How many people can Australia feed?

Australia feeds a lot of people. As a big country with a relatively small population, we have just over two arable hectares per person, one of the highest ratios in the world. Our diverse soils and climate provide a wide variety of fresh food all year round.

Australia exports about 65% of the food it produces.

Historically we produce far more than we consume domestically. We sell around 65% of farm production overseas, making Australia a leading food-exporting nation. We therefore contribute to the food security not just of Australia, but of many other nations.

However, despite being a net food exporter, Australia also imports foods such as coffee, chocolate, processed fruit and vegetables, and key ingredients used in baking our daily bread. We are part of a global food system.

How will a swelling population, projected to reach between 36.8 million and 48.3 million by 2061, affect our food security? Are we set up to weather the storm of climate change, the degradation of our natural resources, and competition for land and water use from mining and urban expansion?

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Professor and Director Food Systems Program at the Global Change Institute from The University of Queensland, Bill Bellotti - “How many people can Australia feed?”

Ian Dunlop posts regarding his alarm about planetary overshoot

A Facebook post from Ian Dunlop,72, who has wide experience in energy resources, infrastructure, and international business, and who for many years was on the international staff of the Royal Dutch Shell Group.He has worked at senior level in oil, gas and coal exploration and production, in scenario and long-term energy planning, competition reform and privatisation. Here is a personal post from Facebook.

Ian Dunlop - alarmed about
planetary overshoot.

Earth Overshoot Day – 8th August 2016

My birthday apart, a really important event occurred yesterday.  On August 8 we reached Earth Overshoot Day for 2016.   We used as much from nature as our planet can renew in the whole year.  We have now used  more ecological resources and services through overfishing, overharvesting forests than nature can regenerate, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester. From now on in 2016, we are destroying our natural capital.  Overshoot Day in 2000 was in late September, every year it has been getting earlier as we consume more than the planet can supply.  Looked at another way, the global population of 7 billion now needs the capacity of 1.6 planets each year to survive, clearly not sustainable. But look behind the average on this chart.

If the world’s 7 billion all lived at Australian standards 5.4 planets would be required, at US standards 4.8 planets, at Chinese standards 2 planets and at Indian standards 0.7 planets.

So Australia is one of the most unsustainable societies on Earth.  We only prosper because we have a relatively small population living in a large land mass, benefiting from the export of many products which are now unsustainable, such as coal and CSG, to other countries.

The irony is that we have the resources and potential to be one of the most sustainable societies on Earth if we choose to make the transition to a genuinely low-carbon society using our abundance of solar, wind and wave energy, geothermal and possibly new generation nuclear.  Other societal changes are also essential such as the elimination of our excessive waste, inter alia  with greatly improved energy efficiency and conservation. 

The longer we leave it, the less chance of that sustainable prosperity being realised as climate change and resource depletion impacts will overtake our ability to make the transition in reasonable order.

Community pressure must force our corporate and political, both left and right, incumbency to take the urgency of the transition seriously.  Despite the current vogue for ministerial policy u-turns, there is no sign that the incumbency really understand what is coming.