ABC News: Food security in Australia

Animations appear behind the presenter to illustrate the figures he cites

PRESENTER

Australia is one of the most food-secure nations in the world. On aggregate, we produce enough to feed the nation nearly three times over. In 2010-2011, we exported just over $27 billion worth of food. The top five items - wheat, meat, dairy, wine and seafood, and they accounted for nearly three quarters of the food we sent overseas. Coming the other way was $10.6 billion worth, much of it processed food, seafood, fruit and veg, soft drinks and dairy. 2.2% of the world's exported processed food comes from Australia. In 2011, trade of processed and unprocessed food was worth $28.2 billion. That's less than 2% of gross domestic product. However, food producers employ 15% of the population. Farming and agriculture account for nearly two thirds of the nation's land - more than half of Australia is grazing country. Another quarter is desert, and just 6% of the nation is classified as suitable for growing crops. Nevertheless, that's 460,000km sq, which is nearly twice the size of the entire United Kingdom. Much of Australia's land is naturally infertile and lacking in phosphorus and nitrogen - two of the key building blocks plants need to grow. Water is so scarce in some areas that, combined with traditional farming practices, even arable land is becoming more salty and acidic - hostile conditions for crops. Extreme weather events mean bushfires, floods and windstorms are eroding valuable, nutrient-rich topsoil. The strain is also being felt at sea. At least one fifth of the nation's waters are classified by the Bureau of Statistics as being overfished. However, look inside the nation's bins and rubbish dumps, and you might not know that food was such a valuable commodity. We throw out close to 8 million tonnes of food waste each year. According to the Department of Environment, that's about 361kg per person per year. And while we revel in the nation's abundance, other countries want a piece of it. A recent run of foreign takeovers has raised concern about the nation's food security, prompting the Government to set up a register of foreign-owned farmland. What figures the Government has collected suggest there's nothing to worry about. It shows 89% of the Australia's agricultural land and 99% of agricultural businesses are entirely Australian-owned, and that the figures are similar to 30 years ago. Whatever the constraints or concerns, some believe there's no cause for alarm, because science and technology will come to the rescue. Researchers at the CSIRO have been instrumental in developing drought and salt-tolerant crops. They're using stem cell transfers to produce high-yielding varieties of beef. They've made vaccines for disease-prone fish bred in farms and tanks. They've even used DNA technology to produce prawns with just the right colour and taste. But some remain unconvinced about the safety of the ethics of substantial scientific intervention in food production. Demand for organic produce is, according to government figures, growing at 20% to 30% per year. At the heart of all of this is the desire to have control of where, how, and in what quantities our food is produced, and how profitable it is. Are the effort and expense worth it? Well, we only need to look at the nations caught up in the Arab Spring. Rising food prices in the Middle East and North Africa have been a huge factor in the political upheaval, and with the world population rising from 7 billion today to 9 billion by 2050, maintaining food security will be an inescapable challenge of the future.