Red and green tape is “strangling” WA’s farming future, with the State’s environmental bureaucracy more than quadrupling since the year 2000 while employment in agriculture has declined by one-third. Mr Wild said despite pledges from successive State and Federal governments to relieve farmers of burdensome regulation, the evidence was clear red and green tape — and the bureaucrats that administered it — continued to increase. For context, he said the number of people employed in environmental departments and agencies nationwide — the “green tape army” — was now 20 per cent greater than the number of soldiers serving in Australia’s “regular army”. “There are now a staggering 34,600 people employed by environmental bureaucracies around Australia; Australia’s actual army is just over 29,000,” Mr Wild said.“The size of that green tape army has more than doubled since 2000, but our actual army has increased by a fifth.”