No one in Government seems worried about where the world will source its food or the consequences of shortages. Few are concerned about land being bought by overseas interests, about farmers being driven from the land by low farm gate prices and trade rules which discriminate against Australian growers.
(snip)
This country needs a food security plan and it needs it now.
We must produce food for ourselves and export to help meet global demand or risk having others take from us our capacity to do so because we were too slow to realise what was happening.
It is not enough for the Australian government to keep on talking up free trade and WTO rules. That era effectively ended with the food riots in 2007-2008 as a result of climate change, peak oil, the rush to biofuels and global population growth. Importing countries lost faith in trade rules when food exporting countries like Russia, Argentina and Vietnam limited or banned the export of wheat and rice so as to feed their own people.
(snip)
In Australia, Chinese interests are looking at buying dairy farms in Tasmania and controlling interests in sugar mills in Queensland. It is impossible to find out how many hectares of Australian farm land has already been bought because the Foreign Investment Review Board does not keep track. How can we plan for food security if we do not even collect relevant information?
In a desert nation like Australia, it is madness to sell off the farm and its water or to undervalue the skills of our food growers and researchers. Our children will never forgive us if we become tenant farmers in our own country.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2964631.htm
Pretty good bit of doom there for what I think is a mainstream Australian outlet. They even mention peak oil.
I've put this in the Aussie / Kiwi forum, though I come at it from an American perspective -- I've heard about the Chinese buying up farmland in Africa, and now I guess they're buying it up in Oz too. So what's next, Chinese owned farms in the US, growing food to feed Chinese people?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for exporting excess food to China. I'm just not comfortable with China actually owning our farmland. Their strategy is very clear here, they're buying up resources around the world that they don't have at home. So when push comes to shove, who do you think a Chinese owned farm in Australia or the US is going to feed?
There's a cliche from the 1950's, where mothers would tell their kids to "eat all your food, think about the starving kids in China." How ironic that in the future, the US and Australia may be like Ireland during the potato famine -- people starving, while their farm produce is shipped offshore.
It's not just Oz, the cooking shows are a fad over here too. The irony though is that all this interest in cooking is leading people to culinary school, but the fact remains that cooking jobs are damn hard work for very low wages. There's also no stability and poor or nonexistent benefits. And on top of all that, in the US anyone getting into this field has to compete with illegal immigrants who work for the lowest wage possible, work hard, and never complain (a boss's dream, they can't complain if they don't speak English eh?).
