Farm debt in Australia has increased by almost 75% over the past decade, from A$40.3 billion in 2004 to an estimated A$70 billion in 2014. Barnaby Joyce, the Federal Minister for Agriculture, has argued…
Greater diversity of insects, you say? Sounds like lunch.
Ariefrahman
Organic farming is a trade off: it prohibits the use of certain chemicals and inorganic fertilisers, which usually results in lower yields, and hence higher prices. With arguments about health benefits…
Wheat fields in central New South Wales.
Sam Ilić/Flickr
Should Australia aim to become Asia’s “food bowl”? How can we help farmers earn more for what they produce? And how can Australia best contribute to global food security? Those are some of the crucial…
The Ruby Jo coal seam gas central processing plant, near Chinchilla in Queensland’s Surat Basin, October 2013.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Why would young Australians buck international trends and move to the country? According to our research, a growing youth population has been observed in coal seam gas (CSG) development areas within the…
Moving from cooperative to corporation could lure foreign investment for grain marketing group CBH, funding its aggressive expansion plans.
AAP/Dan Peled
Long a favoured model for Australian farmers operating in a risky and precarious industry, cooperatives seem increasingly anachronistic as greater numbers move toward demutualisation. This is a mistake…
More appealing and often more effective than concrete flood barriers.
John Haynes
For the second winter running the UK has been hit by widespread flooding, accompanied by agonised debates over whether government is really committed to adequate spending on flood defence. Largely overlooked…
We need more, but more of what? Perhaps not this.
David Giles/PA
Resource-intensive agriculture, despite its productivity, nevertheless has failed to feed the world’s current population, never mind the nine billion people expected by 2050. This system that currently…
Saving seeds can protect us from future calamities.
Simone Cottrell/AAP
In 1926, just outside of St Petersburg in Russia, botanist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov set up the Pavlovsk Experimental Station. It was one of the world’s first “seed banks”. The term “seed bank” or…
“No” doesn’t really cover the nuances of the GM debate.
Darko Vojinovic/AP
In the polarised and fractious debate over the use of genetic modification in agriculture, few issues have raised hackles as much as the proposed use of genetic use restriction techniques (GURT), more…
People should not be hungry with the food, resources, and technology at our disposal.
PA
How much would you pay for staying alive? How much would you pay for breathing pure air? That may seem a silly question since air is everywhere, accessible to all. Air is a global public good, part of…
Habitation of outer space needs solving air, water, energy and food supplies within a tight space. And this isn’t a problem of an apocalyptic, remote future. Developing this technology addresses some of…
Insect predators such as this ladybird can control pests just as well as pesticides.
Nancy Schellhorn
More than A$17 billion worth of crops grown in Australia annually is attributed to agricultural pesticides. That’s a staggering 68% of the A$26 billion industry, according to a recent Deloitte report commissioned…
Instead of developing a northern foodbowl to feed our neighbours, Australia could help them feed themselves.
Neils Photography/Flickr
A nation that destroys its soils, destroys itself — Franklin Roosevelt It is a worthy objective to sell more food to Asia, but we should not conflate pursuing export income with improving regional food…
Profits drive the industry, not sustainability.
naturalengland
The arguments for increasing food demand are well publicised and well understood. By the middle of this century, the planet’s population will top nine billion, presenting a third more mouths to feed. Much…
Last week, video footage of animal cruelty kicked off yet another live export controversy. The footage appeared to show not just confronting and inappropriate animal treatment, but the likely movement…
Close to 90% of Australia’s farmland remains locally owned.
Flickr: Cha222
Why do we clamour to keep foreign-owned car makers here, paying them billions of dollars to stay, while being wary of foreign investment in farms? Around 0.1% of foreign investment last year was in agriculture…
Golden rice, texture like sun.
International Rice Research Institute
Recently Zac Goldsmith MP – a former editor of The Ecologist, no less – branded the views of Environment Secretary Owen Patterson as “grotesque” after the minister called anti-GM campaigners “wicked…
Food eco-labelling should be standardised or farmers will suffer.
John Keogh
Australia has seen a boom in eco-labelling: more than 50 different organisations were eco-certifying products in 2010. Queensland National Senator Boswell calls it green-mail, forcing food producers to…
Managing Director, Triple Helix Consulting; Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Professorial Fellow, ANU Fenner School for the Environment and Society, Australian National University