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In an article from international news agency Reuters yesterday the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said:

“The world will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people.

Annual cereals output would have to grow by almost one billion tonnes from about 2.1 billion tonnes at present to meet the projected food and feed demand by 2050, the agency said.

Interestingly the report says that Meat production will have to increase by more than 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes in 2050. The Australian Government through its Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme plans to reduce our cattle and sheep populations by 25% to cut methane gas emissions. Thats 28 million cattle down to 21 million and 70 million sheep down to 52 million.

The article goes on to say that the world will need to increase investments in agriculture. The Australian government has massively cut funding to Agricultural research.

The article goes onto say that the world can feed itself by bringing into production 120 million hectares of land in developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Interestingly the report expects Arable land in use in developed countries to fall by some 50 million hectares. This figure is interesting. The Australian government had legislated to take 32 million hectares of arable land out of production and into growing forests as carbon sinks over the next 40 years.

Also interesting is that the Australian government through its national water Buyback scheme is taking up to 50% of our irrigation water out of our Agricultural food bowl the Murray Darling for the environment. The report says global water use for irrigated agriculture is projected to grow by only about 11 percent by 2050.

I’d hope that the UN FOA has calculated in these numbers to its estimates. Australia is one of the top 5 food exporters in the world. Obviously our Government has decided that it is more important to protect our environment than it is to play our part in feeding the people of the world.

I personally believe we as a nation have a greater moral obligation to feed people than we do to save the trees and wildlife habitats.

Apparently our government does not have the same moral priorities as I do.

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Agmates editor Steve Truman

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Federal Water Minister Penny Wong’s water buyback scheme is devastating drought ravaged rural Australia and threatening our national food security.

From todays Sydney Telegraph.

“Once-thriving rural communities are being devastated as farmers sell water rights back to the government to keep the bankers from their doors. Towns are finding themselves without doctors, tradesmen, teachers and with empty shops in their main street as their agricultural roots dry up and labourers, farm hands, shearers, drivers and the farmers themselves give up and leave.”

The water buyback is crippling the economies of small towns such as Warren in NSW.

“NSW farmers have sold almost four times more water than any other state – almost 400,000 megalitres – in what small towns call the “most disastrous scheme ever entered upon by any government”.

Macquarie Food and Fibre Network chair Tony Wass (pictured) fears saving South Australian wetlands will destroy Murray-Darling towns.

“What they are doing is strangling the food source,” he said. “Every farmer in Australia feeds 600 people. There is a lack of recognition of the value of farming.

We’re run by bureaucrats who make us feel unwelcome on our own land.”

Water4Food Association chairman Terry Hogan put it in a global context:

“We need to make our city cousins aware the tsunami coming is not climate change, it’s food security.”

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Local Federal MP John Cobb says:

“Because of the drought, farmers are desperate and the Rudd Government is deliberately taking advantage of the situation.

The Rudd Government has no plan for what it is doing, and won’t have a plan until at least 2011.

Because of the drought all the Rudd Government is buying right now is airspace in dams and the future of regional communities.

Answers in the Senate show the Rudd Government hasn’t spent a cent on irrigation water infrastructure, despite promising over $5.8 billion.

At the same time the Rudd Government is refusing to invest a single cent into guaranteeing the Nation’s food security, it has refused to stop its Labor mates in Victoria from stealing 110,000 megalitres of water out of Murray Darling Basin via a pipeline to Melbourne.”

John Cobb said he held grave concerns not only for future of regional communities, he was also worried about the nations food security and the welfare of many in regional Australia who are struggling to cope with the drought which is now entering its eighth year in some areas.

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Agmates member Eye On The Outback writes:

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This yarn in the SMH is a ripper and sums up the problems facing farmers very well when it comes to perceptions vs reality.

I strongly believe the only way we can turn around the argument is to state the simple fact agriculture is food security – without it you will starve.

Was at a Press Club lunch yesterday (yep am living it up) were Kate Carnell the CEO of the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) was the guest speaker.

The AFGC represents food and grocery processors and manufactures.

She made during her speech a very frightening observation.

At any one time Australia only has enough food and groceries in shops to last 8 – 10 days. If any thing went majorly pear shaped any where along the production and logistical chain this country would go hungry very quickly.

I strongly believe that ‘food security’ is the only way that we can get the message out that farmers are vital and not environmental vandals hell bent on the destruction of the globe.

If it were an easy message to sell it would have been done by now – the biggest problem is there are so many chefs in the kitchen (read farm organisations) that the messages tend to get confused.

Farmers fighting farmers whether it is over water or any other issue is self defeating – we need farmers to unite and unite behind one voice.

