Agmates

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes

Australia is indeed the “Lucky Country”. We are rich not only in our vast agricultural production, but also in Minerals and this is insulating us from four global crisies that are rocking the world.

The world is being rocked by four crisies at once: the global credit crisis; the oil crisis, with the crude price hitting US$112 a barrel; the carbon price crisis in response to global warming; and the food crisis.

Converting grain crops into ethanol instead of food has produced a global food crisis that is worse than the energy crisis, the credit crisis, or the climate change crisis.

Regular Agmates Correspondent Viv Forbes (pictured below at his farm in SE QLD) predicted this in his article “Fuelish Food Policies” published on 31/10/2007.

Nestle, the world’s biggest food and beverage company chairman and chief executive Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said, “If we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 per cent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat. To grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible,” he told the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.

The crazy global enthusiasm for ethanol, to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and curb Carbon emissions will mean by 2020 the world will be putting 400 million tonnes of grain a year into cars - equal to the entire current global rice harvest.

World bank president Robert Zoellick (pictured below congratulating Australian PM Kevin Rudd on signing the Kyoto agreement at the December 2007 Climate Change conference in Bali) said the doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100 million people into poverty. He is calling on World leaders to donate $500 million to meet the shortfall in food for the worlds poorest people which is due to increased food prices.

Food riots & protests have broken out in 10 countries out around the world. People are protesting and rioting in Haiti, Cameroon, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Italy and Egypt among others.

(Pictured below A UN peacekeeper shoots tear gas at protesters near the Haiti national palace in Port-au-Prince)

Half the world’s population still depends on rice and its price has doubled in three years and is still rising. Last week medium quality rice exported from Thailand - a de facto benchmark price - shot to US$795 a tonne, up from US$360 at the end of last year. The price is expected to reach US$1000 a tonne in three months as people who would normally eat wheat based products are turning to rice.

Fertiliser group Incitec Pivot estimates, global cereal stocks are at a record low - down to just 10 weeks production.

Ethanol production is just part of the cause of this crisis. A longer term and more difficult issue to solve is the massive increase in demand for protein - meat, eggs and milk - in developing countries, especially China.

China’s meat consumption has tripled in the past seven years. While global grain production has increased 89 per cent since 1980, production of meat, egg and milk has only increased 6.4, 11.2 and 20.8 times respectively.

It is estimated that global food output must rise by 110 per cent per over the next 40 years to meet demand.

This has to be achieved with surface water available for agriculture contracting due to city demand, arable land area is shrinking, agriculture research is declining, marine harvests are dwindling, and biofuel production is continuing to rise.

The world’s population is now growing at 200,000 per day and it’s all in the developing countries, where there is also a diet switch from grain to protein as a result of rising prosperity.

Our answer to this global challenge here in Australia is to Ban the clearing of any new land for agriculture, declare valuable tropical pastures as weeds to be eradicated, build rain dependent dams on top of highly productive farming land to provide water for urban populations and block our farmers from growing superior yielding GM crops.

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Update 17th April @ 3.55pm

Click here to see a map of where the Food Riots are happening around the world.

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Have Your say!

Do you believe it’s the responsibility of Australian farmers to produce more and better food to help feed the 9 billion people of the planet rather than biofuels?

Leave you comment below or click on the Blue word Comments to bring up the text box to leave your comment.

Senator Barnaby Joyce attended the Wheat Single Desk hearing in Perth on Monday, here’s what he had to say:

“Following Senate Committee hearings in Western Australia this week, it is clear that those pushing for deregulation are not growers but it could be well suggested the push comes from those with a vested interest in their own commercial position.

“In the state whose Senators (WA Liberal Senator Judith Admas) have stated virtually all wheat growers want deregulation, surprise, surprise the Western Australian Farmers Federation, a body that represents the greatest number of wheat farmers, stated that overwhelmingly their growers (about 70%) do not want deregulation.

“If growers do not want deregulation in the East and they do not want it in the West, where does this overwhelming support for deregulation come from? It appears the support for deregulation comes not from growers but from the companies looking to become exporters and entrench themselves as regional based and vertically integrated monopolies.

“The bulk handling companies that currently dominate port infrastructure and up-country storage and handling will now have the opportunity to become exporters and extend their dominance throughout the entire grains industry supply chain, squeezing out competitors and ultimately disadvantaging growers.

“By only looking at port infrastructure, competition can be stifled and growers will have to accept one price from one player in their region and the lack of transparency means that nobody, other than the bulk handler, knows what is in the system and where it is.

