Australian mining industry association the New South Wales (NSW) Minerals Council released case studies earlier this month that show how mining and agriculture can work together.

The case studies, which form part of the NSW Minerals Council’s mining education initiative, are first-hand accounts from farmers of their working relationships with local mines, the council states in a media release.

“Traditional mining practices have coexisted with agriculture and tourism for about 200 years and will continue to do so. We know mining does have an impact on the land it uses and we work hard to manage these impacts because coexistence between key industries in NSW is the only way to ensure local communities continue to grow and prosper,” says NSW Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee.

In February, gold producer Gold Fields’ former chairperson, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, called for a new South African mining industry model that simultaneously boosted agriculture and industry and put an end to the currency-strengthening Dutch Disease – the apparent relationship between the increase in the exploitation of natural resources and a decline in the manufacturing sector – which inhibited exports and stunted growth.

Speaking at the Investing in African Mining Indaba, held in Cape Town in February, Ramphele said the only way to respond to the current problems in mining was to change mining’s core business of extraction to the clustering of mining, agriculture and manufacturing, using all the available resources, from land to energy and tailings dams.

“We cannot solve today’s problems using the same mining model. We should start the difficult conversations for mining’s restructuring as a matter of urgency,” she said.

Countries like South Africa, with rich mineral reserves, were particularly affected by globalisation as a result of their local currencies strengthening against the dollar, which led to deindustrialisation and dwindling agricultural activity.

“We will have to accept that the traditional way of mining in South Africa of relying on plentiful labour is over. We better get used to it,” Ramphele added.

The shrinking economic cake and the rising tide of expectation on what freedom would deliver had raised the risk profile of South Africa, where there were “still many time bombs waiting to go off”, she said.

A positive response strategy was to cluster agricultural and manufacturing businesses around mines that would create an economy after the mining operations had exhausted their resources.

The approach of simply making a profit from mining was counter to the twenty-first-century reality of the interconnected nature of a society fuelled by rapid technological advances.

Mining needed to establish a new sustainable foundation for itself as a matter of urgency so that any mine built in the twenty-first century benefited everyone, she said.

The NSW Minerals Council case studies show that cooperation between mining and agriculture is possible.

The first case study in its new series features Andrew Waite, an olive farmer from Australia’s Hunter Valley, who has been farming for more than 14 years and works with natural resources group Glencore Xstrata at the Atulya Olive Grove, which is owned by the mining company.

“Atulya Olive Grove shares land with the Bulga underground coal mine – while mineworkers are producing coal underground, Waite is producing olives above the mine,” says the NSW Minerals Council.

Atulya Olive Grove produces Frantoia and Correggiola olives, with varieties that originate from Tuscany. Last year, 50 t of olives was produced and processed locally for olive oils used for cooking.
“In the past, the mine has sold olives to other growers to substitute their crops and increase the volume of their production each year. Glencore Xstrata also helped growers who had lost their crops to maintain a crop, making this partnership beneficial for other growers in the area as well,” says Waite.

Further, grapes used in Hunter Valley wines are growing above Glencore Xstrata’s Beltana No 1 mine, which is one of Australia’s most productive underground coal mines.

Glencore Xstrata has been mining successfully under about 90 ha of vineyards since 2005, says the NSW Minerals Council.

Seven vintages have been produced since mining began, with little or no impact on the quality of grapes produced, and the vineyards produce up to 250 000 bottles of wine a year.

About half of the mined area is below three vineyards – Beyond Broke, Timbervines, and Smith-Leigh, which is currently owned by Glencore Xstrata.

Further, only 30% of the land owned by diversified major Rio Tinto’s Northparkes Mines in Central West NSW is used for mining. The other 4 370 ha is used for farming purposes. The farm provides benefits for the local farming community through best practice techniques and innovative trials.

Besides the trials, which help develop new and efficient farming techniques, Northparkes’ farms are also productive, yielding over 1 000 t of canola, almost 1 400 t of barley and just under 3 000 t of wheat in 2012.

Northparkes Mines has been employing a farm manager since 1997 who champions conservation farming, aims to improve the original soil quality and productivity of the land and helps guide the eventual rehabilitation of the mine, says the NSW Minerals Council.