A giant coal mine approved for construction beside premium farmlands shows no farm in Australia is safe, says the new head of the NSW farming lobby.
Derek Schoen, who was elected as president of the NSW Farmers Association on Tuesday, has committed his organisation to having the approval for the Shenhua Watermark coal mine overturned, saying it is the most important challenge now facing farmers.
"We're going to leave no stone unturned to try and get this decision overturned," Mr Schoen told AAP.
Mr Schoen signalled a challenge to the mining industry, which has spruiked the job- and revenue-generation capacity of the mine.
"We are going to call on all our grassroots members because it affects every farming operator," he said.
"It basically means that no one is safe within NSW, basically within Australia, to carry out a farming operation without having the rug pulled out from underneath you."
The huge Watermark mine, planned for the Liverpool Plains near Gunnedah in northern NSW, was given federal government approval on July 8 in the face of strident opposition from farmers worried about its effects on groundwater in the key growing area.
The mine is awaiting final planning approval from the NSW government.
"You have to realise we're in the driest continent on Earth and Australia has one of the poorest soils," Mr Schoen said.
"These are our best soils that we have in the country and we are going to let someone just destroy it forever.
"We keep talking that we are going to be the food bowl of Asia and feed the world, and yet our premier piece of earth we are going to dig up just for a 30-year envelope of financial gain."
Shenhua, the Chinese company that owns the project, says the mine will extract 10 million tonnes of coal a year for 30 years, create 600 jobs during construction and about 430 full-time equivalent jobs during production.
Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt said conditions on the mine's approval meant work had to stop if there was any impact on agricultural water supply.
Mr Schoen, a 55-year-old family farmer with cropping and livestock farms in the north and south of NSW, said he found it hard to believe the government would be able to halt the mine with Shenhua investing $1 billion in the project.
"Once you disrupt this aquifer that is underneath the Liverpool Plains there's no going back, there's no way of reinstating what was there," he said.
"We have no faith in scientific reports that say that everything is OK and that we'll monitor it."
