Casterford, Casterne

Casterford, Casterne

Casterford is the central grain market, agricultural university and rail-exchange city of the Republic's most productive farm state.

The city has a median age of 39 and large student and seasonal populations. One hundred and thirty wards elect 260 councillors: Farm and Water 94, Civic 70, Labour 47, Development 28 and others 21. Federal voting was Farm and Water 29%, Civic 27%, Labour 18%, Development 13%, Resource Justice 7% and others 6%.

The workforce is 4.76 million and unemployment 3.8%. Grain exchanges and finance employ 144,000, food processing 238,000, agricultural machinery 176,000, universities and research 190,000 and rail or warehousing 211,000. Median full-time pay is R$47,900 and household disposable income R$81,600. Rent is R$1,170, home price R$340,000, heating R$2,960 and monthly transport R$176.

Revenue is R$75.8bn, expenditure R$76.6bn, debt R$72bn and backlog R$46bn. The municipality has 12,600 school sites, 138 hospitals or large clinics and a tram, suburban rail and bus network carrying 7.9 million weekday journeys. Grain, food, fertiliser and machinery freight totals 1.46 billion tonnes annually. Dust, fertiliser runoff and rail noise are the principal pollution issues.

Mayor Galen Wheat, Grain Co-operative Federation chair Ruth Caster and Rail Workers organiser Asha Line are leading actors. The Casterford Market Journal publishes prices and politics. Disputes concern freight-path priority, aquifer limits and whether the grain exchange should be allowed to own storage data used for market surveillance.