So you want taxpayer handouts to fund your research.

And you don't want companies investing their own funds instead.

And you don't give a rats about the price of food in Bangladesh or other poor countries.

Give me a break.

Maybe DavidL you'd prefer to see this happen here in Australia........

http://investmentwatchblog.com/new-food-bill-in-new-zealand-takes-away-human-right-to-grow-food/

Big agribusiness has far too much control of what we do and eat already.
Aime.

Claire and Nick you have written and excellent article which demonstrates clearly the issues we face in Australia in terms of our food future and the future you portray does look very bleak. I like you hope for the development of Food Sovereignty ideals as a recognizable alternative to the current global agribusines model which places the world and not just Australia's food future in great peril. I suspect that direct-action against this life endangering food system will be necessary before our complacency is sufficiently shaken to recognize the need for change.

How many peasant farmers do you reckon are in Australia?

Perhaps we could also look at population stability (demand), here and overseas?

The STABLE POPULATION PARTY made a submission to the Federal Government's Food Plan (#182), concluding that:

"Australia’s contribution to global food security and peace will also be maximised by maintaining a substantial surplus in food production, and in encouraging other countries to stabilise their population by the example we set and the aid we provide.

Thus, from the point of view of both food security and national security, the lowest attainable peak population maximises Australia’s security."

http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/national-food-plan/submissions-received

A fantastic article, well written and articulated.

Big AgriBusiness and the monocultures they promote rely on cheap sources of oil and natural gas for the tillage, herbicide, pesticide, harvest and transportation of their goods as well as packaging, national and international transportation. Global oil supply peaked in 2005 and has been on a plateau ever since.

Without cheap oil this planet cannot hope to maintain current levels of food production, add water scarcity, topsoil degeneration/loss as well as a more energetic climate, we can recognise that food security is one of the most important issues of our time.

Our growing population of 7 billion will see increases in hunger, starvation and a die-off in the medium term. Alternative energy options do not stack up so we will see this decline continue until we reach a more sustainable population global wide.

Permaculture is a fantastic option and if you are not already growing some of your own food I would suggest you start now if you hope to eat well into the future. Science research and education are key components we need to focus on, localise and reap the benefits.

Ignore this issue at your own peril!

You must have been reading a different article Geoff. I thought it was a bit all over the place. There seemed to be quite a bit of ticking the boxes of the cliched list of stuff these sorts of authors like to mention, not much of it really coherent. A bit of feel good stuff to try and get people interested in organic gardening and that sort of thing.

I love Permaculture. I really do, it's great for gardens and small scale Sunday market stuff but I am not under any illusions that it's gonna feed the world. It doesn't lend itself readily to mechanisation the same way field cropping does. The ongoing inputs may not be the same, but they can still be considerable in terms of labour, time and setup costs. Exporting millions of tonnes of wheat grown by permaculture? Sorry, I just can't see it.

The authors also mention 'Bio-dynamic' farming. They might as well have mentioned Aztec blood sacrifice farming. Apparently that worked pretty well in it's day, and based on the same amount of science.

Get a grip guys, small scale organic gardening is not the kind of agriculture that is going to feed the cities. It can help subsistence farmers in poor countries, sure. But can you imagine how many of those farms it will take to feed London or New York?

Aime, I thought that sort of behavior is a response to big seed companies like Monsanto protecting their patented seed supplies?

They have developed specific seed types that are genetically, or selected for genetic traits, and they do not want their investment cheapened by people then distributing or on-selling second or further generation of "their" seeds. The agreement is on the seed packs by the way .. you buy, you agree to comply .. caveat emptor.

So if countries want the seeds from Monsanto or others, they have to comply with the seed owner's demands.

You can refuse and build up your own seed banks, but for years people have just found it easier to buy from Monsanto, let them do the heavy lifting in selecting the good from the poor seed and plant qualities. It's not much good now turning around and saying they are dirty guys, because we were lazy is it?

