tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/national-food-plan-3436/articlesNational Food Plan – The Conversation2015-05-24T20:12:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/418122015-05-24T20:12:49Z2015-05-24T20:12:49ZWhy Aboriginal people need autonomy over their food supply<p>Access to affordable and nutritious food is an ongoing problem in remote Indigenous communities. These areas have an artificially inflated cost of living due to cycles of mining boom and bust, and suffer from a general unavailability of fresh fruit and vegetables and other high-quality foods.</p>
<p>As well as the high cost of living, limited educational outcomes and work opportunities coupled with insufficient social services, including public transport, create chronic economic insecurity for Indigenous residents. Food is often the first thing to go when there is not enough money to pay the bills.</p>
<p>Going without food, or going without nutritious food, has heavy consequences for Indigenous people, as we learnt on a recent research trip to the West Kimberley. Indigenous Australians are already <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4429.0main+features100292009">twice as likely</a> to have a disability or chronic illness as non-Indigenous Australians; poor nutrition compounds these problems, leading to further illness and secondary impairments.</p>
<p>In our interviews, Aboriginal people consistently reported alleviating food insecurity by going crabbing or fishing on traditional lands. Though this accounted for a small portion of total dietary intake, our respondents greatly valued having some control over this part of life. </p>
<p>Yet this may be jeopardised by the policy direction of the state and federal governments.</p>
<h2>Food sovereignty</h2>
<p>Indigenous people living in regions such as the West Kimberley have systematically lost access to their lands and natural resources since colonisation. This loss of traditional hunting and fishing areas has constrained access to nutritious and fresh sources of food, resulting in poor health.</p>
<p>Healthy traditional foods have been replaced by western-style foods that are energy dense, replete with ingredients such as refined sugar and fat. Up to the 1960s, Indigenous people on missions and farms were often paid via rations of the worst nutritional kind: white flour, refined sugar and alcohol. </p>
<p>The outcomes included the most rapid growth rates of disability, chronic illness and physical distress.</p>
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<span class="caption">Rural Indigenous communities face shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/5612099123/">Vinoth Chandar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The common history of colonisation and dispossession is one of the main social determinants of Indigenous health all over the world. One way to address the ongoing impact of colonisation on health outcomes is through self-determination.</p>
<p>But Indigenous food sovereignty relies on access to country and can mitigate chronic food insecurity to some degree. For Aboriginal people in Western Australia, this appears to be coming under threat with the state government’s moves to undermine native title and coerce people off their land.</p>
<h2>Reverting back to the past</h2>
<p>As part of a broader strategy to weaken native title in the state, the Western Australian government is attempting to push through amendments to the <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/wa/consol_act/aha1972164/">Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972</a> that will reduce Aboriginal people’s role in decisions about the preservation of cultural and heritage sites in Western Australia.</p>
<p>The government wants to shift decision-making power over these sites into the hands of the chief executive of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Traditional owners will have no right to appeal, and the chief executive is not obligated to consult them before making decisions.</p>
<p>The federal and state governments also intend to withdraw services to homelands that are no longer considered “viable”. These are located near traditional cultural and heritage sites. Many are subjects of native title or Indigenous Land Use claims and some are proposed sites of future economic development under the government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/national-food-plan-most-australians-are-food-secure-but-can-we-do-more-14682">National Food Plan</a> (NFP) and <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/jscna/report">Pivot North</a>. </p>
<p>In order to claim native title, Indigenous people must be able to prove a continuous connection to land. “Existing use” of land is also a consideration in native title claims. By withdrawing services, governments are effectively pressuring Indigenous people off their lands – breaking their connection to country – and thus making land available for use by other parties.</p>
<p>In addressing the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Kimberley Land Council Chairman Anthony Watson stated that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Indigenous people in Australia are witnessing a discriminatory and race-based erosion of their rights … through the forced closure of Indigenous communities, attempting once again to separate people from their land and culture.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>National food plan</h2>
<p>The clear message in the federal government’s food security policy strategies is that native title enjoyed by Indigenous Australians is one of the main constraints on market-led development and conceptualisations of food security.</p>
<p>The National Food Plan focuses primarily on economic development based on the idea that “Most Australians can afford to buy the food they need and can access safe and nutritious food” and that a “competitive and productive food industry” is needed in order to meet demand from not only Australian but also international consumers.</p>
<p>This policy direction is also clearly highlighted in Pivot North. The federal government proposes to develop the Kimberley region through intensive agricultural and irrigation projects based around the Fitzroy Valley and the La Grange Aquifer, and parts of the East Kimberley near Kununurra.</p>
<p>The report acknowledges that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>any future development of Northern Australia will require the engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, not only as land owners but as participants and potentially partners and leaders in the development process</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, this is not reflected in the proposed solutions. The report highlights that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Almost all of north Western Australia is subject to a native title claim or determination, as is around half of north Queensland and over a third of the Northern Territory.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So native title is seen as one of the key impediments to development.</p>
<p>The report calls for improved land use and access for developers, and in particular for more “efficient native title processes” that speed up decisions and settlement of land access disputes. </p>
<p>These kinds of policies have the potential to significantly impact on Indigenous people’s ability to access traditional food sources and sustain limited forms of food sovereignty.</p>
<p>The majority of food production is already in rural areas, yet increasingly owned and managed by large food production corporations that have little regard, if any, for Indigenous sovereignty.</p>
<p>Indigenous food security is not guaranteed through increasing agricultural production by large-scale transnational corporations. We must continue to focus on local Indigenous food knowledge and practices to advance Indigenous sovereignty of food and country.</p>
<p><strong><em>This article was co-authored by independent researcher and writer Kelly Somers.</em></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Soldatic UNSW Australia. She has received funding from the Australian Research Council (Disability in Rural Australia - Pini, Soldatic, Meekosha, Thomas) and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Rural women with disability in post-conflict zones). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Spurway receives funding from UNSW for continuation of this research project.</span></em></p>Food is often the first thing to go when there is not enough money to pay the bills.Karen Soldatic, National Director of Teaching, UNSW SydneyKim Spurway, Lecturer in Development Studies & Public Policy & Governance, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/146822013-05-29T04:24:13Z2013-05-29T04:24:13ZNational Food Plan: most Australians are food secure, but can we do more?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/24498/original/gr8ydhc5-1369700460.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Does the government's recently released National Food Plan provide for the needs of food insecure and marginalised Australians?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan">National Food Plan</a>, launched on May 25, spelt out the government’s intentions for Australia’s food industry. Several advocacy groups and academics have highlighted the <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-draft-national-food-plan-putting-corporate-hunger-first-8342">flawed assumptions</a> in the plan, the <a href="http://www.foodalliance.org.au/projects/national-food-plan/">business as usual approach</a> and the potential negative health impacts of exporting Australia’s <a href="http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/stories/2013/03/07/the-asian-food-bowl">western diet to our neighbors</a>. </p>
<p>These broader issues deserve attention. But the failure of the plan to fully recognise and respond to the needs of marginalised and food insecure Australians should also be highlighted.</p>
<p>According to food charity organisation FoodBank, <a href="http://www.foodbank.org.au/about-us/faqs/">two million Australians</a> use food relief each year. That’s approximately 8% of Australia’s population unable to satisfy one of the most fundamental human needs on their own terms. Some Australians may be physically unable to prepare food, are socially isolated or may experience unexpected crises. </p>
<p>It is important that there exists a <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=931414576022992;res=IELHSS">food safety net</a> for these situations, and that these services should be nutritious and operated to ensure their clients’ dignity. But this charitable food system was not set up to chronically support people, and yet <a href="http://www.anglicare.asn.au/site/sotf12_notenoughtoeat.php">community organisations</a> report that this is what regularly occurs.</p>
