Look fellas, I hate to break this to you but the article was clearly hysterical nonsense. Why any of you congratulated the author is beyond me.

Food prices have increased of late and, thanks to the US drought, may well go much higher. Does that mean there has been a fundamental break in the market? Answer: no. A major part of the reason for the price run up, evident well before the drought, was the rise of the Asian and Indian middle calsses thanks to major market reforms in those countries.

When prices rise, output will follow and ther is no indication that the food producers will be unable to respond in the long term. It would help in the short term if the US and Brazil would drop their nutty insistance on using good crop land to produce biofuels.

Before any of this, incidentally, the trend was for marginal farm land to fall out of use.

As for this instance that somehow Austalia, a major food procing nation, will run short of food, it is simply irrational. OLO writers are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. Sophie Love should find some justification for her vapourings.

As for her insistance that fracking is somehow dangerous how much of it is to actually occuring in Aus? I know there's lots and lots of coal seam gas development, and at least two reports on water use of CSG which found nothing much, but Love is concerned about fracking .. so are there projects in her area that have concerned her?

I'm rather taken by Sophie's name. Sophie Love. It has a film star quality about it. But back to business.

According to the National Farmers Federation, there are approximately 134,000 farm businesses in Australia, 99 per cent of which are family owned and operated.

Each Australian farmer produces enough food to feed 600 people, 150 at home and 450 overseas. Australian farmers produce almost 93 percent of Australia’s daily domestic food supply.

Australia’s farm exports earned the country $32.5 billion in 2010-11, up from $32.1 billion in 2008-09, while the wider agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors earn the country another $36.2 billion in exports. About 70 per cent of arable land is currently under crops. Of that 70 per cent, farmers keep about 10 per cent fallow for rotation.

Australian live cattle exports totaled 694,429 head in 2011 (down 21 per cent on 2010 due to Indonesia cattle ban), valued at A$629.4 million, according to ABARE (2012). According to Australian livestock export industry statistics review (2011) the nation exported 2,458,448 sheep in 2011, valued at A$328 million.

We import about a little under $10 billion in foodstuffs per year – mainly packaged goods - and about one third is due to reciprocal trade agreements with New Zealand and other nations.

The knee-jerk reaction is to say that we are running out of food or that we will run out of food. This is blatantly false. If in a moment of madness we decided to drive our exports on to the domestic market, every man, woman and child would be required to eat about $500,000 of meat, grain and vegetables per year, every year. Bon apetite.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that both politicians and corporations are completely out of step ..."

Sophie is right. Politicians are ripping the heart out of farmers, like this:
http://ideologee.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/farmers-spirit-crushed-by-coal-seam-gas.html

Buy organic/direct and support fringe political parties like Katter's Australian Party or the Australian Protectionist Party etc.
Current political leaders have lost their soul.

We need someone like John Hatton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H2nz-O495s

I do not resile from my comments Curmegeon. Love's essay if it did nothing else serves to draw attention to the issue.

I do not think the FIRB rules are appropriate for today as they might have once been. The fact that we are governed by the corporate world and not be elected reps who do what we say ( within obvious constraints) but what Utah Coal or GM tell us to do is reprehensible and wrong.

Be happy buying your frozen bread from China, with all the FSANZ controls (such as they are) gone.

Sorry, the article is junk; I got no further than "Gasland"; any one who mentions Gasland as authority for any comment on gas extraction is delusional; see:

http://www.energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Debunking-Gasland.pdf

Also of interest;

http://www.nohotair.co.uk/gas-guru-blog/shale-gas-2012/166-shale-gas/2348-methane-in-the-water-pennsylvania-1783.html

Seriously folks, I know the oil, coal and gas companies are b.....ds but this handwringing concern get's anyone who wants to keep them under control nowhere.

Gas, oil and coal are the best energy sources; the anti-fracking movement is drivel; there are real pollution issues with the mining and transport of coal and oil, not so much gas, but please stick to them.

As for food security; simple; repeal the Farming Initiative legislation which allows productive farmland to be converted to CO2 sinks at taxpayer expense, and get rid of every vestige of green legislation which restricts agriculture, and encourage the building of dams and other irrigation projects so the vast area of Australia which is marginal can become productive.

Australia is vast but underutilised for a variety of progressive cause reasons; get rid of the bleeding hearts and start working this country.

Do any of you people really think the rest of the world is going to allow a bunch of self-indulgent Europeans let this country lie fallow?

Grow up; and peak oil is garbage

Despite the knocking the article has received there really is a problem.
Someone mentioned oil decline not enabling ships to take the food away.
Well not quite true, China and Mongolia have a lot of coal and as it
would be an emergency they would use coal fired ships to move the food.
So that will not stop China from moving the crop.
I find it hard to believe that they would not use 437 visa to bring
thousands of Chinese labourers to work the farms.
They do that in Africa where the system is already working.
If we do refuse them the facility, will they simply send the PLA ?
A billion hungry mouths could stir things up.

The real question is could enough ships be organised to move the quntities needed ?