Lake Eyre Basin Rivers 116 world’s most important country for organic beef produce. Consumers choose to purchase organic products because they are chemical-free, nutritious and tasty. Organic products may provide children with their best building blocks for a healthy life, particularly pleasing for me as an organic producer. We also market the Channel Country of the Lake Eyre Basin, the people and tourism to the world. This concept is not new. The wine industry adopts a similar approach, marketing regions and wines in Australia, including the highly successful Hunter Valley, Barossa Valley and Margaret River. We can do more here in the Channel Country of the Lake Eyre Basin. We already have a good identity. Sustainability Resource degradation is increasingly an international, national and local concern. I liken our Lake Eyre Basin to the great natural icons of Australia we need to look after it in the same way as we look after them. Think of Sydney’s magnificent harbour with its bridge and Opera House, or Uluru. Damage to these national treasures would cause uproar and substantially affect environmental and economic sustainability, particularly tourism. The Lake Eyre Basin is an icon of our country and the world (see Chapter 7). It is a large area with a large range of values respected and exploited by people for generations. It has great rivers, cultural history and even the Great Artesian Basin, one of the world’s greatest underground water sources. Fig. 11.2. Organic cattle production from the floodplains of the Lake Eyre Basin rivers is a long-term sustainable industry which commands a premium but would be threatened by development of rivers and reduction in flooding (photo, D. Brook).