MORE than 400 landholders and concerned citizens have gathered among the vast cotton and sorghum fields at Cecil Plains today to show support for local farmers who have spent more than five years opposing proposed coal seam gas development by Arrow Energy across the region.
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Save our Darling Downs spokesperson Graham Clapham said the proposed development posed a long term threat to agriculture on the floodplain west of Toowoomba.
He called on the State Government to support the Federal Government's recent decision to introduce conditioning on groundwater extraction for the resource sector.
Mr Clapham said farmers had been forced to adapt to water cutbacks in recent years and it not reasonable for the resource sector to be given "open slather" over the precious water resources.
Toowoomba Mayor and Millmerran farmer Paul Antonio, who today celebrates one year since his Local Government election victory where he ran strongly on a campaign to protect prime agricultural land, told the gathering he would 'see whoever he needed to see' to advocate for the assurance food security would remain the focus of state and Federal Government.
"The change of land use in this region is wrong, wrong, wrong," Cr Antonio told Queensland Country Life.
"The biggest land use that we don't want to see in this region is mining - in any form"
"All my life, ever since I left agricultural college I have coveted land such as we are standing on today. I would have loved to have owned some myself."
"When the history of this region is written the energy sector will be but a small blip on the screen of our history. Food security must be the priority."
Comment has been sought from Arrow Energy.
