Transcript LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Queensland is set to be the first state in Australia to declare the best agricultural land off-limits to mining. The legislation's due to be introduced by the end of this year and it's generally been welcomed.
But how do you define what the best agricultural land is?
From the Central Queensland highlands, Peter McCutcheon reports.
PETER MCCUTCHEON, REPORTER: Central Queensland croppers are preparing for their winter harvest. It's a time for some quiet maintenance before a storm of activity, but this year Ben Sullivan is anything but calm.
BEN SULLIVAN, CROP FARMER, SPRINGTON: We don't know where we're going with anything at the moment. You don't know really what it is. They seem to be telling you stories, but they're hollow type of stories; you don't really know.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: These stories are about mining, or more particularly, a proposed coal mine under wheat crops. And also widespread scepticism in the farming community about the Queensland Government's attempts to restrict mining in one of Australia's food bowls.
BEN SULLIVAN: We feel like we're a political football at the moment, bouncing from one side to the other, and really, we're ready onto anything to help the farming community.
RAY SHAW, BANDANNA ENERGY: Protecting the best of cropping land doesn't necessarily have to involve a prohibition, it can involve a balance, it can involve co-operation.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Queensland is the first government in Australia to attempt to draw a line in the soil. It's produced a map of what it calls possible strategic cropping country, covering about four per cent of the state and set aside two areas for special protection: the Darling Downs in the south and the so-called Golden Triangle in the Central Highlands.
RACHEL NOLAN, QLD RESOURCES MINISTER: We have good enough science that we can tell just what is the best quality ag land and we are preventing that from being mined or otherwise alienated, so we all know we've got it for the future.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: But the plan has failed to impress these farmers, who call themselves the Golden Triangle Action Group. Despite being in a protected area, they say they're under increasing pressure by resource exploration companies.
Do you feel you're under siege here?
SAM BRADFORD, CROP FARMER, ARCTURUS DOWNS: Absolutely. We're, um - yeah, we feel like we're powerless to - with the encroachment of mining within the area.
KATE SULLIVAN, CROP FARMER, CEDAR PARK: It's a very unique region within central Queensland. We've been around for 127, 130 years now. It's an ideal cropping area and it needs to be protected for the future of Australia and the world's food and fibre resources.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Drilling rigs like this one have become increasingly common in this cropping country over the past four years or so. Now, this might not result in a mine; it's for exploration only, but farmers are deeply worried.
BEN SULLIVAN: In the last 12, 18 months, they've done 22 holes, I think, on our property. And, yeah, they're going to the neighbours, neighbours both sides of us now. And they seem to have really put a lot of effort into speeding everything up at the moment.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Now some of these holes have been dug by Bandanna Energy, which wants to develop an underground coal mine here by 2014. But the company doesn't necessarily see proposed strategic cropping legislation as an obstacle.
RAY SHAW: Providing that it is not on a prohibition status, providing that it allows for either offsets, that it allows for a common sense approach, and I think the Government to date has demonstrated that.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Bandanna Energy's chief executive Ray Shaw says the reason why the company can mine in a protected area is because it had invested considerable money into its project before the Queensland Government decided to change the law.
RAY SHAW: As a new generation miner, we're looking forward to the challenge of being able to get out there and basically work with the community, become, if you like, an active player in the agricultural and ensuring that the agriculture can coexist with mining and showing that it is possible.
RACHEL NOLAN: Bandanna is a project that was right on the cusp of getting a stage of its environmental approval done at the time when government announced its policy in May.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Queensland's Minister for Resources, Rachel Nolan, says Bandanna had legal rights that couldn't be ignored.
RACHEL NOLAN: The call we made was that that mine could only proceed if it went underground and if there were very strong standards around rehabilitation, and we will legislate those standards.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Now rehabilitation sounds great in theory, but farmers hear say cropping is a precision science, as demonstrated by this re-levelling of cotton fields damaged in the last wet season.
BEN SULLIVAN: I don't see how you can take something out from lower down, that it's not gonna subside on the top, and that's gonna change the way water flows and it's gonna make it near impossible to grow crops. And we've asked to take us somewhere and prove to us so we can feel safe in ourselves and our kids' future to show us where this has been done, but I'm still waiting.
RAY SHAW: Substance could be anywhere from zero up to perhaps a metre, based on preliminary work, that that is well within the tolerances of what is manageable from a restoration viewpoint.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: And that's a view the Queensland Government supports.
RACHEL NOLAN: We are genuinely confident that both farming and mining will be able to co-exist in this case.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: So it's business as usual in the Central Highlands cropping country. But some farmers here are asking: for how long?
KATE SULLIVAN: When they use the word protection, we were expecting protection. The wild rivers protection means that there's no development on those areas. And protection for us would have meant that there would be no mining above or below on strategic cropping land.
RACHEL NOLAN: What we're talking about here with this project is one fifth of one per cent of all of the land that's being protected.
LEIGH SALES: Peter McCutcheon with that report.
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