<p>These chronic users are the people that the food and social support systems have failed. Many are receiving social security benefits and would need to spend <a href="http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30024899">40% of their income</a> on food if they want to eat a healthy diet (most people spend 17%). </p>
<p>These Australians are marginalised, and may live in cities or in regional or remote communities. They could be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, they could be new migrants, low-income families, pensioners, university students or people who are homeless. As many consumers have only two supermarket choices for where to purchase food, once these options are exhausted, there are not enough low-cost alternative buffers before charity must be used.</p>
<p>These Australians are <a href="http://www.anglicare.asn.au/site/sotf12_notenoughtoeat.php">emotionally and physically scarred</a> from budgeting for food, asking charities for help, eating poor food and skipping meals altogether. They are more likely to be at risk of diet related disease and poor mental health. For their children there are profound <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22199175">developmental consequences</a> of inadequate access to nutritious and affordable food. Food insecurity is both a by-product of and a precursor to poor health and social exclusion. </p>
<p>Australia is likely to see more food insecurity if and when certain phenomena occur, and it is unlikely that our charitable emergency sector will be able to deal with the fall out. If economic trends in America, Canada and Europe happen here; if climate change continues to impact food production and food prices; or if Australia continues to not progress in reducing poverty prevalence and unfairly distributing our common wealth, we are likely to see more food insecurity.</p>
<p>The tenth goal articulated in the National Food Plan is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australia will have built on its high level of food security by continuing to improve access to safe and nutritious food for those living in remote communities or struggling with disadvantage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In order to achieve this, funding for school kitchen gardens and national strategies for nutrition and consumer information will occur. Complementary agendas alongside the plan, like the <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/phd-prevention-np">Agreement on Preventative Health</a>, food security in remote communities and <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/budget2011-flexfund-Indigenous14.htm">Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Chronic Disease Fund</a> are also in progress. This reflects a promising understanding of the various determinants and multi-pronged solutions required for domestic food security. </p>
<p>However, it is feared that the unnumbered “struggling with disadvantage” are still misunderstood by the federal government. The recent rejection to increase social security benefits, the small amount of <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/white-paper/initiatives/community-food-grants">community funding</a> for projects and the absence of community representatives in the National Food Plan working group highlight several areas where not enough is being done at the federal level. </p>
<p>How could goal number ten be achieved? The plan could have expanded on some of the promising policies and tools being used in <a href="http://www.vlga.org.au/Resources/Library/Municipal_Food_Security_Scanning_Report_2010.aspx">local</a> and <a href="http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/siu/strategy/food_for_all_tasmanians_a_food_security_strategy">state government</a>. The emergency food system should have been strengthened. Preventative and innovative community food projects and social enterprises should have been adequately funded. The plan could have named and numbered food insecure Australians and articulated targets for reduced prevalence and severity. </p>
<p>These are just some of the ways to ensure that Australia is a place where the basic human right to food is guaranteed. Food insecurity at home has a sad and unhealthy impact within our community, and more should be done about this. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/14682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Lindberg works part-time for SecondBite, a not for profit food rescue organisation. She receives funding for her PhD from SecondBite and from a Deakin Research Scholarship. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent opinions of SecondBite, Deakin University or any other group. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Lawrence does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The National Food Plan, launched on May 25, spelt out the government’s intentions for Australia’s food industry. Several advocacy groups and academics have highlighted the flawed assumptions in the plan…Rebecca Lindberg, PhD Candidate (Food Policy and Food Security), Deakin UniversityMark Lawrence, Associate Professor in Public Health Nutrition, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112692013-01-07T13:41:33Z2013-01-07T13:41:33ZAustralia can’t feed the world but it can help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19002/original/4ykybsj8-1357526037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The food Australia produces - including wheat - contributes to the diets of 60 million people.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jim Champion</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Food production in Australia is challenging. Why? Because our soils are largely ancient and infertile, and our climate is variable and frequently harsh. Many food producing regions are degraded through soil erosion, acidification and salinity. </p>
<p>But effective application of research, an innovative culture, and low government subsidies have made agriculture a major industry.</p>
<p>Australia currently produces enough food - mostly beef, wheat and dairy - to contribute to the diets of about 60 million people. Australia is a net exporter of food, and exports around <a href="http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/agcstd9abcc002/agcstd9abcc0022011/ACS_2011_1.0.3.pdf">70% of its production</a>.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Value by destination of Australian food exports in 2010-11. Upper chart shows all regions; lower chart shows countries within the key destination region of Asia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABARES (2011)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through food production and the overseas application of Australian agricultural research and expertise, we contribute to the diets of up to 400 million people, mainly in Asia. In addition, we earn over $30 billion annually from food exports. </p>
<p>Food security is an increasingly critical issue, with food prices that are both high and volatile. In October 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s cereal price index was over 2.5 times the value of its <a href="http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/en/">2002-2004 baseline</a>. By 2050, the value of the global food market is projected to increase by over 70%.</p>
<p>In this context, Australia should consider how best to make use of our agricultural expertise to strengthen our farming sector while contributing to regional and global food security.</p>
<h2>Global market for food</h2>
<p>The annual value of global food imports was almost $300 billion in 2007, and this is estimated to grow to over $750 billion by 2050. The greatest growth is expected in Asia, particularly in China.</p>
<p>Overall food consumption will also grow. Projections suggest that demand in China will account for 43% of the global increase in consumption, with India responsible for 13% and the rest of Asia for an additional 15%. The largest growth is likely to be for fruit and vegetables, followed by meat and cereals.</p>
<p>In our main food market China, meat imports will be particularly important. It is expected that as the Chinese population becomes more affluent, the demand for beef and other meats will grow rapidly. There is a significant opportunity for Australia to contribute to meeting the projected increase in global demand for food. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Projected changes in regional and global demand for food between 2007 and 2050.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lineman et al (2012)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The trade environment for food is an important element in strengthening food security. Only a small proportion of global food production is traded. In 2009, 2.5 billion tonnes of cereals were produced worldwide, but only 330 million tonnes or <a href="http://faostat.fao.org/site/291/default.aspx">13% was traded</a>. The traded proportion for rice was less than 4%.</p>
<h2>Food production in Australia</h2>
<p>More than half of Australia’s land area is committed to agricultural activities such as livestock grazing, cropping and horticulture. The largest proportion (46%) of agricultural land is used for grazing of natural vegetation. However, most profits are derived from more intensive cropping and horticultural activities, especially through the use of irrigation.</p>
<p>Australia is a major food exporter and is globally seen as a reliable supplier of high quality food. We are the world’s second largest beef exporter and fourth largest wheat exporter. But as most food is not traded, we account for only a small part of total global production: 2.9% of beef and 3.4% of wheat.</p>
<p>Future increases in food production will be dependent on gains in productivity, which gives an indication of our capacity to harness human and physical resources to generate output growth. For example, we will need to better use limited, and in some cases diminishing, resources such as arable land and water.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Changes in total factor productivity in Australian broadacre agriculture from 1960 to 2008, compared to 1953 baseline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sheng et al. (2011)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Australian agriculture sector has historically experienced relatively strong productivity growth, typically above the average productivity growth in the broader economy. Within the agriculture sector, productivity growth has been particularly high among large or broadacre cropping farms. However, after four decades of over 2% per year average growth in total factor productivity in broadacre agriculture, the last decade has seen a reversal of this trend.</p>
