[Peakoil] SMH opinion on food security

[Trent Smith]

Correct - food security is here to stay, even for Australia.

 

Our agricultural surplus will continue to decline, simply due to expanding domestic consumption, also if modelling is correct also through increasing drought in the "wheat belt".  Some scope exists for tropical products to increase, but limited to intensive horticulture, not broad acre crops.

 

We will certainly increase our imports - as a rich developed nation, we can afford to do so eg cherries, oranges from US, Pears from China.

 

There is nothing "wrong" with exporting expensive high quality produce, and then importing cheap food eg that is what we do with seafood, send our quality lobsters, abalone, crabs, prawns to Asia - import farmed prawns from Vietnam, fish (Basra), and keep the "small" inferior lobsters for home consumption eg $16.00 bucks at Woolies for Xmas.


The reality is that it is our dirty coal, iron ore, LNG, and other mineral exports that will pay for our way in the world - not agriculture, now down to less than 10% of our economy in size.  

 

Cheers

 

Trent

 

 
> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:49:02 +1100
> From: evfit at quokka.ace-hosting.com.au
> To: alex-po at trevbus.org
> CC: peakoil at act-peakoil.org
> Subject: Re: [Peakoil] SMH opinion on food security
> 
> Thanks for posting this, Alex. It's great to have constant reminders that
> cheap oil underwrites so much of our life and that proposals for electric
> cars and light rail "just don't get it".
> 
> There is so much more that I could say, but will spare the preaching
> except for commenting on just one observation:
> 
> > If Australia's population keeps growing at a rate of 1.2 million people
> > every three years, and the Murray-Darling Basin continues to degrade, and
> > the arid zone continues to expand, and cheap imported food continues to
> > out-compete local product, Australia will become a net importer of food
> > sooner rather than later. Hard to imagine, but inevitable on present
> > trends.
> >
> No, IMPOSSIBLE to imagine. By the time Australia reaches the situation
> described above, there'll be no other nation with a surplus of good food
> available for Australia to import. We're it, folks - this generation is
> the one that has to solve this problem.
> 
> Keith
> 
> 
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