Australia's agricultural land is under pressure as never before. As well as the ever growing need for housing, mining expansion is also having a serious impact.
This conflict has been brought into sharp focus on the Liverpool Plains in North-west New South Wales.
The battle between farmers and big business is being described as a David verse Goliath story.
SBS Reporter Peta-Jane Madam looks at how this conflict could affect Australia's food supply.
Australia's agricultural land is under pressure as never before. As well as the ever growing need for housing, mining expansion is also having a serious impact.
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This conflict has been brought into sharp focus on the Liverpool Plains in North-west New South Wales- what is being described as a David verse Goliath story.
The Liverpool Plains is home to more than 100 farmers and a flashpoint of competition for prime agricultural land.
And Tim Duddy, a food producer leading the charge against two of the world's mining giants, claims the area is the most productive agricultural land in the entire country.
"We're talking about a sedimentary flood plain of some 1,200 square kilometres that is as fertile as the Nile delta," Mr Duddy told SBS.
Four years ago, BHP Billiton and Chinese owned Shenhua, were granted licences to drill on the land in search of coal.
What they found was a group of farmers, ready to fight.
Farmers at the Liverpool Plains say their black soil is so rich they're able to yield up to 40 per cent more crops per hectare than the national average.
And underground lies a vast system of aquifers, the life blood to farmers.
While many producers have suffered during years of drought, the Liverpool Plains has lost only one crop out of 20.
They argue drilling for coal and ultimately the construction of a mine could irreparably damage, the land, and also the underground water supply through potential contamination.
There is a national significance too: water from the Liverpool Plains runs into the Namoi catchment, which in turn flows into the Murray Darling Basin.
"If you've contamination of the underground or the surface water resources, that will affect all the irrigators and towns along that entire chain," Tim Duddy says.
'I don't think anyone has actually done a calculation of how many crops, people that involves, but it would be a fair percentage of the Australian population."
This fight began when BHP drillers tried to access the Duddy's farm.
They were met with a blockade, a line in the sand, which has now become a second home to farmers.
At least one farmer guards the blockade regardless of rain, hail or shine and has done so, every day, for the past 20 months.
It's a fight the Greens have been proud of and an unlikely alliance which has helped raise the issue in Federal Parliament.
"In this case, the farming community and the greens have suddenly found that they've got a lot in common, so they're not going to the things that divide them, as they traditional did - that's where the politics was 'you know, beat up a green, take on a farmer,' Mr Duddy told SBS.
Just minutes from the blockade, is Andrew Clift's property, a sixth generation farmer.
He fears people living in the cities don't understand their food supply is at risk.
"There's a fair bit of grain growing here all year round: you gotta get your food from somewhere and we're probably only a small area but we produce a fair bit," Mr Cliff told SBS.
Every year, these farmers produce the raw materials for: 365 million loaves of bread, 144 million bottles of beer, 62.5 million packets of pasta 58 million boxes of cornflakes 110 million dollars worth of beef.
At risk for BHP and Shenhua are an estimated 1 billion tonnes of coal every year.
And supporters say, the mines will boost the local economy for the nearby towns of Tamworth and Gunnedah.
BHP Billiton says it understands the farmers' concerns and late last year it vowed not to mine on the floodplains - just the ridges.
Some farmers are still nervous: it's a clause which hasn't been removed from the exploration licence.
BHP Billiton says wont lodge an application for a mine, until an independent water study into the aquifers - is carried out.
The BHP project manager say they wont put forward any proposal that would damage the alluvial aquifers.
For both sides, the dispute has been delayed by a number of legal battles.
The most recent saw two farmers win a Supreme Court case, which ruled the licences to exploration for coal on their farms were invalid because BHP hadn't consulted those with an "economic interest" in the properties - such as mortgage holders and the banks.
BHP says it " notes the Supreme Court's decision and is now considering the options available..."
That will almost certainly point to an appeal, breathing fresh life into this clash between Australia's two great primary industries.