<h2>Increasing our food production</h2>
<p>We have some scope to increase food production by bringing more land into production and by increasing the intensity of farming. However, the amount of land suitable for agricultural production is limited and we are also strongly constrained by access to water and our sensitivity to climate and its variability.</p>
<p>Food production in Australia could be increased mainly through increases in cropping intensity and more efficient use of the available resources. It has been estimated that by 2050, the real value of Australian agrifood production could be almost 80% higher than in 2007, representing an average <a href="http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/Outlook2012/fdi50d9abat001201203/FoodDemand2050TechAnnex_v.1.0.0.pdf">annual increase of 1.3%</a>. The largest increases are expected in beef, wheat and dairy products.</p>
<p>Increases in food production will need to be managed carefully to avoid environmental and social disruption. For example, in Australia we currently produce wheat on around 13 million hectares of land with an average yield of only 1.5 tonnes per hectare. Analysis of our production potential has suggested that about 47 million hectares could be used for wheat production and average yields could grow to 4.4 tonnes per hectare. This suggests Australia could lift wheat production from just under 20 million tonnes to over 200 million tonnes.</p>
<p>However, such an increase would come at a great cost. It would involve massive land clearing, and directing all available land and all water available for irrigation towards wheat production and would reduce our production and export of other types of food. This is unlikely to be an effective way of contributing to food security.</p>
<p>A number of challenges will need to be addressed if we are to sustainably increase food production. These are among the factors being considered as part of the Australian Government’s first ever <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/national-food-plan">National Food Plan</a>.</p>
<h2>Agricultural research and development</h2>
<p>Australian research in agriculture has been highly successful and is well regarded internationally. The standard and quality of research in Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences and their sub-disciplines rated highly in the Excellence in Research for Australia assessment. This research is increasingly linked with research in Asia, South America and Africa.</p>
<p>However, agricultural research spending has been stagnating. Agricultural R&D intensity has fallen from a peak of five per cent of the value of agricultural production in the 1970s, to just above three per cent in 2007.</p>
<p>The decline in Australian broadacre agricultural productivity has been linked to this slowdown in research activity, together with the impacts of a <a href="http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/pe_abares99010542/RR11_4AgricProductivity_LowResREPORT.pdf">changing climate</a>. Support for research is important over long timescales: there is a lag effect from R&D investment to productivity gain, with the effects often continuing beyond 35 years after initial investment. Revitalising investments in agricultural R&D will be crucial to lifting our food output.</p>
<h2>Workforce</h2>
<p>Australian agriculture has an ageing workforce. From 1976 to 2001, the number of farmers aged in their 20s <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/2055.02001?OpenDocument">declined by over 60%</a>. Many individuals are moving from rural Australia to larger regional centres or cities in search of greater work options, better health and education services. This in turn has dramatic effects on the regional skills profile, its labour pool, and the general health and vitality of rural and regional communities.</p>
<p>Also, there is <a href="http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2012/05/health-of-australian-science-report-2/">considerable attrition</a> among university students studying subjects in agriculture. This has implications for the future supply of researchers, scientists and professionals in the field of agriculture.</p>
<h2>Infrastructure</h2>
<p>Infrastructure plays a major role in moving commodities in an efficient and cost-effective manner, and access to adequate infrastructure will be critical in ensuring Australian agriculture remains competitive. Competition for road, rail and port infrastructure leads to difficulties and delays in transport and increases costs, particularly where goods are perishable or live animals are involved. </p>
<p>Optimising usage of our water resources will require substantial improvements in current irrigation schemes. These issues will be particularly important if we explore the opportunities for intensive agricultural production in northern Australia.</p>
<h2>Conclusions</h2>
<p>Australia is a stable producer of food in the world market, and food exports are important to our economy. However, the world population is already over 7 billion and is projected to grow to over 9 billion by 2050. We produce enough food to contribute to the diets of less than 1% of those people, and less than 2% of people living in Asia. </p>
<p>Neither Australia nor any other country can directly act as the “food bowl” of the world or a large, populous region. Our most valuable assets to support food security in our region and the world are our knowledge of agricultural science, and the ingenuity our farmers have used to produce food on a continent fraught with environmental challenges. We are well placed to apply the outcomes of agricultural R&D in Australia and developing countries, across a range of commodities. </p>
<p>Australia may not be directly able to feed Asia or the world. But our know-how in food production has the potential to contribute to the diets of hundreds of millions of people around the globe.</p>
<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>
<p>We thank Dr Kim Ritman, Dr Brian Keating, and Professor Philip Pardey for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the Office of the Chief Scientist’s <a href="http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/OPS5-FoodSecurity-ForWeb-2.pdf">Occasional Paper Series</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Langridge receives funding from The Australian Research Council, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, the South Australian Government, The European Union Framework VII program, several international agriculture aid programs and private sector organisations including Pioneer/DuPont and DOW Agrosciences.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Prasad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Food production in Australia is challenging. Why? Because our soils are largely ancient and infertile, and our climate is variable and frequently harsh. Many food producing regions are degraded through…Peter Langridge, CEO, Australian Centre for Plant Functional GenomicsSimon Prasad, Researcher, Office of the Chief ScientistLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111982012-12-20T19:43:41Z2012-12-20T19:43:41ZEat, think, and be merry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18768/original/d65r76g6-1355716560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Christmas is a time of plenty - but to ensure we keep eating well in the future, it's time to rethink the way we buy and produce food.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barbeque image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As we gather to share a meal with friends and family this festive season, it is the ideal time to reflect on our relationship with food, including our dependence on those who grow it for us.</p>
<p>Australians enjoy one of the safest, most abundant and still relatively affordable food systems in the world.</p>
<p>But we are also are in the midst of an obesity epidemic, related to a high-calorie, low-nutrient diet that is partly due to our cereal-dominated agriculture.</p>
<p>At the same time, many of the farms and food processing businesses supplying our food are struggling to produce a decent return on their investment. </p>
<p>And the natural resources underpinning our food production are under threat from climate change, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and competing claims from mining and other uses.</p>
<p>While these challenges are reasonably well recognised, there is little consensus on how to respond - which is worth reflecting on now, while we still have the time to make better choices for Australia’s food future.</p>
<h2>Planning for feast or famine?</h2>
<p>Among government, academic and industry circles, the most common approach is to support only incremental changes to the way we grow and manage our food production. </p>
<p>But that’s not the only view, with a growing minority calling for much greater, transformative change.</p>
<p>The Australian government is currently developing the first <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/national-food-plan">National Food Plan</a>, examining whether we have the right policies in place to support a sustainable, resilient and globally-competitive food supply.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/2175156/national-food-plan-green-paper-072012.pdf">consultation paper released in July</a> paints a generally rosy picture of Australian food, and the government should be commended for trying to come up with a comprehensive plan on such a vital issue.</p>
<p>However, if the final National Food Plan is similar to the consultation paper, then it looks likely to back the dominant approach, focusing largely on increasing productivity and harnessing market forces to drive greater efficiency and competitiveness. </p>
<p>That kind of thinking is a <a href="http://www.infinityfoods.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Food-security-in-Australia-in-an-era-of-neoliberalism-productivism-and-climate-change.pdf">classic example of neo-liberalism</a>. </p>
<p>If we fail to question that approach, we are taking a huge gamble on our future food security.</p>
<h2>Counting the true costs</h2>
<p>More intensive agricultural practices can often help boost productivity - something that is easy to measure, and is generally assumed to always be a good thing.</p>
<p>But what about the downsides? </p>