I take your point that some SFO’s do not seem to be up to the task but it is pointless to reinvent the wheel – we just need to get farmers politically aware and motivated and off their butts and attending those annoying meetings on a cold winters night.

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Source: Eye On The Outbacks Comment on this forum

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Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:

I’m feeling like Winston Churchill must have felt when Neville Chamberlain was British PM and his and the governments policy of the day was to avoid war by appeasing Adolf Hitler.

I keep banging on about the importance of food security whilst our governments and peak farm organizations over the last 3 decades up to the current orchestrate the greatest routing our primary production industries this nation has ever seen.

A new report just released by the UN says:

By 2030 it is estimated that cereal production must increase by 30% and meat production by 80% to meet the demands of a global population of more than eight billion people.

The report The Vital Ingredient: Chemical science & engineering for sustainable food was released at Britain’s House of Commons by Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Hilary Benn.

Professor Peter Lilford is the chairman of the working group that prepared the report. He said:

The countries that are less technologically advanced and those that rely most heavily on food imports will be the first to suffer. It will be survival of the fittest.

Last year we saw riots in Bangladesh and Morocco because of food shortages.

As I’ve written here, here,  here and here Australia is rapidly heading in exactly that direction. Our Free Trade and environmental policy are crippling our Agriculture industry. We have lost 11,000 family farmers in just the last decade.

We only have 130,000 farmers left feeding a population of 21.5 million and many of those are struggling financially to stay in business. This is what we are doing -

• Tree clearing bans have effectively capped the amount of available arable land,

• carbon sink forests will lock up a further 84 million acres of highly fertile agricultural land over the next four decades,

• the governments environmental water buyback policy will cut agricultural production from the Murray Darling (the nations food bowl) by 50% over the next two decades,

• the emissions trading scheme with force 1,000 of productive food producers who are not in high rainfall areas where they can grow trees for carbon off the land,

• pursuing Free Trade policy is driving our productive farmers off the land.

• The government is slashing funding to Agricultural Research.

Any country that has an abundance of arable agricultural land that winds up not being able to feed itself is indeed the Stupidest nation on earth.

I feel like Winston Churchill (though I don’t delude myself for a nano second that I am even worthy to make such a comparison) warning of something that’s obvious, imminent and a real threat to our nations security, but no one is listening.

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As a nation Australia on whole does not care if in a decade or so we won’t be able to feed ourselves. ‘Food Security’ is the last thing on the mind of the Rudd Labor Government of the general population.

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.

With Tree clearing bans across Australia the amount of arable farming land in Australia has been permanently capped.

Top farming land is being converted to environmental national parks. (i.e Toorale Station).

Carbon Sink Legislation will see 84 million acres of high rainfall (plus 600mm) planted to trees over the next 4 decades

Over the next 40 years Australia will convert a staggering 84 million acres of productive food producing agricultural land into tree plantations to fight climate change. That’s over 6,000 acres a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year for the next 40 years.

The governments water buyback scheme on the nations food bowl the Murray Darling will reduce Agricultural production from the region by up to 50%.

Australia is the worlds number one advocate of free trade. While this policy has been pursued by Labor & Liberal governments over the past 30 years a third of our farmers have left the industry. Meanwhile  all other nations protect their food producers with subsidies.

Here is what other nations are doing:

Around the world, food-poor but cash-rich countries, spooked by last season’s high food prices, are racing to snap up rights to farmland in developing countries and breadbasket nations. They’re aiming to boost their own food security and cash in on what might prove one of the few sound investments left in a world in financial crisis.

• Under a proposed agreement with Kiev, Libya would lease 247,000 acres of Ukraine’s rich black land to grow wheat. The harvest would then be shipped back to Libya, giving the desert nation a more secure supply of food in the face of predictions about higher food prices and potential shortages in decades to come.

• South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics announced last month that it has signed a 99-year lease on 3.2 million acres of land in Madagascar, which it will use to produce corn and palm oil for shipment home.

• China, which already farms more than 100,000 acres of land in Australia, is buying or leasing huge swaths of farmland in the Philippines, Laos, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Uganda, according to Grain, a sustainable-agriculture group based in Spain.

• Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and others — also have locked up millions of acres in Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan and Egypt.

• In the U.S., a similar buy-up of land occurred in the late 1980s when Japan purchased more than half a million acres of farmland in California, Montana, Colorado and Florida. In contrast to the latest rush, however, the main purpose was to raise cattle for Japan’s beef appetite, rather than grain.

