Planning for food security
by Ernie Davitt, National Affairs Editor, ASM
With global consumption of food predicted to double by 2050, food security and protecting the food supply chain are shaping up as the next big issues on the global and national security agendas.
Population growth, the extended drought in large parts of Australia, and warnings that they will be more frequent when the full impact of global warming begins to bite mean governments will have to devote far more resources to ensuring sufficient food is produced.
Add to this a shrinking local and global farm sector, increasing prices for fertilisers needed to grow crops – especially in dry, soil-poor countries like Australia – and rising fuel prices, and the result is a recipe for major geopolitical and humanitarian problems and instability.
Climate change is also predicted to result in a greater number of natural disasters such as tsunamis, rising sea levels and loss of arable land through flooding and permanent inundation. Much of this will impact on the world’s food bowls.
The Australian horticulture organisation, Growcom, has called for a national food security policy in light of the release of the 2010 Intergenerational Report, which predicts an increase in Australia’s population to more than 36 million by 2050.
Growcom Chief Executive Officer Alex Livingstone said the Government’s response to problems outlined in the report had ignored a key requirement – that a larger population will need to be fed.
“There is no national plan in place to guarantee that arable land with suitable water and climatic requirements and adequate infrastructure will be available in the future to guarantee our food supply,” Mr Livingstone said.
His comments were made against the backdrop of statistics which show that Australia’s net imports of foodstuffs now outweigh what is produced locally.
Mr Livingstone said that the Government’s determination to put in place measures to lift productivity in order to grow the economy was admirable but ignored a key consideration of investing in infrastructure that would ensure the population had access to economical, fresh and healthy food supplies.
“It is ironic that the report mentions the Government’s commitment to investing in an improved hospital and health system while ignoring investment in the cheapest form of improving overall health of the population – access to a healthy diet,” he said.
“The report refers to the need for investment in key infrastructure. The Government’s commitment of $3.4 billion to the road network including the major freight route between Melbourne and Cairns is clearly admirable in securing the economic delivery of fresh food to high-density population centres.
“However, the need for all-weather roads throughout regional centres engaged in food production is also vital in delivering fresh food to markets.
“Moreover, the report outlines the Federal Government’s commitment to increased investment in education and skills and in boosting labour force participation through programs to retrain and re-skill mature age participants. Horticulture’s need for a secure and reliable labour supply in the years ahead must not be overlooked in this agenda.”
Mr Livingstone spoke of the vulnerability of food-based agriculture to a variety of threats ranging from pests, floods and drought to war and other conflict, political upheaval, and global and regional economic crises.
He said it was pleasing to see that the Government planned to use a productivity improvement agenda to address the fiscal pressures of an ageing population; however, increased taxation and budget cuts also loomed as a counter-balance on the agenda.
He urged the Government to refrain from increasing the tax burden on productive sectors such as horticulture which was an important source of employment and flow-on economic benefits in regional Australia.
Global issues cannot be ignored
One only has to look at the global security issues associated with the fact that an estimated billion people in the world are already starving and hundreds of millions more will join their ranks if a major extended famine occurs.
On the geopolitical front, China has already started buying agricultural land overseas to feed its 1.3 billion people and Chinese companies have forged a series of farming deals and taken land concessions in countries around southeast Asia and Africa, harvesting palm oil, corn, cassava, sugar cane, eucalyptus, teak, and other crops.
The United Nations and World Bank are forecasting higher food prices for at least the next decade and attribute the current spike in food prices to the failure of global food production to keep pace with growing demand.
The extent to which food security has moved up the international political agenda was highlighted by recent comments from the then UK agriculture minister, Hilary Benn, who announced development of a new food strategy for the UK.
Addressing a farming conference in Oxford before the latest UK election, he said food security was now as important as energy security, and that securing both would have to be a national priority.
Mr Benn said his view of food security changed dramatically in 2008, when a combination of drought, poor harvests and record-high oil prices led to skyrocketing food costs and even riots in parts of the world.
The strategy points out that the British spend more than €190 billion on food and drink annually and the food sector employs 3.5 million people.
Mr Benn said the way food was produced, consumed and disposed of would all have to change over the next two decades in response to climate change, population increases and competition for natural resources, especially oil and water.
He said: “We need to produce more food. We need to do it sustainably. And we need to make sure that what we eat safeguards our health.
“We know that the consequences of the way we produce and consume our food are unsustainable to our planet and to ourselves. There are challenges for everyone involved in the food system, from production right through to managing food waste.
“We know we are at one of those moments in our history where the future of our economy, our environment, and our society will be shaped by the choices we make now.”
While Australia does not have a national food security strategy, a lot of work has been done in relation to protection of the food supply chain. The Food Chain Infrastructure Assurance Advisory Group is one of the nine sector groups belonging to the Federal Government’s Trusted Information Sharing Network for Critical Infrastructure Protection.
The group’s primary aim is to improve the security of Australia’s agriculture and food supply chain in a changing global security environment.
Australia’s existing food safety and security systems and food regulatory arrangements are primarily aimed at preventing and detecting natural or accidental risks. The challenge is to ensure these systems are capable of responding to an increased potential for acts of deliberate and malicious intervention.
In an address to the World Summit on Food Security earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon called the current food crisis “a wake-up call for tomorrow”.
“There can be no food security without climate security,” he said. “If the glaciers of the Himalaya melt, it will affect the livelihoods and survival of three hundred million people in China and up to a billion people throughout Asia.
“Africa’s small farmers, who produce most of the continent’s food and depend mostly on rain, could see harvests drop by 50 per cent by 2020. We must make significant changes to feed ourselves and, most especially, to safeguard the poorest and most vulnerable.”
The Summit resulted in countries agreeing to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture and promote new investment in the sector, to improve governance of global food issues in partnership with relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector, and to proactively face the challenges of climate change to food security.
Closer to home, acting Prime Minister of Vanuatu Serge Vohor told the Pacific Food Summit in late April that food security had been recognised by all Pacific leaders as vitally important to health and development in the Pacific.
“Under review will be the loss of agricultural land, the impact of climate change on food production, dependence on imported food, over-fishing, lifestyle changes and rise of food prices,” he said.
The Deputy Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Feleti Teo, said the 2008 jump in food prices was a wake-up call to countries who relied heavily on imports.
“The vulnerability of the Pacific region has been highlighted by the dramatic increases in food prices seen within the region for past few years,” he said.
“Now more than ever, concerted effort needs to be channelled into food security as lack of and supply of nutritious food and the increasing low quality of some imported foods threatens our Pacific livelihood.”
This article first appeared in Australian Security Magazine, July-August 2010 issue.