<p>Sometimes these downsides can be harder to measure, but they are no less important - for instance, the degradation of the natural resource base, or the loss of community services and ‘social capital’ that can occur as smaller farms are bought up and consolidated into a bigger property.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, under the dominant approach to agriculture policy, such legitimate concerns are often not accounted for.</p>
<p>The obesity epidemic and its associated health costs can also be written-off as a similar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality">“externality”</a>, or a cost that is not fully accounted for, in our current food system.</p>
<h2>Food for the future</h2>
<p>The challenge of global food security has been described as one of the greatest challenges facing humankind.</p>
<p>How we respond to to this challenge will largely determine the future of humanity.</p>
<p>The next few decades between now and 2050 have been described by some as <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html">“the bottleneck”</a>, when human appetites for more of everything will test several global ecological limits.</p>
<p>The interconnected challenges of food and water security, human health, a healthy environment and energy security will require far more integrated responses from government and business.</p>
<p>Just doing more of the same will not be enough to solve the complex, uncertain, and contested challenges of tomorrow.</p>
<h2>Breaking down barriers for action</h2>
<p>This real-world need for an integrated and systemic response is often in direct conflict with the traditional discipline structures so diligently protected in our universities and research organisations.</p>
<p>The challenge of sustainability requires an ‘un-disciplined’ response, including rethinking the role of science and research in our food and agriculture systems.</p>
<p>The starting point for this critical re-evaluation needs to start with what we value.</p>
<p>We need to examine alternatives to the dominant approach of productionist agriculture, focusing on efficiency and competitiveness above all else.</p>
<p>Are there alternative paradigms that might be more sympathetic to nature and rural communities?</p>
<p>One possible alternative is the agrarian vision, summed up so eloquently by American poet, philosopher and farmer, Wendell Berry.</p>
<p>In his recent lecture, <a href="http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture%0Ahttp://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture%0Ahttp://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture">“It All Turns On Affection”</a>, Berry argues for a return to local agricultural economies, based on a deep affection for the land.</p>
<p>In Australia, we need to be talking about the complex issues involved with trying to deliver on the government’s aim of a genuinely <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/green-paper">“sustainable and resilient”</a> food supply.</p>
<h2>Healthier choices</h2>
<p>So as we look forward to another year, let us consider the food on our plates and how we can all become more aware and active in our food choices.</p>
<p>We can do that any time we’re about to buy food, by asking three important questions.</p>
<p>Is this a healthy food choice? What is the environmental footprint of my food choices? And are producers and processors receiving a fair share of my food dollar?</p>
<p>In Australia we really do enjoy a wonderful food supply and we have much to be thankful for.</p>
<p>But we also need to take responsibility for our individual food choices and collectively strive for good, clean and fair food outcomes.</p>
<p>And this Christmas, let’s not forget a toast of appreciation to our farmers. Cheers!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Bellotti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As we gather to share a meal with friends and family this festive season, it is the ideal time to reflect on our relationship with food, including our dependence on those who grow it for us. Australians…Bill Bellotti, Vincent Fairfax Chair in Sustainable Agriculture & Rural Development, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101302012-10-17T19:37:48Z2012-10-17T19:37:48ZAustralia and the global scramble for natural resources<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16618/original/dq55dpry-1350439315.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia is not starving, but we do have major food distribution issues (and diet-driven health problems).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">N Sawyer/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week saw national and international media attention on events unfolding in Parliament House. But another function in that magnificent building was arguably of much greater long-term importance — the Crawford Fund’s annual <a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012.html">Parliamentary Conference</a>, focused on global food security.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012/2012speakers.html">stellar panel</a> of international experts surveyed the key challenge of how best to feed an extra two or three billion people over coming decades.</p>
<p>We heard <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html">from Jonathan Foley</a> that the world probably has enough land, nutrients and water in aggregate. But major distributional and degradation problems need to be fixed if widespread famine and inequity is to be averted.</p>
<p>Recent food price spikes seem likely to recur. Expert consensus is that the era of declining real food prices is over. About 40% of global food is grown not for people, but for animals and for fuel, and of the food produced for humans, up to 40% is wasted. Changing consumption patterns (increasing meat consumption with rising wealth in developing countries) is probably a bigger driver of food insecurity than population growth.</p>
<p>There are real limits to agriculture expanding its footprint, and the “scramble for natural resources” is an apt title. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html">Water, Nitrogen, Phosphorus</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-biodiversity-and-why-does-it-matter-9798">biodiversity loss</a> are major concerns globally, albeit for different reasons.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16626/original/xb8sc9rv-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nearly 40% of global food is grown not for people, but for animals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jed Langdon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As argued by Julian Cribb in the <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6447.htm">Coming Famine</a>, we will have to innovate in a third agricultural revolution if we are to meet global food needs without a major expansion in agriculture’s footprint. Life sciences and ICT offer exciting technological components of new solutions <a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012/2012speakers/rijsberman.html">according to Frank Rijsberman</a>. But integrative tools will be equally important enablers.</p>
<p>Dr Rijsberman, recently of the Google and Gates Foundations and now CEO of the <a href="http://www.cgiar.org/">Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)</a>, argued strongly that investment in agricultural R&D has been shown consistently around the world (as it has <a href="http://lwa.gov.au/products/pn30369">here</a>) to provide great returns on public and private funds.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012/2012speakers/padoch.html">Christine Padoch</a>, Jonathan <a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012/2012speakers/foley.html">Foley</a> and <a href="http://www.crawfordfund.org/conference/conf2012/2012speakers/bai.html">Xuemei Bai</a> reminded us that false dichotomies - urban vs rural; organic vs GM; food vs energy; forested vs cleared lands - are not helpful. With more than half the world’s population now living in cities, we need much more integrated approaches across whole landscapes and regions that seek to optimise for multiple objectives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16639/original/8rwsk49j-1350451085.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Landscape transformation around Shenzen, China. The same view from 1980 …</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Professor Xuemei Bai, Professor of Urban Environment, ANU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16640/original/6vy8yw2t-1350451143.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">… to 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Professor Xuemei Bai, Professor of Urban Environment, ANU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implications for Australia’s National Food Plan</h2>
<p>Having top international food security experts in Parliament House was timely because Australia is finalising its first <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/national-food-plan">National Food Plan</a>.</p>
<p>There is clearly no risk of Australia running out of food, but neither can we aim to <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-place-in-the-global-food-chain-time-to-wise-up-8143">feed the world</a>, or even many of our neighbours.</p>
<p>We too have major food distribution issues and significant diet-driven health problems with obesity and associated chronic illnesses and morbidity.</p>
<p>Our agriculture has always been more exposed than most to climate variability, and now to climate change, water scarcity and rising real prices for energy. We are at the sharp end in managing for climate variability and extreme weather events, and we have long faced more acute water stress than competing food exporting countries.</p>
<h2>Don’t get trapped in silos</h2>
<p>It’s not helpful for Australia to look at food, health, land, water and energy in silos. They are inextricably interconnected. While its high level objectives are sound, the National Food Plan <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/green-paper">Green Paper</a> underplays the inter-dependencies between climate, food, health, water, energy and land.</p>
<p>We need sophisticated land use planning, and integration tools to help us work out how best to “fit” competing land and water uses at national, regional and landscape scales.</p>
