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Renewing our focus on food

By Julian Cribb - posted Wednesday, 12 January 2011


World food prices are now at their highest in recorded history. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s global food price index surpassed its previous (2008) peak in December 2010.

“We are beginning to realise that the era of food surpluses has come to an end,” the UK Financial Times commented recently.

The message is likely to be rubbed in for Australian consumers in the weeks and months ahead, as the impact of the Queensland floods seeps through to the supermarket as food price inflation - and maybe even drive up the cost of repaying a home mortgage.

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The context in which Australia must shape its future agriculture and food policies is one of a world in which global food demand will double by the mid-century. At the same time the resources needed to satisfy it - water, arable land, fossil energy, mined nutrients, fish, technology and stable climates - will become much scarcer or increasingly unaffordable for farmers. Strategic thinktanks in the US, UK, Scandinavia and Australia are already warning about the consequences of this for conflict and refugee crises, for economic shockwaves and food price hikes, even in affluent and otherwise food-secure countries.

At present these shocks are reasonably small and well-spaced. By 2060, with ten billion people aspiring to a western diet, they will be tectonic and one will spill into another. Countries that imagine themselves secure now will discover that, in a globalised world, they are not.

It is important to note that it does not have to be this way. Humanity does not have to bow to a growing cycle of scarcity and crisis; indeed, if we prepare ourselves, we can prevent them. What is most needed is leadership, both national and international, to put in places the measures that will avert the building cycle of regional food shortages and their wider impacts.

Food production cannot be turned on and off like a tap, at the whim of global markets or politicians. It takes decades for a new technology or farming system to be widely adopted: meantime drought, poor returns and global competition can eradicate local food industries. To deal with such issues requires forethought and planning on time-scales ranging from decades to half a century or more. It requires the integration of water policy with land policy, energy policy, science policy, health and food policy and climate policy. (Anyone who doubts the scale of the task has only to reflect how long it is likely to take to regenerate the Murray-Darling Basin alone, its industries, communities and ecosystems.)

Based on the key impending scarcities in global food production, here are some essential measures Australia ought to be taking now in order to head off food insecurity in future:

Recarbonise, rehydrate: we need a nationwide plan to rebuild the fertility, carbon and water retention of our landscapes, agricultural, pastoral and natural. In particular we need to find ways to retain more of the 50% of rainfall now lost to evaporation continent-wide to carry agro-ecological landscapes through warmer times ahead and maximise our ability to lock up and retain carbon in the soil.

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Recycle, re-nourish: mined nutrients are finite and likely to become costlier than oil in future, so we need a national plan to harvest fresh water and nutrients as they pass through our great cities and return them to food production: agricultural, peri-urban, urban and to novel intensive industries such as biocultures which will in turn produce food, feed, fuel and other valuable products.

Re-energise: With oil already heading for $100 a barrel again we need a crash national R&D program to develop the farm and long-distance transport energy sources and systems of the future to sustain food production. Whether it is algal biodiesel, 2nd generation biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, solar electrics or boron ion batteries we need to start right now, to avoid being caught unprepared by the next oil shock and massive food price inflation.

Reinvest in knowledge: after two of three decades of disinvestment in agricultural science, technology and extension, policymakers need to understand that these hold the key to our future food security, and maybe that of our region also. Instead of continuing slashing the public investment (as the Productivity Commission has blindly recommended) we should double it.

In particular we should invest in:

  • irrigation and land and water science – areas that have suffered irrational demolition in recent years.
  • soil microbiology with a view to enhancing the biological potential of our landscapes and crop and pasture yields.
  • building bridges between organic and high-intensity farming with the goal of developing science-based low-input eco-agricultural systems that recycle, re-use and conserve.
  • developing food systems (including urban ones) which are cushioned against climate shocks
  • research into frontier science areas such as re-engineering of the photosynthetic pathways in crops and trees, to boost yields and lock up more carbon.

Share knowledge: to help stabilise our neighbouring region against food insecurity (and ease the disturbing trend to foreign acquisitions of Australian land and water) we need to build a new multi-billion dollar knowledge export industry, based on our expertise in areas such as landcare, dryland farming, water management, drought strategy etc. The mining sector has already done this, so it is perfectly feasible for agriculture and NRM.

Reinvest in people: our agricultural education system is falling apart and is in desperate need of reinvestment and revitalisation. We need to train a new generation of farmer and urban food producers equipped to overcome the scarcities ahead. We need to encourage our best youth back into a field which will be central to the human destiny this century.

Re-educate Australians about food: up to half of all the food produced in Australia is wasted or sent to landfill calling for an urgent effort to end the waste, through education, technology and recycling. Up to half of all Australians, including our children, now die from diet-related disease, This calls for national education about healthy eating, both to save lives and to rein in the biggest budget blowout in Australian history, in healthcare. We should educate our children to eat healthily, sustainably and with a renewed respect for food. This can be assisted by introducing a Food Year in every junior school in Australia, teaching all subjects through the lens of food.

Reinvest in food: FAO points out that massive global reinvestment will be needed to head off food scarcity in the mid-century – yet warns this will not happen while farm incomes are so bad and farm productivity sliding. This is due to a market failure driven by the growing imbalance in market power between 1.8 billion producers and the handful of corporates who now dictate the world price of food. Finding a solution to this economic distortion, without harming price signals, is a key challenge – otherwise new technologies and sustainable systems will not be adopted fast enough. One option is to compensate farmers for their stewardship, on behalf of society, of land, water, atmosphere and biodiversity. Others should be explored.

If Australia can successfully address the challenges outlined here we will earn the right to be a leader of the endeavour to sustain the global food supply. It is a role for which our farming, scientific and technical expertise equips us well. All that is presently lacking is awareness of the scale of the risks we face – and the political and societal will to overcome them.

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About the Author

Julian Cribb is a science communicator and author of The Coming Famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it. He is a member of On Line Opinion's Editorial Advisory Board.

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