This is not aimed at backyard or small acreage farmers, it is the vast thousands of acres of wheat and other grain crops farming.

Would it be illegal under the proposed NZ laws to sell seeds, sure .. unless you get a government license.

I expect this to be unbelievably popular with out current government, a new source of bureaucracy, more government departments, more fiddling in peoples lives .. for the national interest of course .. isn't that the current catch-cry.

This isn't new .. Monsanto and DuPont have been at it for years .. good luck to them, at least someone is doing it and looking after the world's seed quality .. you can bet your life they have stocks of old and ancient varieties as well.

If we want to develop and protect seed types, maybe stop funding popular science, that does nothing except return $ to the science, nothing to humanity and fund agri science, unsexy as it is .. take 10% of what climate science gets for instance ..

Aime, if you're interested, you might read Nicky Hagar's Seeds of Distrust .. an expose on the NZ experience with GM seeds and the mechanisms of government .. not just the current conservative one either. http://www.nickyhager.info/category/books/

He's a very good investigative journo, old school .. not opinion, real journalism.

I get nervous when I see a head of that hydra Greenpeace pop up again. Its nearly always in an attempt to 'control' peoples behaviour and usually with reference to Green buzzwords and catchphrases which ultimately make no sense.

I found the article a little disjointed and composed of random 'good sounding' quotes from various and mostly irrlevant sources. What the heck does 'decontextualised standards' in Bolivia have to do with us??

Looks like they want an in for organically grown food which is usually expensive to buy and often dodgy quality. More than that, I can't say because, like most Green tirades, it is full of half-empty, feelgood statements which ultimately make little sense.

The son of a mate of mine is now the fourth generation farming a property near Dalby.

They had been saving their own wheat seed for 50 years. "Why pay for the stuff, when we grow it ourselves" was their motto.

In answer to those who rabbit on about soil degradation, erosion & other such garbage, they have been using no till, plant through stubble, with a cotton, & legume rotation using cottons deep root structure to open up the soil for about 30 years now, actually improving soil structure & productivity. The nitrogen fixed by the legume helps decomposition of the plant matter left behind.

I can hear the screams, cotton uses too much water, we should not grow cotton, & it makes me sick that this kind of rubbish is believed in the city.

They grow dry land cotton, no irrigation, basically as a soil improver. The deep root structure opens the soil, improving water penetration, & moisture retention, adding humus as it does so. Yes cotton is nutrient hungry, but when you only harvest the seed head, most is returned to where it came from.

It was only after using Monsanto cotton seed, that they were talked into using their wheat seed. It was a revelation. The commercial seed gave better germination, faster growth, better water tolerance, & a higher yield.

Even better, it produced prime hard wheat in drier conditions, when their production, using their own saved seed, would have been downgraded to stock feed.

Using proprietary seed has increased the net from the wheat part of their operation by about A$20,000 PA. Add to this the fact that dry land cotton is only viable in that area using the commercial seed with it's enhanced pest & herbicide resistance, & you get an entirely different answer to the Greenpeace spin.

It is time our city folk understood that this type of farming is almost universal today.

I'm with Atman - Greenpeace frighten me. They're a pack of nutters with a penchant for pseudoscience, but they've got such a good PR machine that they've managed to convince most folk that they're nice harmless hippies.

It is surprising that in article co-authored by a GM Wheat Campaigner, no explicit mention was made of genetic modification. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Could it be that Greenpeace have finally realised that genetic modification is not the bogeyman they paint it as?

Well, things are certainly hotting up in the “food wars.”

The biggest land grab in history?

HOW FOOD AND WATER ARE DRIVING A 21ST-CENTURY AFRICAN LAND GRAB

>>An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens>>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/food-water-africa-land-grab

>>"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly.* The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands.

"All the land round my family village of Illia has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no compensation. People cannot believe what is happening. Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry.">>

*Doubtless the large transfers of funds to the leader’s Swiss bank account are also done secretly. This is Africa!

