fantasia_kitty wrote:Stupid, newbie American question.
What kind of agriculture do you have in Australia? Kansas is almost entirely agriculture, we grow mostly wheat and raise cattle, so that's why we're so dependent on rain (or snow) here.
I was watching a program on Friday night about the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, which will finish next week. It appears that Kansas is semi-arid in climate and too much tilling, not enough planting of trees, a too-great reliance on grain-growing, and a prolonged drought led to those disastrous conditions.
Much of Australia is also semi-arid, just like New Mexico (the program did mention that state), Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. We also tend to have similar sorts of weather conditions. Except for some reason our tornados don't ever seem as bad as yours. But then our mountains aren't so high either. Nor do we have rivers as big, as long and with so much water as the Colorado, the Missouri, the Mississippi and other subsidiary waterways that I may not know off-hand. During drought conditions we have also had dust storms, in particular at the end of 2009. The two dust storms had a distinctly reddish tinge, since they came off the desert in Western New South Wales.
In Queensland along the coast we get sugar-cane farming, centred around Mackay. I know all about that, since I still have relatives involved in that industry, I believe. There, as well as northern New South Wales, they also grow tropical fruits like pineapple, rockmelons (cantaloupes) and bananas, which is why Queenslanders are jokingly called banana-benders, elsewhere in Australia. Some of the crops we grow further inland and in the south include wheat, canola, corn and fruit. In some parts of New South Wales we even have cotton-growing, though this is a water-intensive crop to grow.
Wine-making is quite an industry in most states of Australia, especially around the Margaret River area in Western Australia (near -comparatively speaking- to where IloveFauns is), the Barossa Valley near where W4J is situated, and in the Hunter Valley, north of here. Some of our best agricultural land in NSW is around the Riverina area. This is around the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Murray and Darling Rivers. The Darling, which flows into the Murray river, and some of the Darling's tributaries such as the Castlereagh, Macquarie and others have a distressing tendency to dry up during drought conditions.
We, that is, Australia as a whole, rear beef cattle in Northern Australia for export, whether WA, Qld or NT. We have dairying along the New South Wales southern coast, down into Victoria, and in Tasmania, in particular. We also raise sheep for wool and meat, as well as other livestock, like chickens, pigs etc. When there is a drought or worse, a bushfire, there is a lot of suffering involved. Flooding, and the damage it causes, can be also fairly horrendous for the farmers. The toll on native wild-life isn't helpful, either, since these animals are what makes this country unique in the world.
We also have mining, as well as manufacturing in most Australian cities. Possibly Canberra is an exception due to it's being the capital of Australia.
I hope that answers your quite reasonable question.
Our daylight-saving doesn't stop until the end of March.
You guys up north are getting loads of snow and we are getting, probably nothing. We do have a slight chance for some rain/snow mix here, but I doubt we'll get anything. 
I suppose it could have been an interesting show learning about the weather on other planets, except they hired the production team from It Could Happen Tomorrow and they were all dramatic about how the White House would be blown to smitherines... yeah. 
And then the big weather news I'm excited about is that we are going to be getting our first taste of spring this week. The highs are supposed to jump to the mid-60s tomorrow AND they're predicting our first thunderstorms this weekend. 
).