The current global food “crisis” is not so much a consequence of natural resource constraints as it is a consequence of poor food policy decisions by government. That’s the headline in an article by Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, published on Monday by On Line Opinion.
I tend to agree with Mick.
The bottom line is that governments in Europe and North America, as Mick explains, have very actively discouraged agricultural production over recent decades by converting arable land into conservation areas. According to Mick, the USA has 16 million hectares of crop land (almost two thirds of Australia’s total crop area) in Conservation Reserve.
In Australia, the bans on tree clearing, but in particular the purchase of water allocation from irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin, is going to significantly impact on our potential to produce food in the longer term. Indeed while the Murray Darling Basin has historically received only 6 percent of Australia’s annual rainfall, it has produced 40 percent of Australia’s food. This is where we have concentrated the national investment in water infrastructure.
Mick suggests that the imminent introduction of greenhouse emission mitigation policies in Australia and New Zealand also has the potential to adversely impact global agricultural capacity by converting agricultural land to permanent carbon sink forests.
I thought this had already occurred to some existent in Australia, with the bans on broad scale tree clearing in our rangelands? But Mick is perhaps referring to new Blue Gum and pine plantations. Does anyone have any figures on areas likely to be converted from agriculture to this type of forestry?
Mick also mentions the lack of investment in agricultural research and development, government policies mandating the use of food crops for fuel production and policies that restrict trade.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Isn’t the omly hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our duty to bring that about?
Maurice Strong Chairman of the Council of the United Nations for the University of Peace and architect of the Kyoto Protocol.
Given that almost all of the world’s government bureaucracies are comprised of left-leaning statists, I would not underestimate their ability to bring the collapse of our western civilisation with these idiotic policies.
Government intervention never produces useful outcomes, only varying degrees of catastrophes.
There is another game in play and it’s using climate change as the smokescreen.
Well put Louis!
Thank you Paul!
Appreciated.
“”Isn’t the omly hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our duty to bring that about?” I have never seen a strawman so comprehensively beaten. A shame he couldn’t fight back.
Yes there is likely to be very large scale carbon tree planting in Australia. It is allready happening in NSW, but not on a huge scale yet. Tree sequestration does depend on tree planting qualifying for carbon credits. So long as the trees are fairly long lived species and there is an undertaking not to cut them for 100yesrs, it probably will be allowed – but this isn’t certain. It is likely to only apply to land that was cleared prior to 1990.
The cost of carbon sequestration is well under $10 tonne based on wheat belt land prices in NSW
Land price is one main variable, along with tree growth rate per hectare, (which is driven mainly by rainfall).
If the carbon price is high enough for long enough it could result in the entire wheat belt becoming a Mallee forest. Irrigation country would be too expensive.
(Of course in this scenario the price of wheat will just go up and up and up. No reason the same thing won’t happen across America, Poland, Ukraine – assuming they all sign up for carbon trading. Canada might be a bit cold for tree growth to be fast enough to be economic?
If you think Biofuels is a debacle, you have seen nothing yet! At least the farmers will be laughing all the way to the bank.
The creation of carbon sinks gobbling up valuable cleared agricultural land will be looked at back in time as idiotic and illogical. Given we live in a carbon constrained world, the only reason you would plant trees that do not produce food is to harvest biomass for mobilisation into energy streams. Google search ‘biomass’ and check out the number of biomass fired power plants that are coming on-stream around the world. Then you have the ability to produce biogas or cellulosic ethanol. But planting trees and signing up to 100 year carbon sink contracts where you can’t touch the trees is simply crazy! If I could short these carbon sink companies I would …
Now I know the argument is you plant malles because you can’t grow wheat. However we need to be planting trees that yield food and any sequestration is a bonus and essential part of the ‘organic infrastructure’. There are many tree crops out there that are native and food productive but my favourite is the Australian sandalwood which produces an oilseed in the yield range of about 200-500kg/ha. Legume based too.
Hyperinflating oil prices translate to increase usage of food for fuel whether there are subsidies or not. Food is too cheap!
Aaron,
The game in play is to reduce the human population and it seems starvation is the means. Not us, but the poorer developing peoples.
Notice how the Luke Club are strangely silent on this?
The world population is overtaking the food production needed to feed it. It has gone so far that the worlds governments can now do nothing to prevent the starvation of the people in the poorest countries who will not be able to aford the food.
Millions will starve to death the only thing which will prevent it is millions dieing from something else.
Much of the disruption in government policies is the result of efforts by Friends of the Earth, HIVOS, and other groups which receive tens of millions of Euros annually from the governments of the European Union, and from the European Commission itself.
These groups then work, through national affiliates in over 140 countries worldwide, to establish protectionist trade policies.
If the European Union quit spending money on groups that lobby foreign governments, many of these bad policies would go away.
I agree about government policy impacting our ability to produce food, but it is a bit deeper than the basics.
Australia has about the largest fishery in the world per capita, but restrictions and quotas on catch mean that we import about 80% of all the seafood that we eat. Walter says that restrictions on bag limits in the Great barrier Reef area mean that we can only take 4kg per square km, whereas the international standard for sustainable fishing in a reef area is 4000 kg per square km, 1,000 times. So we buy our seafood from developing countries to such an extent that we severely impact their ability to feed themselves.
Government tax incentives have meant that large tracts of good agricultural land have been taken of by forestry. This reduces agricultual production, largely because govrnments will not permit sustainable harvesting of our native forests.
We have a pretty vigorous bio-fuels industry which has been going for quit a long time, and there is pressure to mandate ethanol percentage content of petrol. Most if not all of this ethanol is produced from sugar, restricting this source of food onto the world market.
Putting this all together, we are probably having as big an impact per capita on food production restrictions as any country in the world.
But it is much easier to salve the conscience and point the finger at the Americans.