Residents fight to save DPI office
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Condobolin residents have taken their fight to keep the town's Department of Primary Industries' (DPI) office open, to State Parliament.
The office and research station is one of eight earmarked for closure across New South Wales.
A delegation of farmers and representatives from the Lachlan council will today outline its benefits to the Primary Industries Minister.
The chairman of Central West Farming Systems, Chris Jones, says the decision to close the facility has not been properly thought through.
"In the cold light of day it would be a very unwise move to shut the research station out here," he said.
"Where else are we going to get the information that we need to keep farming out here?
"Before this latest drought started Condobolin was the biggest grain receival site in NSW.
"To have no research station for well over a couple of hundred kilometres in any direction is pretty short-sighted, I would have thought."
Mr Jones says the facility is the only research station in a low rainfall area in the state.
"It's a very important place, not just for Condobolin either," he said.
"We're talking a huge area of the cropping belt and the mixed farming area of central west NSW that's all covered by this one research station.
"If we're going to have climate change and it's all going to dry out, really this is where they have got to do the research now for what will be happening in 20 years' time."
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