Growing world population is an opportunity for Qld agriculture

By JOANNE GRAINGER, QFF President

SOME time this week the world population will have reached seven billion people, according to the UN Population Fund.

Their estimate might be off by a few weeks or even months, but the key point is that we now have one billion more people than we did in 1999, and four billion more people than we did as recently as 1959.

They all need and want three meals a day and clothes on their backs.

Therefore, there are a couple of points that I see as crucial for policy makers when it comes to Australian farmers and agriculture in the context of a booming population.

Clearly, it is not only each new person that needs food and fibre to live a healthy life, but there are also many among the current population that aren’t receiving enough of the basics, or are surviving on subsistence farming.

Agricultural productivity growth and Australian expertise has an important role to play in the equation if we are to produce more food and fibre for the global population. So too does cutting down on waste.

Australia has an enviable track record of productivity growth in agriculture. For example, the Australian cotton yield is about 2.5 times the world average and has steadily increased on the back of research and development over the last 40 years.

According to the Productivity Commission, overall ag productivity increased 2.8 percent per year from 1975, which is stronger than the overall growth rate of the economy.

But farmers can’t produce more food and fibre out of thin air, even though that often seems to be the pressure we are put under at times from governments, the major supermarkets, and some environmental lobby groups.

Immediate challenges include: the looming draft Basin Plan; new price paths for SunWater customers; terms of trade and the high Australian dollar; and pressures from the booming gas and resources sector.

The State Government has started to recognise the risks associated with the mining sector and our finite soil resources through the Strategic Cropping Land legislation introduced to Parliament last week.

But this is just a small part of the bigger picture, and it will take more than SCL legislation to ensure long term productivity growth.

What does this mean for government? Most importantly, the government must pull together all the issues under one banner as it develops the National Food Plan green and white papers.

An overarching policy such as the National Food Plan has great potential to recognise the absolute importance and value of agriculture, and to ensure that it doesn’t continue to be slowed by a ‘thousand cuts’.

The National Food Plan can amplify the important role of Australian farmers in providing food and fibre domestically and internationally.

There is also a need for government to ramp up the investment in agricultural R&D, and recognise that doing so is an investment in the future.

Australia has the potential to be a global research hub when it comes to agricultural investment; we have a huge continent with a full range of climates, soils and crops, and the world’s best farmers.

We can use that to our own advantage, and also in terms of assisting other nation’s raise their own standards of production and living.

The experts are predicting that world population growth is now slowing as the fertility rate declines and the population will start to decrease by the end of the century.

Either way, whether the population decreases slightly or even plateaus, the world will continue to demand more from its farmers.

With the right support from policy makers, that has the potential to be an amazing opportunity for Australian farmers and regional communities. We have the land, resources and expertise – we just need the right policies in place to allow us to continue to do things better.