Opinion: Renewing our focus on food
By Julian Cribb
The challenge for Australia in coming decades is to assure its own food
security in an increasingly food-insecure world. This will require
renewed focus on science, technology, economics, food policy, consumer
education and the national diet writes Julian Cribb.i
The same week as World Food Day 2010, drought in Russia and downpours
in North America thrust world corn prices to their sharpest one-day
rise since 1973.ii For the second time in three years the
impact of regional food setbacks was transmitted to consumers globally
in a matter of days. “We are beginning to realise that the era of food
surpluses has come to an end,” commented the UK Financial Times.
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.iii
At present these shocks are fairly 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 may take 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 issue 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 can take now in order to avoid the
impacts of 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.
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: whatever farmers use to grow and transport their
produce in the 2030s, it probably won’t be fossil fuels. Peak oil calls
for 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 price shock.
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 slashing
the public investment (as the Productivity Commission has 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.iv
- 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 calling 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 adds this will not happen
while farm returns are so bad and farm productivity sliding.v
The overwhelming economic signal from global markets to farmers is
“grow less”. 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 buy their produce or sell farm inputs. 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 in this article 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 an
appreciation, both among our leaders and Australians at large, that this
lies at the heart of our security in the 21st century – and a renewed
focus on something that is elemental to human survival: food.vi
iAuthor of “The Coming Famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it”, CSIRO Publishing, 2010
ii“Food Security”, Financial Times editorial Oct 13, 2010.
iiiSee
for example the UK MOD’s DCDC Global Strategic Trends program,
2007-2036 outlook which, among other insights, foretold the global
financial crisis two years ahead.
ivIn recent years we
have Land & Water Australia, the CRC for Irrigation, the CSIRO
Irrigation Division, and large parts of State Governments’ irrigation
research effort.
vFAO High Level Export Forum, How to
feed the World: Investment, Rome, October 2009.
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Investment.pdf
viWhat about population? many will say. There wasn’t room
here to do this issue justice but Ch10 of “The Coming Famine” discusses
the issue, and acceptable ways through it.