>>Leading the rush are international agribusinesses, investment banks, hedge funds, commodity traders, sovereign wealth funds as well as UK pension funds, foundations and individuals attracted by some of the world's cheapest land.>>

Wonder if we’ll see an African style Irish potato famine. There was enough food in Ireland at the time but it was being exported while the locals starved.

>>Meanwhile, the Saudi investment company Foras, backed by the Islamic Development Bank and wealthy Saudi investors, plans to spend $1bn buying land and growing 7m tonnes of rice for the Saudi market within seven years. The company says it is investigating buying land in Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. By turning to Africa to grow its staple crops, Saudi Arabia is not just acquiring Africa's land but is securing itself the equivalent of hundreds of millions of gallons of scarce water a year. Water, says the UN, will be the defining resource of the next 100 years.>>

Steven,

Yes, The World Bank as an agent of globalisation and Western corporate interests is still hard at it :

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-568890

Poirot

It’s not merely “Western” corporate interests.

As my previous post shows, Saudi Arabia is a major player.

So, of course, are China and India.

From my previously linked article

>>Indian companies, backed by government loans, have bought or leased hundreds of thousands of hectares in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.>>

>>…China has signed a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 2.8m hectares of palm oil for biofuels….>

Egypt too is a player:

>>We met Tegenu Morku, …on his way to the region of Oromia in Ethiopia to find 500 hectares of land for a group of Egyptian investors. They planned to fatten cattle, grow cereals and spices and export as much as possible to Egypt. There had to be water available and he expected the price to be about 15 birr (75p) per hectare per year – less than a quarter of the cost of land in Egypt and a tenth of the price of land in Asia.>>

And this from Bloomberg:

FOREIGN INVESTORS INCREASE ‘LAND GRABS,’ HARMING POOR FARMERS, OXFAM SAYS

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-22/foreign-investor-land-grabs-harm-farmers-in-poorer-nations-oxfam-says.html

>>Foreign-investor purchases of farmland in poorer nations are displacing local populations and adding little to a country’s wealth, even as agricultural prices increase, according to Oxfam International.>>

>>As many as 227 million hectares (561 million acres) -- an area one and a half times the size of Alaska -- have been sold or leased since 2001, with most of the “land grabs” occurring in the past two years, Oxfam said in a report released today. With the consent of governments, weak legal codes allow the purchase of large tracts with no regard for residents or the environment, said Oxfam, which is based in Oxford, U.K.>>

I am afraid the locals don’t stand a chance. Nobody seems very concerned about “indigenous rights” or “human rights.”

IN AFRICA IT’S CORRUPTION THAT GREASES THE DEALS. ALL MOST AFRICAN LEADERS ARE INTERESTED IN IS WHO CAN MAKE THE BIGGEST PAY-OFFS.

Is this land grab all that bad. You can't roll it up and take it away.
Maybe use of the land can be greatly improved, and it adds up to export for the parent country. I can't see how it would be a backward step.

Steven,

Yes, well the greasy palms of corrupt African regimes are usually shaking hands with the IMF and the World Bank (check out Egypt's experience).
But I take your point that any country with challenges in food production and the means to jump into bed with a corrupt African regime will do so.

India is actually an interesting case in point. IMF and World Bank policies involved with the "Green Revolution" have been instrumental in the degradation and poisoning of the land and massive water depletion.
Structural adjustments instituted by governments in partnership with these organisations usually debase the environment and enrich corporate interests outside those countries and often leave the peasant populations worse off than before.

This is a really poorly organised article. It is hard to see what the main point is other than corporations are bad and unscientific practices are good. I would have found it much better if there had been a focus from a scientific approach about the various methods, rather than the “agroecology is good, everything else is bad” sort of argument.

The evidence provided in favour of agroecology is not about the measured benefits of agroecology, but consists of a whole host of ideological arguments: “mining companies are stealing agricultural land”, “plant breeding is being taken over by commercial interests”, “free trade is bad”, and so on. Somehow, we are expected to believe agroecology will fix these problems, without and data on how it performs.

