Our current Australian anti-farmer policies coupled with a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead us to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food. As the world population grows by another 2.3 billion people, food in Australia will indeed become a scarce resource.
During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.
Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.
As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.
“THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.”
The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.
One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for our farmers.
The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.
Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.
There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”
Australia leads the world in Agriculture free trade, to the detriment of our own nation’s food security. Still the federal and state government’s attacks on our farming sector are unrelenting.
Exceptional circumstances drought relief is the only assistance the government offers our farmers and they are considering scrapping that. Our drought ravaged farmers received approx $1 billion dollars through this assistance over the past 8 years. Compare that to the great ‘free marketers’ of the world, the USA who have paid grain subsidies (not drought assistance, just a subsidy) to their farmers totalling $128 billion for the same period.
There is no doubt that if the government scraps drought assistance we will lose more farmers.
Whilst News Corp boss Rupert Murdock applauds Australia’s Agriculture Free Trade policies, the reality is that ‘free trade’ has been disastrous for our farmers.
A combination of cheap imported pork and sky high grain prices has seen 40% of pig farmers leave the industry in just the last 12 months. In a good indication of what is to come, there will be shortages of hams in shops this Christmas. Actually when you can’t buy a ham this Christmas you can thank the ‘free trade’ coalition party polices for this one.
“THAT most succulent of yuletide traditions, a perfectly smoked and glazed Christmas ham, is at risk of becoming a delicacy only for the rich as the chronic shortage of Australian farmed pigs inflates the price of pork.
It is estimated 40 per cent of pig farmers have left the industry in the past year, squeezed off the land by prohibitive grain costs and record volumes of subsidised pigmeat flooding in from Denmark, the US and Canada.”
The Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme is the greatest threat we now face to our food security.
It is estimated that under the scheme approx 10% of our productive farm land will be turned over to growing trees over the next decade. Not to mention that by 2015 when Agriculture is scheduled to become a covered industry that Australia’s leading economist Brian Fisher has predicted that Australian livestock producers will be completely lost as an industry.
Let’s not forget that the nations food bowl, the Murray Darling Basin is also under extreme pressure from past and present State government over allocation of water to irrigators and now the drought. The federal government is buying back water allocation and turning it into environmental flows. As this plays out over the next 10 years we will see even less food produced.
One of the most critical factors is water. “Water is getting extremely scarce because of demand in many countries.” He says there are problems with lack of water in Africa, and declining groundwater in India and Pakistan.
Chartres says with water becoming scarcer, there is no simple answer.
“We can’t make inputs cheaper, so food will probably be more expensive. But the critical thing is we have to grow a lot more to feed the extra 2.3 billion mouths that are expected by 2050.”
The State Labor Governments of QLD and NSW are major contributors to our dwindling farming sector. It was they after all that legislated the Draconian Native Vegetation Legislation laws that has locked up millions of hectares of productive farm land for eternity.
That legislation treats any farmer who dares to cut down a tree to grow more food as a criminal. The legislation was designed to do two things, win green votes for inept state labor governments and secondly to secure funding from a federal coalition government that used the carbon credits as a Kyoto ‘free kick’.
This was done regardless of the fact that it stripped the property rights of 1,000’s of private individuals and permanently capped the amount of arable land available for food production.
All the while the inept State Labor governments of NSW and QLD continue to allow prime farming land within a few hundred kilometres of major populations to be destroyed by coal mining companies. All in the name of coal mining royalties for cash strapped state labor governments. Examples of this are the 32,000 acres of prime farming land at Haystack on the Darling Downs, land at Felton and Kingaroy in Queensland and on the Liverpool Plain in NSW.
Lastly lets not forget the deregulation of our export wheat marketing. For the first time in a number of years Australian wheat farmers are harvesting a good crop that is supposed to pull them back from the brink of financial ruin after years of failed crops due to drought. However, now thanks to the Rudd governments deregulation they are being offered cash prices by ‘free market traders’ that are way under the cost of production. This will force 1,000’s of wheat growers off the land in the next 12 months.
We will see a day in Australia when we will have food shortages. We won’t be able to import it all as most countries already consume everything they produce.
The day that reality hits home as we are starting to glimpse with this years Christmas hams, the Australian public can look back and curse the names of those short sighted Politicians that lead Australia into the food shortage abyss we are surely headed into – Paul Keating, John Howard, John Anderson, Mark Vale, Warren Truss, Kevin Rudd, Tony Burke, Peter Costello, Peter Beattie, Anna Bligh, Bob Carr – the list of culprits goes on and on.
8 Comments
Many farmers have left the land because Australia is simply too dry to sustain farming given the long-running drought. Agricultrual subsidies, notwithstanding short term drought assistance, are not the answer.
G’day Generic Person,
Great Urban Myth – “Australia is too dry to sustain farming”. It currently does, in fact so easily does it feed 21.5 million people that it can export enough food to feed double that as well.
if the continent is so dry, why then can we do this and also have 28 hectares of trees for every man woman and child on the continent. The world average is just 0.8 hectares of trees for each person. Trees don’t grow in the harsh desert climates.
As for subsidies, one of the main reasons we need them is to compete with every other major exporter who has them. We don’t and can’t compete. Just ask yourself how can a pig be grown in the USA, Canada, Denmark, transported to a processor, Killed, cut up, transported to a port, shipped massive miles across an ocean, then be distributed by road transport to a supermarket shelf and land there cheaper than pork from an Australian piggerey that is probably 2-300kms from the supermarket. Its called subsidy, thats how.