<p>Australian agriculture should be a major producer of energy, integrated within farming systems at a paddock and farm scale, and within regional economies at a regional scale. The emphasis should be on renewables, including <a href="http://www.futurefarmonline.com.au/research/new-woody-crops.htm">second-generation biofuels</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16625/original/42p2pqjt-1350446543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Urban food production is a major opportunity to build food literacy in the community.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Valerie Hinojosa</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The urban dimension of food production is critical</h2>
<p>Cities are great magnets, drawing in people, nutrients, water and energy from their rural hinterlands. They often use these resources inefficiently, generating significant waste streams. There is a major urban engineering job to re-plumb and re-wire our cities and <a href="http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/%7Eshuli/PUGEC_02Peri-urban.htm">peri-urban areas</a> to catch waste water and nutrients before they become pollutants, and transform them back into food, water and energy.</p>
<p>Urban and peri-urban food production is a major opportunity to close waste loops. More importantly, it can help us to reconnect urban people with food production — in backyards, <a href="http://www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au/">neighbourhoods</a> and green belts. <a href="http://www.landcareonline.com.au/?page_id=26">Landcare</a> models are applicable here, energised by <a href="http://www.foodconnect.com.au/">links</a> with farmers’ markets and <a href="http://www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au/index.php">schools</a> and facilitated by social media. </p>
<p>This would help in another key long-term objective: to attract talented young people into food producing industries.</p>
<p>If the National Food Plan fails to engage urban dwellers and the health system, a major opportunity to reposition Australian agriculture will have been lost.</p>
<h2>Lead internationally, and nationally</h2>
<p>Australia has much to gain from building on its international reputation for excellence in agricultural research, extension and policy, by being a proactive international player, helping other countries (especially our neighbours) to feed themselves. Strategically, we have much to gain by helping countries in the region to lift their own food production sustainably, exporting our know-how and services.</p>
<p>We can make a bigger difference to regional food security this way than we can by opening up <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/09/23/why-the-coalitions-top-end-dams-and-food-bowl-plan-just-wont-float/">new food bowls</a> in northern Australia.</p>
<p>But only if we are prepared to reinvest in integrated food, water and energy research, development, extension and education here in Australia. The trend of
<a href="https://theconversation.com/part-two-running-dry-the-worrying-repercussions-of-running-down-irrigation-research-8613">declining investment</a> must be turned around sharply.</p>
<p>I’ve argued <a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-rural-research-in-australia-9048">previously</a> that Australia needs purchasing mechanisms for research and
development, education and extension that are broader, more integrated, expert and strategic than our current commodity-specific approach. The Productivity Commission <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/projects/inquiry/rural-research/report">inquiry into rural R&D</a> illustrates how to get there.</p>
<p>The National Food Plan is a great opportunity for the federal government to lead in taking a more integrated approach across these big intersecting issues, play a strategic leadership role as a key investor in agricultural research in the region and beyond, and prepare the country for inevitable challenges ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Campbell has an honorary position on the Northern Territory Committee of the Crawford Fund. In his current role at Charles Darwin University neither he nor his Institute receives funding from any organisation mentioned in this article. The Research Institute for Environment and Livelihoods could however benefit from any sector-wide increase in funding for integrated research across climate, water, energy, food and biodiversity issues. </span></em></p>Last week saw national and international media attention on events unfolding in Parliament House. But another function in that magnificent building was arguably of much greater long-term importance — the…Andrew Campbell, Director, Research Institute for Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91082012-09-11T05:08:30Z2012-09-11T05:08:30ZConfronting corporate power in the food system<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15121/original/pgys9qct-1346905510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Market share: Two companies in Australia control more than half of the country's bread and bakery business.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/looseends</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Federal Government’s current <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-draft-national-food-plan-putting-corporate-hunger-first-8342">national food plan</a> process is heavily dominated by business interests. It is built on flawed assumptions that the market can provide the solutions that our broken food system sorely needs.</p>
<p>Australia’s food system, like the <a href="http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20100305_a-hrc-13-33_agribusiness_en.pdf">food system globally</a> (<a href="https://www.oxfam.org.au/grow/the-grow-report/">see also The GROW Report</a>), is dominated by a handful of corporate players in pursuit of profit. Far from the rhetoric of “free” and “competitive” markets, our food economy is governed by an oligopoly of private interests.</p>
<h2>(Super)market domination</h2>
<p>Concentration of economic power in the Australian agrifood system is probably best understood through the example of the supermarket duopoly of Coles and Woolworths, controlling around <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/coles-woolworths/4064672">80% of retail grocery sales</a>. Lesser-known corporate giants include <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-most-powerful-companies-youve-never-heard-of-cargill-3191">Cargill</a>, the world’s largest grain trader, which became Australia’s largest grain trader when it purchased the privatised Australian Wheat Board in 2011. </p>
<p>Since deregulation of the dairy industry, one multinational food and beverage company, Kirin, controls around 80% of <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/big-supermarkets-gain-fresh-food-market-share-at-the-expense-of-the-small-guys/story-e6frg9if-1226018006708">Australia’s drinking milk market</a>, forcing out farmer-run cooperatives. Two companies, Weston Foods and Goodman Fielder, control more than half of the bread and bakery markets.</p>
<p>Private control of agriculture, food processing and retailing means that decisions about what food is produced, how it is processed and where it is sold are driven by profit motive, and not by human needs. Moreover, the huge market share controlled by the small number of companies that dominate Australia’s food system creates the potential abuse of market power.</p>
<h2>Farmers’ struggle</h2>
<p>Farmers feel this impact of this market power keenly. As suppliers to the two big supermarket chains, and to companies like Kirin in the milk market, farmers are forced to accept lower and lower prices in order to win supply contracts. In the milk sector, farmers are receiving a decreasing proportion of <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=economics_ctte/dairy_industry_09/report/c03.htm">retail revenue</a> since deregulation in the early 2000s. The start of the so-called <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/milk-wars-leave-sour-taste-in-farmers-mouths-20120120-1q9st.html">“Milk Wars”</a> between Coles and Woolworths in early 2011, pushing milk retail prices to $1 per litre, only exacerbates this downward pressure on farmgate prices.</p>
<p>In addition to low prices, farmers are forced to meet exacting standards regarding the appearance of fruit and vegetables, to package and label produce at their own expense, and risk having produce returned at the whim of the retailer. Negotiations between supermarkets and their suppliers are not transparent and the resulting contracts, with no standard terms of trade, provide little consistency for suppliers. At times, suppliers are notified of the prices they will be paid <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/political_economy/downloads/JonesRetailDuopoly&PublicInterest406.pdf">after the sale is completed</a>.</p>
<p>It is not only farmers who suffer as a result of the enormous economic power of the handful of companies that dominate the food system. A survey of hundreds of truck drivers working for Coles earlier this year found that the majority felt pressure to drive above the speed limit in order <a href="http://www.twu.com.au/home/media/major-survey-of-truckies-a-damning-indictment-of-c/">to meet the company’s demands</a>. </p>
<p>Drivers were forced to work for hundreds of unpaid hours per year, waiting in delivery lines, and loading and unloading cargo. Health and safety standards dropped, putting workers’ lives at risk, when the company failed to allow sufficient time for vehicle repairs.</p>
<h2>Need for change</h2>
<p>It is unacceptable that powerful food companies obtain profits by extracting unreasonable concessions from primary producers and workers in the food system. This imbalance of economic power undermines farmer and rural livelihoods, and threatens the future of Australia’s food production industries.</p>
<p>There has been significant discussion in Australia of the power of the supermarket duopoly. The ACCC issued an astonishing <a href="http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml?itemId=838251">report in 2008</a> which pronounced the retail industry sufficiently competitive, despite the two largest retailers controlling, at the time, 70% of grocery sales, 50% of fresh fruit and vegetable sales and 60% of all supermarket stores. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the ACCC did find that some adjustment measures were required, such as lowering barriers to entry for other firms. There has been little progress on this point as Coles and Woolworths have further consolidated their market positions and are refusing to agree to a more “streamlined” process proposed by the ACCC for approving mergers and acquisitions. The retailers are reportedly concerned that the new process will enable the ACCC to block deals and <a href="http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/woolies-accc-at-loggerheads-on-deals/2614834.aspx">limit their growth plans</a>. </p>
