Today I am introducing a thought provoking article by Roger Crook. Roger emigrated from the UK, trained in agricultural production. As a young bloke he began as a stockman, and ended up working for ICL. With them he rose through the ranks to a senior management of their Zero till branch. It was there that I first encountered Roger back in the day when zero till farming was not the orthodox it is today.
In this article Rogers clear mind, and years of experience allows him to study empirical data to arrive at some uncomfortable conclusions about our capacity to feed ourselves in the face of today’s coronavirus damaged world trade supply routes.
Below are some disturbing statistics from Rogers article. In it he chronicles the history of world Agricultural trade from the end of WWII to now and offers his thoughts on how we have gotten to where we are now.
Interesting excerpt from Rogers article:
These Figures May Shock You
The latest figures show that we imported into Australia over $18 billion of food products last year. If food consumption in this country does grow by the forecast 79%, and if nothing changes in the balance, Australia will be importing food to value of $39 billion by 2050.
A few examples of what food we import. It is an incomplete list.
- Last year Australia imported $2.1 billion of ‘other food preparations’ I can’t find what is in that category, but we know it is food. Have a wander round the shelves in the supermarket and look at the labels. I have found imported tinned fruit and bottled peaches from Bulgaria. Potato chips in packets and frozen. Frozen mashed potato from Holland at the same price as fresh potatoes. Salt from Pakistan for goodness sake, the anomalous list is endless.
- Last year we imported $800 million dollars worth of pig meat. Eighty percent of all the pig meat we consume is imported. The other 20% is fresh pork and a bit of bacon.
- I find it hard to believe in the land of the best wheat in the world we imported biscuits, cakes and pastries to the value of $1.017 billion some from New Zealand, Indonesia, America and the EU.
- We imported cheese worth $690 million and we have a struggling dairy industry and we make very good cheeses.
- We can and do grow coffee, but our imports were valued at $639 million and we spent the same amount on cocoa preparations and chocolate.
- We imported a staggering $830 million, on of all things, wine and we exported the same amount.
- Spirits and liqueurs cost us another $916 million. Beer put the figure well over $1 billion a year.
- To add insult to injury, surrounded by oceans we imported fish worth $2 billion in 2017. Seventy per cent of the fish we eat is imported a lot of it from New Zealand, Vietnam and Thailand.
You can read his full article via a PDF (Click here to open it), or click here to read the original post on the Global Farmers website.
Thanks Roger for permission to use your material in creating this post.
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