But it have your way – continue to cannibalize our farming sector. But it is only the stupidest of nations rich in arable land that cannot feed itself. Zimbabwe springs to mind.
No doubt you look forward to having your milk come from China, your spring vegetables from Indonesia, your sea food from Vietnam, your beef from Brazil, your pork from Denmark, when you can afford to buy it.
… a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead use [sic] to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food…
Are you talking about the Aussie pop. steve? By my calculations of 60 seconds by 60 minutes by 24 hours by 365 days each year we have about 31.5 million seconds each year. This figure divided by 1.3 seconds means that we are growing our population by a staggering 24 million people per year?? If this is a world thing how does it impact on Australia’s net food?
Enough of my fun, I too believe that our agg sector has been sold down the drain and in my conspiracy theory world this has been done to break family farms and force their sale. Big business knows that the world is headed for a massive food crunch. World population increase coupled with increased flood, drought and pestilence caused by climate change coupled with peak oil and peak phosphorus all mean that the world just wont be able to feed itself and I will bet that this happens much sooner than 40 years. The insanity of importing over 300 000 immigrants under such circumstances needs to be exposed. Paying people to have babies? What was Costello thinking of? One can only assume that he wanted to create an army for future wars?
This is by far the best post that I have yet seen on Rooted (even given the dodgy maths at its beginning).
Madness is what it is and the message unfortunately doesn’t want to be heard by the masses.
I know I have been banging on about this for quite some time. Keep it up steve this is one that we must win
G’day twobob,
Mate you are right about the math. I got the figures from a Courier Mail article and must admit that I did not check them, just did and your right they are wrong. Thats what I get from not double checking everything I see in that reputable source The Courier Mail.
Thanks for the compliment about the article –
The urban masses will either think about it , or just blindly accept the free trade, and unsustainable environment mantra that is leading us in the exact opposite direction of food security and sovereignty. Those countries that don’t enjoy the abundance of good clean food and water that we do – must look at us as a nation and wonder how stupid we can be.
Those that don’t value our ability to feed ourselves (and the 0.6% of the population that do feed us) should go live in a country that can’t feed itself for 6 months to a year. On the Hierarchy of needs Water is No1 and Food No2. If those two aren’t available there is no law and order and the whole social fabric breaks down.
Australia has always been richly blessed in this area, probably why the majority, including our political class value it so little.
On the contrary, I find ths a very flawed and ignorant article.
Firstly, it talks as if the drop in farmer numbers over the last eight years are a result of government policy. No, it’s a result of a long running, unpredicted (and unpredictable) drought, which has made farming literally impossible in some areas of Australia. Of course, those farmers could have done their national duty and stayed put, generating ever increasing amounts of unpayable debt; instead, they chose the wiser option and got out whilst they still could.
Many of these will come back when times improve, or be replaced.
(Incidentally, this is exactly what the Fed Government’s attitude to drought payments is about – letting people leave if they decide their land is unviable, rather than encouraging them to stay on and accumulate more debt when they can’t conceivably ever pay it back).
Climate change – that thing – is partly responsible, and yes, we will have to rethink the way we farm because of it. Not necessarily bad. We are still desperately applying European methods of farming (including European crops and livestock) on non-European land. It’s never been a suitable way of farming and never will be.
Secondly, it is clear from your article that the problem isn’t ‘anti farmer’ governments but the growth in population. You seem to assume that this is inevitable, whereas I would have thought that we understand very well what we need to do in order to stem overpopulation. Anyway, there’s nothing in your article to suggest that, if the present ‘anti farmer’ actions continued but population growth was halted, that there would be any problem.
Basically, you could repeal all the anti farmer legislation you identify, clear all the forests for agriculture, force larger numbers of the population onto the land, and – if the population continues to grow unchecked – still be in deep trouble.
It’s fairly well proven – and accepted by the farming community in general – that protection results in less efficient agricultural production i.e. less food. Australian farmers (when there’s rain, which is not governed by government policy) are amongst the most efficient in the world – because they’ve had to be. The answer isn’t for Australia to become more protected but for the rest of the world (who need our exports to survive) to become less so. (You would expect, for example, that a country of the size and fertility of America would not need to import wheat or meat).
Finally, I suggest you read Malthus. When was he, the 1800s? Didn’t he predict that the world was going to run out of food within a very short time? Gee, I wonder whether he got that right….
China, 1.3 Billion people, smaller land area than australia, net exporter of food. Because it rains.
In australia anything water intensive is going to be in big trouble (cotton, rice). However people have trouble changing because they don’t like being told what to do. Yes there are lots of innovative farmers, but there are plenty who aren’t.
People leaving the industry does not necessarily lead to less production. It just leads to bigger holdings which can be farmed more efficiently. We have a romantic notion about family farming for X generations, lots of other industries dominated by small players have changed in the past 50 years. Lots of families are leaving the industry because the kids don’t want to be farmers.
If there is a food shortage, prices go up, unfarmed land becomes economic again.
Consumers have to accept responsibility for buying imported versions of products. Then they have to shame Coles and Woolworths for stocking so many imported products.
Emissions trading will shake things up a bit. Firstly we have to end our australian obsession with red meat. A sizeable fraction of our national CO2e emissions are cattle and sheep for meat. We eat more meat than almost everyone other than Texans. Secondly the transport costs of imports will rise and help restore the balance somewhat.
Subsidies and tariffs are very frustrating. Ultimately australian grown food is a premium brand and I would suggest in most cases is a superior product due to being fresher, less chemicals (I hope) and safer than the stuff from China/Thailand/etc.. (based on recent incidents).