Food & Farming

Hi Jennifer,

750 hectares of the nation’s most significant waterbird breeding habitats has allegedly been cleared by a Moree farmer.

News sources, including ABC Online, are suggesting that the case may turn out to be one of the worst since legislation was introduced in 2003 to protect native vegetation

Aerial shots of the clearing have been broadcast on national television with both state and Federal Ministers weighing in. NSW Environment Minister Phil Koperberg said his department is investigating and that potentially big fines may be involved if the case is proven. Malcolm Turnbull has his Federal department also investigating to see if any Commonwealth legislation has been breached.

If the reports of land clearing are confirmed then the Gwydir case will be the first big test of the State Government’s resolve to halt broadscale clearing since it handed native vegetation management to the Department of Environment and Climate Change. Thus far, the landholder has declined to comment.

A river and waterbird expert at the University of NSW, Richard Kingsford, said that in the mid-1990s more than 100,000 birds had bred at the property. These included egrets, several species of ibis and a variety of native ducks.

Professor Kingsford was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald explaining that:

“It’s the death knell of this colony. Firstly there hasn’t been enough water allocated to allow them to breed and now their essential nesting habitat has been destroyed.

“These birds faithfully return to the same place to breed but when the next flood comes they will have nowhere to lay their eggs and keep their nests out of the water.

“I am shocked at the scale of the clearing and the fact that it had occurred on one of the most important waterbird breeding sites in Australia.”

Kingsford speculated on television that it would take decades or longer for the system to recover if ever.

There have been previous prosecutions over clearing of Gwydir Ramsar wetlands: http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/compliance/judgements/index.html

Cheers,
Luke Walker

“Victorian farmers have welcomed reports that the Victorian Government will give farmers the choice to grow genetically modified crops, effectively breaking ranks with other Labor states that have imposed moratoria on GM production.

“According to The Age, sources close to Premier Steve Bracks say the government is satisfied there is almost zero risk associated with GM crops and the ban “will be allowed to expire next year”.

Read the complete article at Farm Online: http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=42448

For a long time now its been predicted that the world will run out of food. According to Jared Diamond and other doomsayers, we are mining our soils, depleting our water reserves and now, according to Al Gore, we also have a climate crisis.

The latest United Nation’s report on climate change** was, however, surprisingly upbeat for agriculture stating that:

“Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions.

“At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C), which would increase risk of hunger.

“Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average
temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but above this it is projected to decrease.

“Adaptations such as altered cultivars and planting times allow low and mid- to high latitude cereal yields to be maintained at or above baseline yields for modest warming.

“Increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected to affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes.”

Then yesterday I read at ABC Online that the United Nations predicts a surge in world cereal production:

“A United Nations food body is predicting world cereal production will increase by nearly 4.5 per cent this year, to a record 2 billion tonnes.

“The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the bulk of the increase will be in maize, with a bumper crop already being gathered in South America and US plantings up sharply.

“It is also forecasting wheat production will rise 5 per cent to 626 million tonnes.”

Even in Australia, with this terrible drought, I’ve been told the prediction is for a record, or near record, wheat harvest this season.

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** Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report
Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Summary for Policymakers
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf

Hi Jennifer,

Globally grain stocks have shrunk to levels not seen since the early 1970s. Now to most this may seem like a seemingly unimportant fact. But this reality needs to be put into perspective.

In 1970 when the world was feeding itself out of the same sized grain inventories there were 3.7 billion people. Today there are over 6.5 billion people meaning the world is carrying near an extra 3 billion hungry mouths to 1970. We also now have a significant portion of the global crop being turned into biofuels – cereals and sugars for ethanol and oilseeds and tallows for biodiesel.

Once these biofuel plants are built they generally do not stop consuming feedstock. Shareholders do not make money from plants sitting idle. Other end users that have emerged are combustible stoves and water heaters in grain producing areas where low prices have encouraged feedstock substitution away from fossil fuels.

There are over 2 million corn stoves in North America alone that consume close to 25kg each per day in the cooler months – a total loss of 50,000 tonnes a day. What this serves to highlight is that grain prices have been too slow to appreciate to discourage waste in non food sectors. Once end using infrastructure is in place and consuming it generally will take significant grain price inflation to stop this consumption. Grain values in effect need to reach and in fact surplus energy parity values to prevent loss to biofuel end uses.

On the other end of the grain chain are the producers who are facing severe limitations in their ability to actually increase let alone maintain production. Depleting water aquifers, drought affected irrigation sources, competition for water and reduced rainfall are issues that are real and impacting on production output today.

And with an anticipated ‘grain boom’ there are also some such as myself who are predicting capacity constraints. For example, an inability for the fertilizer supply chain to be able to cope with demand from an agricultural sector keen to capitalise on rising prices. Potash fertilizer may be especially short moving forward. Hyperinflation in such inputs in itself is damaging to the output potential of third world cropping systems. Competition for land resources by staple food crops will be fierce and ‘illogical’ crop choices of the past (eg fruit crops) will be swept aside for fields of wheat, rice, corn and soybeans.

Output driven technologies such as transgenics will need to be embraced worldwide and embraced with fervour. Most would argue it is better to be fed than dead and anyone disagreeing with this is likely unwilling to be the first to go without as shortages unfold.

Environmentalism has failed for there is not one so called green group with a truly sustainable model of food production to promote today.

2007 will be a critical year for the world’s staple food supply. Because a willingness to try and produce our way out of an approaching deficiency in grain supplies may be overriden by constraints out of everyones hands – weather and water. There are already early signs that China’s 06-07 winter wheat areas are showing the effects of drought and areas within the Midwestern wheatbelt of the US have inadequate soil moisture levels. Here in Australia our summer crop plantings are well down from previous years. This developing crisis should concern everyone who eats food.

Regards,
Aaron Edmonds
2002 Nuffield Scholar
President Australian Sandalwood Network
www.australianuts.com