see kids out on bodyboards in creeks flooding at that level, the little shits--it's very dangerous because all the bad noodles get caught in the wash. Last year and early into this year it has been particularly shockingly wet however but the big difference is heat I suppose. I'd wager on sheep stations here when it rains like that, there's far less chance of Lambs dying purely due to higher temps. Different deal.
Fuck everything about animal production, really. Seems like an awful slog with worse margins, huge amounts of risk and compliance. This is why I'm in agriculture. Well, I say that, but I don't consider myself a real farmer. I know real farmers. They spend 80K per year on Fertilizers. I'd say the term "Primary producer" fits what I do more or less. I'll stop short of the term "Hobby Farming". I'm a fair bit deeper into than that.
Still, weird seeing mountain ranges with no trees on them, that's depressing. Also odd that they are so visible so far away. See, in Australia most of the trees are eucalypts, which release eucalyptus oil into the atmosphere. So from a distance, they appear to be in a kind of blueish haze.