<p>Amid many complaints from farmers and other industry stakeholders, the ACCC’s new Chairman has made several attempts to curb the duopolists’ power, including the streamlined approval process for acquisitions. The ACCC has also investigated claims of unconscionable conduct regarding suppliers and misuse of market power regarding private label products. The outcome of these initiatives is yet to be seen. </p>
<p>The national food plan process has been particularly dismissive of concerns regarding the <a href="http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/finance/duopoly-sweet-in-food-policy/2614401.aspx">impact of the duopoly</a>. The government has refused to intervene in the relationships between Coles and Woolworths and their suppliers, preferring to “let the market decide”. </p>
<p>The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance decided in early 2012, after seeking to engage with the government’s flawed food plan process, to initiate the “People’s Food Plan” project. The national food plan fails to provide adequate access to the public for consultation and prioritises the needs of the market over the needs of the people who <a href="http://sydneyfoodfairness.org.au/blog/2012/08/15/the-national-food-plan-green-paper-whose-plan-is-this/">depend on the system</a>. In contrast, the People’s Food Plan questions the dominance of corporate interests and the market-driven nature of the food system, opening the door to the kind of transformative <a href="http://www.foodalliance.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Food-Alliance-National-Food-Plan-Green-Paper-Summary.pdf">change that many are advocating</a>.</p>
<p><em>The People’s Food Plan involves community meetings throughout Australia. At these forums, interested farmers, community activists, food-lovers, students, workers and others will get together to talk about the changes we want to see in our food system. If you are interested and would like to participate in one of these discussion events - you can find out more or contact us at <a href="http://australian.foodsovereigntyalliance.org/blog/2012/08/22/steering-team-for-the-peoples-food-plan/">The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Parfitt is affiliated with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and is a coordinator of the People's Food Plan project.</span></em></p>The Federal Government’s current national food plan process is heavily dominated by business interests. It is built on flawed assumptions that the market can provide the solutions that our broken food…Claire Parfitt, Research student, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83012012-07-26T04:31:53Z2012-07-26T04:31:53ZSplendour in the grass: new approaches to cereal production<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13308/original/ygmxg3kf-1343078049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It would be smarter to use perennial native grasses for cereal grains instead of relying on a handful of farming-intensive annual crops. Shown here is Curly Mitchell grass (Astrebla lappacea), common in northern Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Chivers</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Any investment manager will tell an investor to spread risks, to have a diverse portfolio, to engage with many sectors of the local economy, to invest in other parts of the globe, to hedge your bets, a mix of shares, real estate and cash – we have all heard this advice. And for the most part we agree with it and do our best to abide by it. Yet we do not take the same approach to our own sustenance. Unlike the savvy investor, humans have an unparalleled reliance upon just a few forms of cereal grains. This is of concern given that grains provide the bulk of nutrition to almost all of the world’s billions of people.</p>
<h2>Seeing the limits of the current system</h2>
<p>Before exploring where new value might lie, it is important to understand where the threat to value lies in the current system. Now in most parts of the world we mostly rely on only eight or so species of plants for grains. Given their pervasive nature they are easy to name quickly: wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, oats, barley, rye, and millet. There are a few others that are consumed in smaller quantities, but overall we have a very heavy reliance on this small number of species. Our investment adviser would be telling us that this is too narrow a portfolio and that we should be broadening it to spread risks.</p>
<p>The other notable fact about this short list is that most, if not all, are annual plants. These plants do not persist for more than one season, for the most part remove rather than add carbon to the soil and, as they die each year, they leave the soils free of living green matter. This lack of living matter means that they are unable to absorb rainfall if it falls at that time.</p>
<p>Altogether there are too many eggs in the one basket of annual cereals as the principal source of foods for the world’s billions. These plants require significant investment in terms of time and money. It starts with annual resowing, with all the risks of failure and high costs involved. Repeated cultivation has been shown to remove soil organic matter and so reduce the ability of the soil to host beneficial microflora, to absorb water, to be soft underfoot (remember soft soils? They are a thing of the past in much of Australia), to retain nutrients and to smell and feel good. Anyone digging up soil on dedicated cereal cropping farms in most parts of Australia will, apart from deciding that they need a crow bar to get into the soil, notice the absence of worms and that lack of strong earthy smell. Surely this is not a system that offers the long term benefits that come from healthy soil.</p>
<p>Production of these crops not only strips the soil of essential nutrients that must be replaced or else production will fall, but it also requires the use of selective herbicides to remove weeds. Many of those same weeds are now developing resistance to those chemicals. This implies a need to either use higher doses of the same chemical or change to another chemical and start all over again. In short, total reliance upon annual crops is a one-way street to oblivion. It is a system that can produce grain, but does so at the expense of the soil and of the environment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13307/original/hhk4cwpj-1343078020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Business as usual may not be the best way: wheat crop in Dalby, Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/RaeAllen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Risky business</h2>
<p>Significant risks are found at many stages throughout the growth of the crop. At sowing time inadequate rainfall can reduce stand density and may indeed dictate a repeat sowing. During the growth stage again inadequate rainfall might not allow sufficient plant growth to stimulate reproductive stem formation. Finally at harvest time too much rainfall, ironically, can ruin the crop.</p>
<p>It is also a system reliant upon petroleum for fuel to sow, harvest and manage, for fertilizers to promote growth, for herbicides to control weeds and for insecticides to reduce pests. In a world where crude oil will never be cheap again, and along with that other inputs such as fertilizers, growers of annual crops are continually seeing their costs of production increasing. Perhaps breaking the link between expensive oil and grain production should be at the forefront of 21st century practice?</p>
<h2>Seeing new options through history’s lens</h2>
<p>What we need to do is to look around at other systems and see if they can be used. In Australia we have stunning examples of very long-term grain-food production that had no degrading impact on the environment, that did not require expensive fertilizers or pesticides, and grew without the need for irrigation water to be diverted from river systems. These long term cereal production systems were a feature of Aboriginal-Australian farming systems for thousands of years.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13309/original/8wwddrt6-1343078133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sorghum leiocladum: a long lived perennial sorghum relative found in the eastern half of Australia, in all states except Tasmania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Chivers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not well known that Australian Aborigines used our perennial grasses as grain sources each year for food, usually in the form of a damper, and had well-established methods of production. The region where this was best known was called the Panara by early European anthropologists and extended in a large swathe from the Flinders Range through western New South Wales, north through central and western Queensland, straight through the Northern Territory into the Kimberley and then south into the northern wheat production areas of Western Australia. In the shape of a donut with a bite removed covering the Great Australian Bight, this area covered more than one quarter of the total landmass of Australia. In this huge area Aboriginal Australians kept themselves fed with grains from our perennial grasses and supplemented that basic diet with other bush foods.</p>
<p>The existence of this managed grain production system was novel to the early European explorers, like Sir Thomas Mitchell, who wrote: “In the neighbourhood of our camp the grass had been pulled to a very great extent, and piled in hay-ricks … extending for miles … (that) had evidently been thus laid up by the natives, but for what purpose we could not imagine”. It took later botanists and anthropologists to determine that the Aborigines had been using these ricks (windrows) to ripen the seed, which was then collected, cleaned, stored, and used to make a bread-like damper.</p>
<p>So why do we not look to use the same sort of system for grain production now? Maybe Australian cereal breeders should become more aware of Australian native grasses and the existence of the Panara. Sure, we are not in a shifting hunter-gatherer society any longer, and I am not suggesting we revert to those practices. Rather, I am suggesting that we look at the species that were used by those clever societies and see if they can be adapted to form part of a new production methodology that is more sympathetic with the realities of Australia, and indeed the globe, in the 21st Century.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13306/original/ymyzcgxs-1343078005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Flinders Ranges in South Australia, where Aborigines used native grasses for cereal grain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/kabl1992</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new production system using perennial grasses</h2>
