THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMPETITION BETWEEN RURAL LIVING AND CANE GROWING

IN QUEENSLAND, the almost universal right to have a house on rural allotments has resulted in rural living settlement in areas intended, by land use planning policy, to be used for agriculture. Such ‘unplanned’ rural living has a range of potential adverse impacts, including loss of agricultural production and land use conflicts. There was a concern that a combination of factors related to land use and subdivision policy could lead to inappropriate conversion of existing allotments to unplanned rural living. Those factors included: the right to have a house on virtually every allotment; the absence of the potential to excise small allotments for new or existing houses; and the existence of many allotments that are below the size considered necessary for a viable farm. The study comprised three stages of empirical analysis. Firstly, a State-wide survey of land converted from sugarcane production supported the choice of the Bundaberg region as the study area. This was followed by analyses of the current land use and other attributes of allotments in the study area that, in 1980, were used for sugarcane. The third stage analysed the characteristics of rural living and sugarcane allotments at the time of their sale during the 1992–2000 period, including logit models of the choice between the two uses. It was found there had been limited conversion of suitable, productive sugarcane land to unplanned rural living. Compared to the allotments that remained in sugarcane production, allotments converted to unplanned rural living were, on average, much smaller, of lower value, had lower agricultural production potential, and were situated in more undulating and forested landscapes further from Bundaberg. These clear distinctions between rural living and sugarcane allotments resulted in logit models with high explanatory power. There was a lack of evidence to support a change to the current regulation of either houses or excisions. The findings indicated that the allotment area required to avoid conversion to unplanned rural living was much less than the area required for agricultural viability. However, the potential for changed economic conditions to reduce the productive value of agricultural land, and increase demand for rural living, makes it appropriate to be cautious about permitted allotment sizes.