The piece de resistance is the praise of biodynamic agriculture. An agricultural system based on astrology and homeopathy is supposed to be what we should aspire to? The authors must be joking. The fact that they would praise something as ridiculously silly as biodynamic agriculture shows how anti-science their thinking is.

Agroecology might be all well and good for those who have the financial backing to be weekend farmers, but it ain’t going to be feeding the world, unless we can find a way of getting rid of 70% of the population.

It is important to be clear about who is commenting on public issues of such significance.

Hasbeen has posted 2078 times in total. It looks like someone is financing these comments.

Its also worth noting that whoever is paying is not getting a good deal, because Hasbeen is not doing the research. The story about GM cotton farmers is intended to suggest that following a good experience with Monsanto's cotton, the farmers tried Monsanto's GM wheat. However, Monsanto has not released any GM wheat in Australia as yet - neither commercially, nor as a trial. So have Hasbeen's friends been planting illegal GM wheat?

Or is Hasbeen being paid by Monsanto to spruik a product it wants to foist onto Australian farmers and consumers?

It is important to be clear about who is commenting on public issues of such significance.

Hasbeen has posted 2078 times in total. Who can afford to spend so much time making posts on internet sites? Or is Hasbeen being paid? Its hard to know if Hasbeen does not identify themself.

If someone is paying, they are not getting a good deal, because Hasbeen is not doing the research. The story about GM cotton farmers is intended to suggest that following a good experience with Monsanto's cotton, the farmers tried Monsanto's GM wheat. ("It was only after using Monsanto cotton seed, that they were talked into using their wheat seed. It was a revelation. The commercial seed gave better germination, faster growth, better water tolerance, & a higher yield.")

However, Monsanto has not released any GM wheat in Australia as yet - neither commercially, nor as a trial. So have Hasbeen's friends been planting illegal GM wheat?

Or is Hasbeen being paid by Monsanto to spruik a product it wants to foist onto Australian farmers and consumers?

Claire, did you really write that? Wow, just wow. It is all I can say. Rather than addressing any criticisms of your article, all you do is a massive ad hom.

This is a discussion forum of opinions. People voice opinions on all sorts of topics. People with lots of opinions make lots of comments.

Hasbeen didn’t say anything about GM wheat. Hasbeen was talking about normal wheat, which in Australia is provided to growers by breeding companies like Longreach, Intergrain and AGT. Hasbeen’s anecdote, however, is largely correct. Wheat breeding in Australia is increasing yield potential by about 12% per decade. So buying new wheat seed every decade will give a substantial increase in yield. The other factor that comes into play is that farmer saved wheat declines in viability with storage, because farmer storages are often poor and they don’t always have the ability to dry grain. If the harvest is wet or storage is poor, the yield of the subsequent crop sown with that grain will be less.

@Agronomist

Monsanto does not sell wheat seeds in Australia, GM or otherwise (http://www.monsanto.com.au/products/default.asp) so Hasbeen's comments still come off as, at best, ill-informed, at worst, dishonest.

I haven't responded to any of the other criticisms because I don't think that they are worth responding to. It looks to me like nonsensical industry spin. But when the spin is so far wrong as to be a blatant untruth, as in this case, I feel bound to make that clear.

Otherwise, I'll let the article and the eminent research, including United Nations publications, it refers to, stand for themselves.

Feeding modern society sustainably is probably impossible. In particular, nearly all food is grown, whether 'organically' or otherwise, in places remote from the ultimate destination: cities. Each time a crop is harvested, or an animal sold for slaughter, there is an ongoing export of minerals and trace elements from farm soil to cities. Some ends up in sewerage; some in rubbish dumps and the remainder in the blood and bones of people who are either buried or burnt upon death. This process differs from pre-industrial society where people lived off the land and died on it. Now we replace lost minerals and elements using fertilizers, but this has only been possible through oil. As oil grows scarce and world population continues to grow, feeding it with falling yields and depleting soils will be a challenge.