“Anchor deliverers, like anchor tenants in shopping malls, get a good price and the premium they receive is more than made up with a discount to other growers. Currently, this legislation leaves the Australian wheat grower with the potential for a closed shop monopoly protected by the accreditation provisions and no transparency in a legislated form to ensure everyone in the Australian grains industry is treated equally and fairly.

“In the same legislative stroke we have made the same mistake as we did in the fuel industry when we repealed the Sites and Franchise Acts, allowing total vertical integration. Now, instead of instead of total control of a market via vertical integration on import, we will create total vertical integration from receival to export and corporations, if they are legally allowed to exploit you for greater profits to the shareholder, not only will, they must.

“CBH in WA has 95% of the receival infrastructure. If housewives are held over a barrel by two supermarket retailers who can manipulate the market because of centralisation where two players hold approximately 80%, imagine how farmers will go in a market where one player has 95% of the receival infrastructure. Likewise, Graincorp and their major shareholder will have a tremendously powerful position in the east and the receival to export corridor will not be broken up by the inclusion of another player.

“Even the Wheat Export Authority, in 2007, found that with all its market power, the AWB monopoly was unable to reduce storage and handling charges.

“As insult to future injury, we lose also one of our greatest marketing advantages as so ably pointed by Alan Tracy of the U.S. Wheat Associates who is overjoyed by the success of the deregulation campaign in Australia.

Now Australian wheat can compete against Australian wheat in the majority of our export markets that have single desk buyers.

“If this legislation is not blocked or significantly changed, the future is the inevitable regional monopolisation and the discriminations to the growers and a financial boon to certain select players as they are delivered a monopoly position by the Federal Government.”

Have Your Say! Do you support government legislation to abolition the Wheat Single Desk Marketing system? Leave your reply in the text box below or Click on the Blue word Comments to leave your reply.

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes;

Was Senator Barnaby Joyce at the same Senate inquiry in Perth on Monday as the West Australian reporter who filed this report? Growers back abolishment of single wheat desk the headline screams. (Click on coloured text to go to that story).

The lead paragraph says - “West Australian wheatgrowers have thrown their support behind the abolition of the single desk wheat marketing system, in stark contrast to eastern states growers.”

If you read Senator Joyce’s article and then read the West Australian article you’d have to think they were at 2 different hearings or if not one of them had succumbed to a mind altering substance.

Is it my imagination or is the West Australian article slightly biased toward the major proponents / beneficiary’s of abolishing of the single desk? Why would the West Australian be trying to convince the populous that WA wheat growers want the Single Desk gone?

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Here’s what some of the Agmate’s had to say about abolishing the single wheat desk last week:

You can see the full text of all the online comments below and more by Clicking Here and scrolling down the page.

Greg Crook WA.

“Farm/ Farmer in the dictionary means “A tract of land used for agriculture or other industry; to cultivate ; to raise livestock,fish etc on a farm “

Nothing about being a bloody hot shot grain trader trying to outsmart the rest of the world and coming a gutser every second time while the grubs ate the back paddock out because he was at the computer all day!”

Jock Munro NSW

“This is a treacherous piece of legislation that hands over the marketing of the Australian wheat crop to foreign multi national interests.

Our single desk marketing system is a credit to our Nation and the three generations of wheat growers who have developed it over 60 years.”

Rowell Walton QLD

” as every farmer knows, every meeting I have ever attended has had hundreds vote to retain our model of marketing, just one percent or less against and here we are with the Labor party about to give us the kinfe, farmers assume the Labor party will, but it was the Labor party which gave us this model, It has been the awful Liberal party which has so underhandedly bought us to this place with their philosophical extremism. “

Jock Munro NSW

“Tony Burke will one day realize that he has been ‘duped’ by trader middlemen and the Liberal Party. Lets hope for wheat growers sake it is in the very near future and he withdraws his treacherous Bill.”

Ben Reece

“The real question free marketers must explain is why major production contraction in 2006/07 compared to 2001/02 could only deliver $4.10 increase in domestic valuation of the unit price for wheat. A deregulated domestic market should have delivered a much higher premium.

It can be inferred from this data that the deregulated domestic market carries all the characteristics necessary for classifications as either market failure or excess capacity in the marketing sector. This needs to be identified and explained by supporters of the deregulation.”

Gary Butcher WA.

“The problem with Senator Judith Adams is that if she has ever been to any of the meetings in WA discussing the retention of single desk then she must have been asleep.

The meetings I attended had an overwhelming majority in favor of retaining single desk (300 for / 6 against Minginew 2007). The Western Australian growers I talk to are not against single desk but are sick of politicians not listening to to what the overwhelming majority has to say.”

Have your say! What are your thoughts? Do you agree with the federal government abolishing the single desk wheat marketing system? Click on the blue word comment below to have your say.