<p>We need to be looking at perennial grasses for our new grain types, not annuals. As it happens, Australia has many suitable grain-production candidates amongst its perennial grasses. It is not the purpose of this essay to discuss the merits of each of the candidates, rather to encourage people to think more broadly about their choice of species and then to look closely at some of the Australian native options and opportunities.</p>
<p>But what would a new production system look like? There are many different models and they will vary from region to region, but I suspect they will have several consistent features. They will be perennial, they will match the rainfall zone and be permanent and persistent pastures in each zone, they will be palatable to domestic stock, they will be harvestable for grain using conventional equipment, and they will have grains that are easy to thresh.</p>
<p>Can you imagine a permanent pasture that also produces a grain crop in those years when the rainfall amount and timing permits? It would also be the pasture that is able to survive the drought that will inevitably occur without the need to resow once the drought breaks. In another area with another grass pasture and crop, it will be the permanent pasture that grows vigorously under the trees, that produces a grain crop at the end of the wet season but still does not compete for moisture during the dry months. It would be a new world of true dual-purpose crops – where farmers have the options to simply graze a paddock or alternatively to graze it for a shorter period and then to let it run up a grain crop. This is a perennial grain-cropping system as it was used in the long-time past but which is still there for the discovery if we are wise enough to look.</p>
<h2>Time to think, time to act</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13310/original/yk7k6n89-1343078207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Channel millet (Echinochloa turneriana): a native of the Channel country across parts of Queensland, NSW, and SA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Chivers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is a low-risk, low-cost system that is sadly not known to most plant breeders. What is horribly clear however is that continuing to invest in breeding of the existing cereal species looking for a variety that might be slightly more drought tolerant means continuing to favour a system that degrades our soils and environment. Is it not time to rethink? Why not be active and systematically collect potential crop plants from around Australia? Why not go to marginal environments and find those native grasses that grow there already to see if they can be adopted for use in modern farming? Why not broaden the thinking of the plant breeders and give them opportunities to be creative in their species selection? It would be to the good of us all.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Chivers owns shares in Native Seeds Pty.Ltd. He has received funding from RIRDC, ARC and Flora Foundation of Australia. </span></em></p>Any investment manager will tell an investor to spread risks, to have a diverse portfolio, to engage with many sectors of the local economy, to invest in other parts of the globe, to hedge your bets, a…Ian Chivers, Adjunct Fellow, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83422012-07-20T04:41:05Z2012-07-20T04:41:05ZThe draft National Food Plan: putting corporate hunger first<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13197/original/t7hj8kk3-1342753820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Time for real change: the Government's new draft National Food Plan puts the interests of big business ahead of health, equity, and food security.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/mermaid99</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Federal Government released on Tuesday the <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/green-paper">green paper for Australia’s first-ever National Food Plan</a>. According to Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, this plan “will ensure Australia has a sustainable, globally competitive, resilient food supply that supports access to nutritious and affordable food”.</p>
<p>Ostensibly, the plan is for the benefit of all Australians, but on closer inspection it is really a plan for large agri-business and retailing corporations. This should surprise no-one, given it was conceived at <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/michael-luscombe-calls-for-food-super-ministry/story-e6frg6n6-1225886388524">the urging of the former Woolworths CEO, Michael Luscombe, for a food “super-ministry”</a> prior to the 2010 Federal Election. The plan’s early development was guided by a corporate-dominated <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/working-group">National Food Policy Working Group</a>, established after that election to “foster a common understanding [between the Government and the food industry] of the industry’s priorities, challenges and future outlook across the supply chain”.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/issues-paper">Issues Paper</a>, released in June 2011, contained 48 questions, half concerning the need to develop a “competitive, productive and efficient food industry”. There was only one question about environmental sustainability. The nature of the “consultation” as a top-down, tightly-controlled process was clear, with the Government setting the parameters of acceptable topics, and corporate representatives having an inside and direct channel to decision-makers. The further liberalisation of trade in food and agriculture, for example, was not a matter on which the Government wanted the opinion of the Australian public; free trade was assumed to be of unquestionable public benefit.</p>
<p>Despite this unpromising trajectory, many members of the community engaged in good faith with the public consultation. <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/nationalfoodplan/process-to-develop/issues-paper/submissions-received">Two hundred and seventy-nine written submissions were received</a>, with several identifying the need for bold and transformative policy changes if Australia was to develop a sustainable food system. Melbourne University’s Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, which produced the ground-breaking <a href="http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com/research/food-supply-scenarios">Food Supply Scenarios</a> report in April 2011, commented that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Substantial, unavoidable and imminent changes in our food supply systems … require fundamental shifts in how we manage land and resources for food production … These potentially non-linear changes mean the past is not necessarily a reliable indicator of the future and care must be taken in avoiding ‘lazy’ assumptions about the possibility of continuing in a business-as-usual trajectory.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately the green paper is largely based on precisely such assumptions. According to the green paper, Australia “has a strong, safe and stable food system” and “Australians enjoy high levels of food security”; our food industry is “resilient and flexible” and we “have one of the best food systems in the world.” The paper focuses on our food industry “seizing new market opportunities”, reflecting the Prime Minister’s recent urging that we become “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/we-can-be-food-bowl-of-asia-pm-20120503-1y1w9.html">the food bowl of Asia</a>”. Last week on The Conversation, Allan Curtis <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-place-in-the-global-food-chain-time-to-wise-up-8143">gently exposed that claim</a> – which underpins much of the green paper – as a frankly preposterous example of wishful thinking.</p>
<p>Here we discuss some of the more significant flawed assumptions of the draft National Food Plan. These tend to be implicit, reflecting an underlying commitment to the free market, free trade, and constantly expanding production - an unavoidable imperative in a capitalist economy.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13192/original/cvvj8x2s-1342751551.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Rainforest Action Network</span></span>
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<h2>Assumption 1: Food insecurity will primarily be met through increased food production</h2>
<p>The green paper makes some concessions to the multidimensionality of food insecurity: poverty, distribution inefficiencies, and political instability are mentioned, for example. Yet the overwhelming message is that more food must be produced, and that such production will, when combined with further liberalising agricultural trade, deal with food insecurity.</p>
<p>When the Food Plan was first announced, it was presented as an effort to “<a href="http://www.alp.org.au/federal-government/news/australia-s-first-ever-national-food-plan---our-fo/">develop a strategy to maximise food production opportunities</a>”. Now the green paper states that the first strategy to ensure Australia’s food security is to “build global competitiveness and productive, resilient industry sectors” positioned to “seize new market opportunities” created by anticipated rising demand.</p>
<p>Yet food insecurity is increasing in a world awash with food. In Australia, conservative estimates indicate that <a href="http://www.aifs.gov.au/cafca/pubs/sheets/ps/ps9.html">around 5% of the population experience food insecurity</a>, although we produce enough food for 60 million people. Globally, the world produces <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-population-reaches-seven-billion&page=3">enough food for 11 billion</a> with a global population of 7 billion, and yet nearly 1 billion people are chronically malnourished, and as much as 40% of food purchased is wasted.</p>
<p>The green paper says little about the fundamental cause of food insecurity: inequality. Hunger – and other related social pathologies, such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mapping-australias-collective-weight-gain-7816">obesity pandemic</a> - are the result of a corporate-controlled food system that distributes resources according to the ability to pay, rather than by need. The over-riding imperative of this system is to generate profits, not to feed people well.</p>
<h2>Assumption 2: The future will look much the same as the past</h2>