However we in Australia are ’smarter’ than all those others wealthy nations. Our environment is more important than our ability to feed ourselves. The argument has always been, well it does not matter, we can always import our food cheaper than we can produce it here.

Figures just out show that the farmers we have left are under continuing financial pressure. More will leave the industry:

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Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:

A month ago to the day I wrote an article asking Is Australia The Stupidest Nation On Earth.

Over the next 40 years Australia will convert a staggering 84 million acres of productive food producing agricultural land into tree plantations to fight climate change. That’s over 6,000 acres a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year for the next 40 years.

That’s the result of the ‘carbon sink’ legislation that the Labor government with the backing of the Liberal party passed into legislation in the Federal Parliament this week.

Today The Australian Newspapers John Stapleton writes – Farms Die for Rudds Trees

CATTLE farmer Neil Graham can see the landscape changing around him as his neighbours sell their properties for plantations, unable to compete against the Rudd Government’s generous tax concessions for forestry companies.”I’m angry,” Mr Graham said. “We’re seeing rural communities lost, schools and services closed down.

“The Government has tunnel vision: they think planting trees will solve everything. Both farms and native vegetation are being replaced by plantations, all driven by federally funded tax schemes. It’s wrong.”

… leading voices predict that dozens, if not hundreds, of rural communities will disappear.

The Australian Greens and The National Party in the Senate vigorously opposed the Labor Parties ‘carbon sink’ legislation but it passed with the support of the Liberals.

Nationals Leader in the Senate Barnaby Joyce said:

“We’re taking out the capacity of Australia to feed itself or to export food products,” he said.

Greens Senator Christine Milne is scathing in her criticism:

“Labor are talking about changing the entire face of rural Australia,” she said. “From northwest Tasmania to the Northern Territory, rural communities have suffered because the Government decided to give a greater tax advantage to Collins Street investors than to people who are trying to make their living from the land.

Rural Australia will revolt.”

Well no it won’t revolt Christine. Not when you have clowns running the supposed farmers peak lobby group the National Farmers Federation.

That’s right the very organization that is meant to be lobbying for farmers best interest did not lift a finger to oppose the legislation. I can tell you that I have been contacted by a number of major players within the rural industry who believe the entire board of the NFF should resign or be sack over this very issue.

It is outrageous that whilst the NFF was sitting mute on it’s hands that the four National Party Senators were virtually splitting the coalition in crossing the floor and vote against it.

What in the hell was Malcolm Turnbull and the entire Liberal party thinking when they voted for this legislation. As I wrote at the time:

If Malcolm Turnbull & his Liberal Front Bench are not capable of doing that as this weeks events have shown, then either the coalition is finished our they need to find another leader who understands that there is more to life in Australia than the Latte drinking, metro sexual Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

After having the numbers to block the ‘carbon sink’ legislation and the appropriation of the $2 billion dollar bush telecommunications fund and choosing not to, the conservative voters of rural and regional Australia can never again trust Malcolm Turnbull as a coalition leader.

You can tell I’m bloody angry about the way that theses people (Labor, Liberal and NFF) have  sacrificed rural and regional Australians once again at the alter of political expediency and indifference. This has to be stopped whilst we still have a viable farming industry, not to mention rural & regional communities.

Yes we are indeed doing a fine job of  proving ourselves to be the stupidest nation on Earth.

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Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

Over the next 40 years Australia will convert a staggering 84 million acres of productive food producing agricultural land into tree plantations to fight climate change. That’s over 6,000 acres a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year for the next 40 years.

That’s the result of the ‘carbon sink’ legislation that the Labor government with the backing of the Liberal party passed into legislation in the Federal Parliament this week.

In the face of Global Food shortages this policy is at best stupidity, at worse it’s a crime against humanity.

If Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal party had not supported Labor this legislation would not have passed as it was opposed by the Nationals, The Australian Greens, Family First Senator Steve Fielding and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

Rural & Regional Australia holds Malcolm Turnbull personally responsible for this appalling outcome. He had the numbers to stop it, but chose not to. We won’t forget that come the next election. Liberal or Labor have consistently demonstrated that they care nothing for the people who live outside of the Australian capital cities.

TURNING tens of millions of hectares of prime agricultural land into carbon sink forests to fight climate change would dramatically increase food costs, destroy rural communities and take substantial amounts of water out of Australian river systems.

The ‘carbon sink’ legislation just demonstrates that both the major political party’s, Labor and Liberal only govern Australia for those that live in the Capital cities.It is only the minor parties, The Nationals, The Greens, Family First and the independent Nick Xenophon who stand up for rural and regional Australians.

