Global crisis on our plate

The solution, according to these scientists, is to make the world's 2,000 million farmers the guardians of soil, water, biodiversity and carbon by equipping them with new technologies, education and ample funding.

The solution is to replant the forests and sow new agro-forests. It is to design farming systems that enrich the soil with organic matter, thereby absorbing carbon out of the atmosphere instead of degrading it and releasing carbon. It is to filter, cleanse and restore the fresh waters. And it is to turn a renovated agriculture in the world's languishing regions into the engine of economic growth and prosperity that it has been for countries such as Australia and the US, thereby tackling the millennium goals of reducing poverty, hunger and disease.

It's a big idea and, like all such concepts, its critics are already swarming with reasons why it can't and shouldn't be done. In some cases it will need new science and, in others, old science re-applied or better applied. Above all it will require the transfer of knowledge on an epic scale: the education of a third of the world's people in new ways of producing food.

It is also a challenge for which Australia is singularly well-qualified and which, a generation ago, we would have leapt at. Our farmers and scientists are already hammering out and trialling the basics of sustainable farming systems, of landscape renewal, of husbanding and cleansing precious water, of treading more lightly on Earth, of locking carbon in the soil. Many of the elements in this great revolution in productive thought are already in our possession. It also embodies equity principles that Australia has long espoused, such as fair trade rules for all countries, the breaking of monopolies and free access to scientific knowledge.

It is a task we cannot, in conscience, ignore, either in our own country or in the wider world. It is also an opportunity like none other for renewal of the natural world, for economic and rural growth, for the relief of human misery and for developing a sustainable basis for civilisation as a whole.

If ever there was a beacon to draw gifted young Australians in search of a life's mission back into science or agriculture, this would have to be it.