Equating the value of an open cut copper mine with the farm production forgone – have we stopped doing maths in schools?

I see in this article from South Australia – Rex Minerals’ Hillside copper mine gets SA lease approvals – opponents of the mine floating the old red herring that we are losing food growing land.
SA Greens leader Mark Parnell says State Government approval for open-cut mining on some of the state’s best cropping land is a blow for the region’s farmers.
“Valuable agricultural land is in short supply in South Australia. It makes no sense to sterilize forever land that could be productive for growing food,” he said.
Facts are the mine will occupy a miniscule percentage of SA farm land but income generated by the mine will dwarf by many times what farms could generate off that area. Somebody might have some examples. Certainly on a National scale – income from resources is considerably larger than agriculture yet occupies a very tiny percentage of land compared to farming.

8 thoughts on “Equating the value of an open cut copper mine with the farm production forgone – have we stopped doing maths in schools?”

  1. Crikey!

    You would have to wonder just how many SA farmers make enough money to pay tax to fund all their bloody useless wind farms?
    In my experience, farmers as small businessmen have all the dodges under the sun.
    It will never happen but, you would have to hope even a Green politician would understand the
    money comes from taxpayers & company tax.

  2. You ask:

    have we stopped doing maths in schools?

    It’s not the cold, heartless maths you would know. It’s maths that is kind to the numbers and treats them all equally, regardless of the value that one may attribute to them. No longer are numbers segregated into “irrational” and “rational” because of the inherent discrimination and prejudice. Further, renewable numbers are infinitely divisible without losing any value.

    Students learn the lore, the colours, the tastes and the tunes of the numbers and combine colour and sound into creative arithmetic while reciting the dreaming of the numbers and making a delicious stew out of irrationals seasoned with exponential fractions.

    All numbers are equal and we must share their world with respect for the numbers were here before us.

  3. Had we been so obsessed with paralysis by analysis when our pioneers were working in the dust to create the wealth that was the foundation of this country, where would we be now? If you consider the endless public hand-wringing and government red and green tape that now obstructs any proposed Australian mining development, should we be under any illusion why major resource companies are now looking off-shore to jurisdictions less hostile to development?

    In Victoria the open cut mining of lignite in the Latrobe Valley for electricity generation has underpinned the state’s economic prosperity for more than 90 years. Despite the mining having some limited impact on the water table in the locality, agriculture continues as a profitable business.

    We need recognise green, environmental, alarmism for what it is and understand that the green/left would take our civilisation back to the stone-age if, God forbid, they got their way!

  4. Unlike brown coal/lignite most of the extracted material in this mine will go back in the hole. They say the processing plant has a capacity of 15Mtpa for 75,000tpa of Cu equiv, 60,000 oz/a of Au and 1.2Mtpa Fe eqiv. The actual ore resource has 0.6% Cu. To get at the ore one has to remove the over burden, widen the hole to allow the ore at the bottom of the pit to be extracted. Deposits like this often originated from hydrothermal outpouring from a magma source into a shallow sea and then tilted through ground movement. So there is a limit to the depth. Most mine regulations require the hole to be filled after mining and the side to be banked at a maximum of 45degree. I have been near the area of the mine and as well as I remember it is not very productive, it gets little rain (mostly in winter and is hot and dry in summer). There are limestone mines in the area.
    I have some doubt about the ability to sell the iron ore.
    The life of the mine is said to be 15yr.

  5. cementafriend:

    The greens call it as “the best cropping land” meaning you can graze animals on it. They don’t mention whether they mean sheep, camels or goats. Probably they don’t know.

    The best agricultural land is being built on in the Adelaide Hills. The State Government decided, without consultation and apparently without thought, that there should be a city there and all they had to do is wave their hand vaguely and refuse to discuss it. It is the same forethought and arrogance they bring to wind farming, although I have to admit their expertise in moving hot air.

  6. The Greens have certainly stopped doing economics…if they ever started.

    If the copper mine turns out not to make a profit, that is the owners’ lookout. Meanwhile there will be 500-700 jobs, $30 million a year in royalties, and copper for customers.

    The mine will be 2.4 kms long and 1.0 kms wide – a fraction of a millionth of the area of the area of Australia. Do you ever hear the Greens whinging about the huge chunks of Australia – hundreds or thousands of times the areas covered by mines – lost to agriculture forever by being declared national parks? Or the land taken up by wind turbines and the access roads to every single one of them?

    As for “sterilis[ing] forever land that could be productive for growing food”, what sterilising procedure do they imagine will turn this place into a permanent moon-like desert after the miners leave?

  7. There is more to life than purely maths and maximising profit. Many are ignorant of this though which is what leads them to share this view by the author.

    Maybe we can reach a compromise where your friends can make their precious profits so that you can be paid for spreading the message. That’s how it works right?

    Yes money is important but i’m guessing those with this degree of obsession and an accountbooking mentality are genuinely unhappy people deep down and have not quite figured out that there is much more important things in life that share returns. I feel sorry for anyone who has a similar perspective!

  8. Prison – To be sure, there is more to life than profits. But it’s the Greens that are claiming that a more profitable use of the land would be agriculture. The issue here is not profit. No one cares whether the mine runs at a profit except the owners. Everyone else involved gets a benefit whether there is a profit or not – the state government will rake in revenue for schools, hospitals etc., the local community will benefit from the jobs created, the government will get more revenue from the taxes those employees will pay, and copper will produced for lots of useful purposes.

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