Head of the Australian Farm Institute Mick Keogh [pictured] said:

By altering land use patterns and locking up millions of hectares in carbon sinks, rural Australia is being made the “sacrificial lamb” for Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading system.

“The resulting reduction in farm output would have a significant impact on food prices, as well as major socio-economic impacts. This is the dark underside of the glossy and optimistic conclusions about the potential costs of an ETS.”

The National Party Senate leader Barnaby Joyce [pictured below] who defied Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull to lead his Senate team across the floor to vote against the legislation said:

The law was “completely mad – akin to an art movie. You don’t know whether to be shocked or to laugh. It is outrageous when the major threat to rural communities is not the international economy but domestic tax policy”.

The Australian Greens also voted against the Bill. Tasmanian Senator Christine Milne [pictured] said:

the Prime Minister must explain to the people of regional Australia “why he is determined to drive them off the land and further undermine the viability of their communities with another tax rort for plantations dressed up as climate change policy”.

Gippsland Farmer Robert Belcher, chairman of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia [pictured below] said :

“As soon as you take a farm, you take a family, you take kids out of school, money out of the local community,” he said.

“We have had to work really hard to get the average punter to realize he’s been duded.”

Size of Agricultural land to be turned into carbon sink forests (source: ABARE)

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Professor Julian Cribb writes:

World food security, as Australian consumers and others are fast discovering, is at its lowest in half a century. The precipitous fall in world food stocks in the past seven years is forewarning of what we can expect in the next few decades as civilisation runs low on water, arable land, nutrients and technology, as marine catches collapse, as biofuels grow and energy costs rise, and as droughts intensify under climate change.

The chart of grain stocks reveals that, year on year, humanity now consumes more food than it produces.

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Watch Professor Julian Cribb giving his full speech on The Global farm Crisis at the 2008 National Agrifood Conference. If your net speed is so slow you can’t watch it you can read it online here.

Julian Cribb is an agricultural journalist and science communicator.

(thanks to Agmates reader Sally)

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Australian farmers expressing their concerns about GM Canola Contamination.

“We all thought this crop would not be going into the food system, but obviously it is,” says Australian farmer Juliet McFarlane.

In 2008, the first genetically engineered (GE) crops were harvested in Australia, and already there is evidence of GE seed contamination.

Australian farmers explain the threats GE crops pose for non GM farmers.

If you are concerned about this you can sign a petition at the Truefood / Our Right To Know web site.

The petition states:

Dear Minister,

We, the undersigned, call on the Federal Government, to keep its promises and to protect public health and consumer choice by introducing, and strictly enforcing, legislation to ensure that:

• GM crops are only approved if they are proven to be safe ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ using evidence from independent, long-term, published studies -- measuring indicators relevant to human health.
• All GM foods are clearly labelled, including highly processed products such as oils, starches and sugars from GM crops; and meat, milk, cheese and eggs from animals fed GM feed.

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Three decades ago before world leaders including the Australian and New Zealand governments embraced global free trade most developing nations produced enough food to feed themselves. After three decades of pursuing global free trade, today 70% of developing countries are net food importers.

Robert Weissman [pictured] is co-director of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group based in Washington, D.C. that focuses especially on international issues.

He is also editor of Multinational Monitor magazine and writes this terrific explanation of what three decades of ‘free trade’ has done to the worlds food security.

Visit Roberts excellent site Multinational Monitor.

The world’s food system is broken.

Or, more accurately, the giant food companies and their allies in the U.S. and other rich country governments, and at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, broke it.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries produced enough food to feed themselves. Now, 70 percent are net food importers.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries had in place mechanisms aimed at maintaining a relatively constant price for food commodities. Tariffs on imports protected local farmers from fluctuations in global food prices.

Government-run grain purchasing boards paid above-market prices for farm goods when prices were low, and required farmers to sell below-market when prices were high. The idea was to give farmers some certainty over price, and to keep food affordable for consumers. Governments also provided a wide set of support services for farmers, giving them advice on new crop and growing technologies and, in some countries, helping set up cooperative structures.

This was not a perfect system by any means, but it looks pretty good in retrospect.

Over the last three decades, the system was completely abandoned, in country after country. It was replaced by a multinational-dominated, globally integrated food system, in which the World Bank and other institutions coerced countries into opening their markets to cheap food imports from rich countries and re-orienting their agricultural systems to grow food for rich consumers abroad.

Proponents said the new system was a “free market” approach, but in reality it traded one set of government interventions for another – a new set of rules that gave enhanced power to a handful of global grain trading companies like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, as well as to seed and fertilizer corporations.

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