Can we feed a 'Big Australia'?

The statistics on grain can be complicated by the existence of stocks that are carried over from year to year and also the fact that Australia can import grain as well as export it. For example, in the drought year of 2006-7 Australia produced 0.57 Mt of canola (our main oilseed crop) but consumed 0.59 Mt and exported 0.23 Mt! However, in a good year we export about twice as much canola as we use. In 2008-9 we produced 1.9 Mt of canola.

For pulses, (e.g. lupins, field peas and chick peas) the bulk of our production (usually about 1-1.5 Mt) is consumed domestically.

Coarse grains are the other major category of our grain production and include grains such as barley, oats, triticale, sorghum and maize. Our total coarse grain production, consumption and exports in Mt looks like this:

Less than one tenth of our domestic use of coarse grain is consumption directly by humans - the rest goes to feed animals and supply the grain for the next year’s crop. For example, in 2008-9, 0.4 Mt of total coarse grain production was consumed directly by humans while 5.1 Mt went to Australian animals. When combined with domestic wheat consumption we can see that, on the whole, far more grain in Australia is consumed by animals than humans.

So let’s look at meat. In the last few years our production and consumption of meat has varied by less than 10 per cent. The most recent numbers (taken from ABARE’s “Australian Commodity Statistics 2009” (PDF 1.45MB)) are shown below.

We can see that Australians consume about half of the red meat we produce. (Per capita consumption figures from ABARE (PDF 1.45MB) - not shown here - indicate that only about 70 per cent of this consumption is by humans.) In Australia, most of our red meat production is from sheep and cattle fed by grazing. Less than 30 per cent of our cattle are fed on grain before sale (i.e. “finished on grain”) and, since “finishing” usually occurs for a lesser fraction of the lifespan of cattle for sale, we can see that our red meat production is not largely dependent on grain. Most of the enormous volume of grain consumed by animals in Australia goes to pigs and chickens. Furthermore, the per capita consumption figures indicate that we eat more pig and poultry meat than red meat in Australia. While we do not import poultry meat, we do consume 95 per cent of what we produce and so export only 5 per cent. In contrast, our consumption of pig meat is 50 per cent greater than our production. Since pig and poultry production is almost entirely dependent on grain, rising grain prices directly affect the larger part of our meat consumption.

So far in this analysis I have not addressed seafood or dairy products. Production from Australia’s wild fisheries (PDF 1.43MB), (as in the rest of the world), is in decline and although there is some substitution for this loss by aquaculture, aquaculture itself is largely dependent on wild-caught fish for fishmeal (a major component of commercial fish food). In 2007-8 Australia’s wild fisheries and aquaculture production totaled 0.11 Mt. We exported 0.04 Mt of edible products but imported 0.20 Mt - nearly twice as much as we produced ourselves. During the past decade, Australian exports of dairy products (PDF 1.45MB) have been in decline as both our domestic consumption of dairy products has been rising while water allocations for pasture irrigation have been cut due to droughts. In 2007-8 the average Australian consumed 104L of milk and 32kg of milk products, e.g. including cheese (which lies somewhere between our kg per capita pig and poultry meat consumption rates). Although less than 10 per cent of Australian cattle are dairy cattle, these tend to occupy our best irrigated pasture country, requiring large inputs of fertiliser, water and energy.

From the broad summary above we can draw the following conclusions. Under current economic, environmental, energy supply and climatic circumstances:

1. we are currently not self-sufficient for fruit and vegetables;
2. in a good year we could supply about 3x our current population with wheat but, in a drought year, less than 2x our current population;
3. we could supply 2x our current population with red meat in normal - not drought - years; and
4. we could probably double our pig and poultry meat production if we consumed all our course grain production domestically (i.e. no exports) and significantly reduced our wheat exports. This is not possible under drought conditions.

A population of 36 million Australians is approximately a 64 per cent increase over today’s number. The rough analysis above shows that, in a drought year and under current conditions of resource supply, we would be nearing the limits of our ability to provide our own population with food and we are already beyond the limits of our ability to produce fruit and vegetables for ourselves. We would not be “food secure”.