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 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 projected 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 Labour 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 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.
Have Your Say!
Interesting article Jeff. It sounds like the media has picked up on the street level conversation of rural Australia.
“Concerned Northerner” has a point and in fact this is the good example of hurried planning. Trees drink water! They compete with ground cover and indeed they are not very digestable. While theres nothing wrong with having trees on farms (everything in moderation) having ONLY trees on farm land can cause alot of trouble.
A timber farm in my area has gone broke in spectacular fashion and now guess what..the land is being used as an agistment block for cattle.
In the Douglas Daly region good farm land has been locked up in green tape for years and this has been to the detriment of many graziers. Most have had to move elsewhere to continue their lifestyle
I would like to know who’s idea it was to glorify trees? Im NOT against trees in fact I quite like them but really who’s idea was it to give them such status. Its been widely pulicised that the only way to save the planet is to plant trees. Kids are even taught this from pre-school upwards. But lets look at it.
If we plant trees everywhere, in 20years time what will we have? Answer: trees.
What we wont have is a generation with improved agricultural practices, skilled food producers, internal food security, understanding of good land mangement in regard to producing large quantities of food with relevance to the scenario in 20yrs. We will however have a great knowledge of how to grow trees. Not a bad plan in some spots but on a large scale as is being pushed it seems very short sighted.
Why dont we start teaching people how to prevent mineral lockup (that stops large scale fertiliser use, which lowers residue which means less mineral on the reef). Lets try learning about soil chemistry and biology and understanding how the land/soil works in terms of agriculture? Then we may be able to grow more feed on the land we have and raise better livestock. Lets teach sustainable cropping practices where we put back some of the goodness we take out. This is just the tip of the iceberg the list is huge.
Trees like everything else have their place, They provide shade, shelter, habitat, fodder and wind breaks. But to ignore good management and just plant trees is not in the best interest of anyone really. Trees are PART of a solution not THE solution.
yeah, i’m in forestry circles, and have heard of great disasters where trees planted by the thousands of acres, hit their growth spurt all at once, and where rising water/salinity was an issue, now there is bugger all groundwater available for anything! MIS’s probably haven’t heard of the word moderation though…
maybe my circle of colleagues isn’t a good cross-section of society, but from country to city we agree on lots of the general ideas, and i think we appreciate trees as integrated farming practice makes sense, nothing gained by swapping grain for gums - but i do suspect plenty of ‘mainstream’ (yuk, i hate stereotypes) news etc portrays/sells the notion that trees is the answer.
put back in the land - maybe all the urban organic wastes can be redirected for recyclable organics/compost?! instead of ocean outfalls or landfill? but then, some people object to having their power from wind turbines if it crowds their views, or of bioreactors if it might cause a smell, so whether that NIMBY mindset would be amenable to eating food that was produced using fertiliser from their leftover takeaway scraps or worse…!?
From ‘The Land’
“Green tape strangling world food production”
LUCY SKUTHORP
12/11/2008 5:59:00 PM
http://tinyurl.com/5qzo82
Of particular interest is the ‘Comment’ by Concerned Northerner.
yeah, interesting - and considering other recent articles on here, e.g. clinton and his reconsidering of free trade as a good idea, and ?Shiva and the dissent of indian farmers… hmmm.
at some point, maybe the ‘extreme green’ will come to some middle ground when they begin to starve, and the ‘money hungry’ when they realise they can’t digest their stocks and shares either!
but that don’t help the folks on the land here and now does it?!
Hi Shane,
Well I know of alot of people in Australia who are well aware of better ways to farm but are reluctant to enter the current debate. A quick read of Acres Ausralia will highlight quite a few of these people. Another magazine that tries to do this is the Town and Country Farmer. There are usually feature articles on people that are inovative and eco-friendly while producing a quality commercial product. These people are there but they get limited media, in a sense you have to go looking for them. They dont usually work for the government or big corporations. But rather are people on the land with families to raise and bills to pay and so are not at conferences and such. This is why we need to engage in finding ways to recognise these people and bring their ideas into the light.
Since I live in the tropics where for six months of the year you wish you had water in the river or dam and green feed and for the other six your hopelessly bogged and have lost any lower paddocks and fences to flood. Im not the most qualified commentater on drought but from what I read from many sources, it seemed that the buyback just wasted money without actually helping the rivers and flats that needed the water. In regard to locking up land, all indications in my area show that the government is doing a tragic job maintaining the land it has and to obtain more is senseless. More thought needs to go into stakeholders involved and the funds available for long term land management.
But then as you say who wants to read a nice story with a happy ending? When you could cook up a juicy scandal and propaganda and get the ratings of the year!
