Sounds like Burke is deep in the pocket of the agriculture multinationals. One wonders whom these politicians serve - certainly not the voters. Peak oil means the eventual end of industrial agriculture and that seriously worries the multinationals who have been very successful in subjugating farmers and sequestering their profits for their shareholders. Future food security is to be found in produce grown locally and consumed locally. If agricultural land and produce are not owned by the people that do the farming the results can be catastrophic - look at the Irish potato famine where 1 million people starved while the English landowners were still exporting wheat from Ireland. Do you REALLY believe things would be different in a future oil-scarce world and with foreigners with more capacity to pay than destitute Australians?

A timely and interesting post Russ,
I was pleased to see that so much of our vegetables and fruit are grown locally.

We should start putting tariffs on fruit and other imported foodstuffs.
This will have the effect of reducing the oil used in moving the food
around the world faster than just the incrementing oil price.

There are arguments for large commercial farms and I am aware of the
oil consumed in large commercial production.
However some time ago I read of work being done to electrify the farm
machinery. It was however about batteries and fuel cells.
It would be possible with the sacrifice of small strips of
land to set up lines of poles and feed the machines in the same way
trolley buses are fed. There is an alternative system I have seen on
cranes where a one metre off the ground duct runs across the land and
an arm on the machine picks up from there.
Either seem to me to be totally practical.
It is unlikely batteries or fuel cells will ever be up to the job so
we should not waste time waiting for what may never come.

After their production, but provided we can get the pollies to listen,
electrified railways could move bulk foods like wheat from more remote
areas. Even bananas could be shipped to our southern cousins.

Whatever energy regime we end up with, it will end up outputting
electricity.

This is the same Minister who has mindlessly endorsed genetically engineered foods - a position you can only take if you are benefitting directly from the biotech companies or are willfulloy ignorant of the failings and dangers of the technology. The changes that we need to make to food production will not be made by a Minister who embraces the industrial model of food production.
Next

Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke could look to innovation and new value added products with health benefits like prevention of tooth decay from local food "to get some legs on the other side of the world".

Nuts and cheese can be developed into products to chew before and after eating to displace trapped food between teeth and inside grooves on chewing surfaces to reduce demineralisation of teeth and increase remineralisation of tooth.

Chewing celery after eating helps saliva dilute trapped sugars,neutralise acid and repair demineralised tooth.

Marketing and dental health education can be integrated in a project like Supertooth and Good Food Friends www.supertoothndk.org and www.ndk.biz/choc

Even with fluoridation, a $21.5 billion global oral hygiene industry and dental health education, tooth decay is the most common and expensive disease yet the easiest to prevent.

School teachers, parents, health professionals and the public can register on line comment and participate in surveys. www.supertoothndk.or

Foodmiles are a great marketing ploy, but that is about it.

What we can show is that lamb grown in NZ, eating pasture,
then shipped to the UK, uses heaps less oil then lamb fed
on grain for most of its life, in the UK itself.

Free range farming is clearly far more efficient then factory
farming, shipping transport hardly comes into it.

Give Tony Burke some credit. He came in green into the agriculture
industry and so far has shown to be learning fast and quite pragmatic.
Credit where credit is due!

Farmers' markets certainly have sprung up everywhere and are well frequented - eventually it might even impact on our duopolised food retailers.

The free-market de-regulation spin doctors have certainly been successful in demonising 'protectionism' in the case of food supply. Tariffs to protect local industry were considered quite acceptable many years ago and some of the problems inherent in protectionism could easily be averted by increasing local competition and preventing monopolies.

Importing food that we already produce here in vast quantities in view of peak oil is quite absurd. The decision to stop imports will be thrust upon us before we know it but the lack of foresight is worrying from our elected leaders.

The way to go would be to return to smaller local production systems which supply a locally defined area and where imports would be limited to food unable to be grown in that area or off-season.

Can anyone else see the irony in agricultural exports from Africa when there is little food for their own people.

Yabby's point about NZ lamb and food miles is a valid one and methods of production would have to be accounted for when calculating food miles.