<p>The green paper states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>even though Australia’s food supply is secure overall, we cannot be complacent in preparing for natural disasters, adverse weather conditions and other sudden and unexpected events … these events have the potential to temporarily disrupt food production and distribution and could expose some individuals, communities or regions to transient food insecurity</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These transient risks are the only ones identified as explicitly threatening Australia’s food security. The green paper is equivocal about climate change impacts, citing <a href="http://www.daff.gov.au/abares">ABARES</a> models suggesting that agricultural productivity might increase with more rain in some scenarios. This flies in the face of recent detailed assessments by <a href="http://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/otherreports/rainfall.pdf">the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO</a> which confirm a decades-long drying pattern along the east coast, and south-east and south-west regions.</p>
<p>According to the Minister, “Australian inventiveness” will “find the solutions”; and our excess production will emerge unscathed, even enhanced, if only, it would seem, our farmers embrace bio-technology. Yet the <a href="http://www.agassessment.org">world’s leading agricultural scientists and development experts</a>, and the <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/971">United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food</a> have made it clear: we need holistic and systemic change in agriculture. We cannot rely on the same practices that have led us to the current food and resource crises to get us out of them.</p>
<h2>Assumption 3: Farm incomes will be higher when more is produced</h2>
<p>According to the green paper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The real value of world food demand [is expected] to be 77 per cent higher in 2050 than in 2007 … This gives our food sector good prospects over the long term, due to our comparative proximity to Asia … and our existing strengths in commodities such as beef, wheat, dairy, sheep meat and sugar</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The assumption here is that demand growth will outstrip supply, and so there will be a more or less permanent dynamic of increasing returns to Australian producers through higher volumes supplying niche markets in Asia. But any farmer knows that price-taking commodity producers suffer price reductions in a glut. Targeting niche markets, no matter how big they are, is a response to oversupply and price squeezes. In a free and unrestricted market, lower cost producers, quite likely from South America, will target these niches. The consequences will be more of the same for Australian producers - diminishing returns.</p>
<h2>Assumption 4: Food prices adequately embody environmental, health, and social costs</h2>
<p>It’s well known that markets externalise, or socialise, many costs associated with production and consumption. Nowhere is this more true than in the industrialised food system, where the “<a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781849713214/">real costs of cheap food</a>” are exceedingly high, but the green paper, with its relentless focus on the need for a competitive, productive, food industry is seemingly oblivious; the phrase “cheap food” is not mentioned, and at only one point is it acknowledged that fresh food is rising in price faster than unhealthy food.</p>
<p>On the basis of work by Australia’s top scientists, the findings of the <a href="http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2010/12/securing-australia%E2%80%99s-future-pmseic-releases-expert-reports-on-food-security-and-energy-water-carbon-intersections/">Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovations Council Reports of 2010/2011</a> on water, energy, and food security are at odds with the green paper’s predictions about the costs and reliable supply of food. Unlike Scandanavia, Australia has no junk food tax – nor is any proposed in the green paper – which means that food corporations can receive handsome profits, while the taxpayer picks up the hefty healthcare tab of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mapping-australias-collective-weight-gain-7816">obesity pandemic</a>, and our children face <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090319224823.htm">reduced life expectancies</a>.</p>
<h2>Assumption 5: Food corporations and markets will solve the problems of inequity and social justice</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13198/original/mssvddpq-1342754357.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>We’ve noted earlier the central role that Government has signalled for Australia’s food industry in “feeding the world”. Yet by any measure, the food industry has failed to achieve the basic objective of maintaining a healthy population in this country, with current projections showing that nearly 80% of the adult population will be overweight or obese in little over a decade. The principal burden of the associated ill-health falls on lower socio-economic groups. It’s richly ironic that the green paper assigns a major responsibility for redressing this to the corporations who have profited so well from cultivating consumer preferences for unhealthy products:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the food industry has a key role to play in addressing health-related messages and is implementing initiatives to help Australians maintain a balanced diet … The Australian Government will continue to work with the food industry to change the dietary behaviours of Australians</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here as elsewhere, the green paper reads as though the GFC and its continuing reverberations never happened. Its rigid ideological adherence to “market-led solutions” (see below) keeps those companies, who are the principal source of the food system’s social, environmental, and economic dysfunctions, at the helm of the system’s evolution.</p>
<h2>Assumption 6: The free market-based food system is efficient</h2>
<p>According to the green paper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Australian Government’s overall approach to food industry policy is part of a general economic policy approach that aims to foster a flexible economy and a sound and stable business environment … A key objective of the market-based approach is to improve competition and productivity across the economy, allowing resources to gravitate to their most valued use. Competition in domestic industries can, in turn, improve international competitiveness of domestic firms by encouraging improvements in productivity, flexibility, innovation and efficiency</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If free markets are the most efficient economic system known, why is it that, in 1940, the more localised short chain food system <a href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915">produced 2.3 calories of food for one calorie of oil</a>; but, after several decades of “market efficiency dividends”, it now takes <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5045">between 8 and 10 calories</a> of oil – and often much more - to deliver that same calorie of food? What’s worse, in 1940 oil was easily extracted from a few hundred feet at a cost of one barrel of oil to produce 100 barrels. Today the ratio is 1:10, <a href="http://www.reformer.com/ci_20930567/is-peak-oil-dead">dropping to 1:3 for “non-conventional” oil sources</a> such as tar sands and coal seam gas.</p>
<p>In truth, the “market efficiencies” are largely illusory. Cheap and easily accessible oil allowed the industrial food system to flourish, but this era is ending. Oil is an extremely compact and versatile energy source with no simple replacement. Biofuels are one of the market’s responses to the price rises of this dwindling resource (coal seam gas is another); but the corporate rush to produce them, underwritten by state subsidies and targets in the name of the “green economy”, has been identified as a <a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/biofuelsAndWorldHunger.php">chief cause of the mass suffering</a> that occurred in the 2008 food crisis.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/13196/original/8n58sxr9-1342752053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Sterneck</span></span>
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<p>In short, contrary to the Government’s claims, the green paper is a recipe for increasing vulnerability, lack of resilience, and heightened inequality in our food system. A different approach, based on a different set of values and priorities, is required. That is why the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is inviting all concerned members of the public to join us in a participatory and democratic conversation to develop a food system that is truly fit for the challenges of this century.</p>
<p>We look to the the Canadian <a href="http://peoplesfoodpolicy.ca/policy/resetting-table-peoples-food-policy-canada">People’s Food Policy Project</a> and the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/90485799/The-Food-Manifesto">Scottish Food Manifesto</a> as examples of what is possible; and we ask all who think there is more to food policy than meeting the needs of corporations, to join us in the months ahead as we develop a “People’s Food Plan” which will highlight best practice in creating a food system which is sustainable, healthy, and fair.</p>
<p><em>Comments welcome below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Rose is affiliated with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, a not-for-profit association, incorporated in the Australian Capital Territory, whose mission is to work towards fair, diverse and democratic food systems for the benefit of all Australians. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Croft is affiliated with the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, a not-for-profit association, incorporated in the Australian Capital Territory, whose mission is to work towards fair, diverse and democratic food systems for the benefit of all Australians.</span></em></p>The Federal Government released on Tuesday the green paper for Australia’s first-ever National Food Plan. According to Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, this plan “will ensure Australia has a sustainable…Nick Rose, Contract Research Assistant , The University of MelbourneMichael Croft, Postgraduate student, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.