My son is on a property in the NT and he has been told that a nuclear waste dump is being developed on a remote part of that property - I thought the Australians were against that !! - I have no idea whether it is overseas waste or Australian waste.
it’s amazing the amount of things that go on ‘out in the sticks’ that most of us don’t hear about…
Hi Rashida,
i’d noted your ref to Acres Aust sometime earlier, it’s on my list of things to follow up! yeah, i’d agree that you gotta go searching for the info etc - whilst i understand a bit about our block, wanting to get it functioning better is one thing but finding the info without reinventing the wheel is another!
i live on the east coast, so i too am probably not entitled to comment on drought issues
though i know at least a couple of semi-arid farmers, some love the inland seas that came from tradeable water rights, some loathe them and can’t wait to see the weirs taken out. and though the compensation approach is something i am open to (as part of addressing the issues), i still reserve my judgement on how it’s enacted. true, i know the current state-owned land is undermanaged (lots of weeds being bred!!) and thankfully there’s a bit of move towards assisting landholders to look after things themselves because it is more feasable long term… but guess there’s always improvements in practice or policy.
Are we re-inventing the wheel or reminding people that its there! At the moment I think we have the latest in sled technology.
Acres Australia is just the tip of the iceberg but once you start reading it opens your eyes to all these other people and publications out there. Enjoy the search
No doubt the people from the past on the never ending list have made mistakes and that has affected agriculture but really in this age of information is there any excuse for blind policy making?
We are not starved of information on how things can be run but rather the ability to analyse what we have read and make sense of it.
There are enough knowledgable people out there to promote sustainable agriculture and adjust consumer attitudes that we really shouldnt be making these dopey mistakes like buying water out of people dams, locking up land or demonising land clearing for production.
Indeed some land is very fragile but alot of it can be maintained and improved with starategic clearing. If you read the NT Land clearing guidelines youll find that its an all or nothing approach. You either get a permit to knock every tree in sight or you dont clear at all. That sort of inflexibility has caused alot of conflict. Much of the clearing done today is actually clearing of regrowth. This is part of the maintenence of arable land.
Most of the land in the world (with exception to the volcanic islands and river flats and deltas)has been developed from “fragile and infertile soils” to good rich farm land through organic principles. The use of mulch and manure is one of the key factors in improving soils. Sadly these practices take time to be effective and that doesnt sit well with current markets and consumers who want it and they want it NOW. Much of the soil in Australia has imbalances so by applying the correct minerals and not just buying generic fertiliser these areas can become productive and useful.
I think its senseless to look back and say “but all those years ago they made a mistake! so we cant move on now”. We cannot change the past but we can change the future. The conditions of the past are not the conditions of today. Today we have more mouths to feed and better information on how to achieve that.
Cutting education and assistance to farmers was a bad move as it has slowed the whole process of improving ourselves and our practices.
Its not the scenario the government “inherits” that defines them but rather the way they deal with that situation and the solutions they produce.
Well said!
particularly “We are not starved of information on how things can be run but rather the ability to analyse what we have read and make sense of it.”
though, regarding enough knowledgeable people, heard from a recent conference that aust-wide, seems a gap in getting info to people on the ground… i.e. lack of the right people to help inform… the sort of people that would normally be extension officers of sorts from our knowledge-banks of our public research sectors etc… and looks like that gap will be widening now?! hmm.
interesting on the NT clearing policy - guess that’s the sort of scenario that gets touted by those that want to object to any form of clearing, pull out the worst example! i think there’s still a fair public perception that qld is still doing the same, despite veg management laws that were supposed to stop that? i’m not sure if a bit of footage on tv about ‘clearing’ has it explained to the viewer if it is regrowth being rotation-cleared etc, i think they just show it for the shock factor and sell a story! dang dodgy media…
though, on buying back water/land as being ‘dopey’, i think there is some merit in this, i mean, if our knowledge now shows the govt permitted the use of more water than we should, and/or taken it from the wrong places, then how else to reclaim the resource? maybe just not renew licenses, commandeer it, with no compensation whatever - that would upset big companies and destroy smaller ones. at least paying something for it keeps a measurable fairness to the idea(?) though examples in forestry and fishing sectors where the idea starts well but not everyone gets the fair payout.
finally, the imbalance between people wanting results ‘now’ and the reality of gradual change is something that could have been greatly helped by increasing our R&D / education aspects, not decreasing it. and it would have strengthened our position on the global stage too.
‘what other industries get govt support to run badly? if a farm is in trouble, then it may be poorly managed (now and/or historically), and so like any small business, the bad ones fail, the good ones survive, and it encourages innovation/competition etc’
What do you think pf the bail out of the Holden and Ford plants down south and the ABC learning centres ! Seems like over many years with the globalist free trade policies big buisness and coporate farming have had a very very cosy relationship looking after each other and wiping out small businesses and small farmers here and poorer countries.
ah, i knew someone would quickly come up with some classic examples to counter that statement
how about i clarify by saying the quote and discussion i referred to, was more in the context of small-mid business etc. seems once you get big enough, there’s a whole separate lot of rules, like ‘thou shalt be pandered to by public funds in times of need…’
but that sort of thing still covers up/delays problems as i was alluding to - e.g. like you say, ruins smaller business (which is usually more in tune with local economies/environment etc) and the poor countries too.
i mean, if we’re funding e.g. our auto sector, to remain competitive with cheap imports etc, how will the labourers in those countries get a chance at better pay when at our end we’re competing to bring our prices closer to theirs, instead of the other way around and evening up their work/living conditions?!
here’s a cat for the pigeons…
well, a lot of names left off the list in the last paragraph above… how about you start from all our leaders from about 1788?
i don’t think fault can be laid with those over the last couple of decades without acknowledging what they inherited - namely, two centuries of farming the second driest continent and possibly the lowest nutrient continent, with the general mindset that we could do it like anywhere else.
it has left its mark, and of course it is going to be a long and painful recovery.
to that end, i propose an alternative view for your “Draconian” veg laws - why should we go clearing more land for production, when we already had abused land falling out of production? what, just clear and develop more to have it go to the same weed and wasteland as the previous paddock? no, the ideal of it was to reduce broadscale clearing. and it did not make farmers criminals for cutting down a tree - it is comments like that which ’scared’ people in the leadup to the veg laws so that more of qld was cleared in the two years prior to it coming into effect, than before the laws were mentioned?! no, there are land management methods for farmers to maintain veg AND cut down trees, in most situations. If more of the details/facts/options were presented instead of the same ’scare tactic’ info, it would probably help people, e.g. explanation of the process for surveying veg to determine if it meets the 30/50 height/cover criteria of native veg or not, category X land classifcation, approved property management plans etc.
as for farmland to trees - i know lots of examples where ‘farmland’ is turned to trees and it’s the best damn thing to be doing - unless you like barren hillsides of weeds and unpalatble grasses simply so it can still be ‘counted’ as farmland for the stats? i’d like to know really, how much of the 10% is actually sustainable farmland, because i think there’d be more land available than that for trees which is currently on the ‘way out’ as far as being productive farmland goes. or if you don’t like trees, maybe lobby for hemp as a viable industry in australia.
Free trade? well, that’s having fallout globally, if you think we fared bad, look at the developing nations who can’t eat because they’re farmland is now all coffee for free trade export etc… true, we could be headed that way ourselves, but we didn’t start so far down the ladder. The issue of subsidies overseas does make our lack of them seem to be a handicap, but in the whole picture, those subsidised countries are causing a whole lot more problems because of subsidies - over-production, bad management practices, loss of small-business or family-owned primary production, and then of course, utter dependence on continued subsidies to exist. it might hurt us on the world market, but i think it might do us better in the long run, to be without similar subsidy programs here.
As a colleague once elaborated; what other industries get govt support to run badly? if a farm is in trouble, then it may be poorly managed (now and/or historically), and so like any small business, the bad ones fail, the good ones survive, and it encourages innovation/competition etc. OK, so i’m sure you’ll all point out how e.g. fossil fuel industries get govt support to run badly… but the essence of my colleagues argument was decent, i.e. too much support/subsidy etc just hides problems and avoids them being solved, only to get worse further on (message for fuels sector there too?!)
article says how many farmers left land over last 8 yrs - i think though, that does not equate to similar reduction in farming - some of that would be due to larger businesses (even foreign owned companies) buying up smaller farm interests. Some would be lost farming of course.
But what about prior to the 8 years - as i said at start, look right back. plenty of examples throughout oz where we exceeded our ‘carrying capacity’ as far as farming goes, at some point the balance has to swing back, at the moment it seems to be against us. Add the issue of cheap import food makes it a nasty hit, but that too will swing, maybe even sooner because of the biofuels craze.
All that said, I still agree on issue that we’re on a trend of losing too much of our independence when it comes to food production. And scrapping public R&D/extension services is a bad move.
Bush to warn of protectionism at economic summit
Bush will also emphasize that reforms, while essential, won’t work unless they are accompanied by open trade and competition.
“Protectionist rhetoric about walling off markets or companies does not help stabilize markets,” Dan Price, Bush’s deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said in a preview session with reporters Wednesday. “It in fact leads to greater uncertainty”.
(The corporate elite of the world are getting worried that their free trade policies might be under attack from smaller countries. Many countries are sick to death of having their small business and farmers wiped out with the present corporate dumping ‘free trade’ set-up.)
Yep , but the city people can’t see it.