Q&A, "How are you going to conduct the cull Mr Right/Candide?". I don't know how Mr Right/Candide might answer this, but David Kemp gave his answer in the article, in a round about way. He said: "they ... consume at the rate that 13 billion people would today", and "reducing the quantities of food exports from Australia". Well you can't have both, can you? So it sounds to me like he is planning to starve to death those that can't pay the higher food prices.

Seriously, the main point of the article is that our current agricultural system is gradually degrading the environment, in the long term leading to smaller and smaller outputs. This obviously isn't sustainable, and the sooner we fix it the better off we will be. I don't know if this picture is true or not, but lets accept it is. His solution is to include the price of environmental degradation in the cost of the food, or if you like keep rising the cost of the food until it stops.

As an aside, I don't see how its possible to ensure the extra funds raised will be directed towards maintaining the land, so I don't know that his proposed solution would work.

In any case, in a world already has many on the brink of starvation he is proposing we reduce our food output to a sustainable level. In life and death terms, he is proposing we kill off some of the population in the near future in order that more can live later on. Its a real Faustian bargain, and makes my head hurt. I thank my lucky stars I am not in a position to make a decision about it one way or the other.

What I can do is whinge, kick and scream about Australia's current immigration policy. It means Australia's population will double by 2040. It must stop.

The comments so far have been interesting, but there are no simple solutions. We will only find those solutions by realistically acknowledging the central role of agriculture in life, appreciating the limitations in food production and the gaps between likely supply and demand and then working with the more relevant trends. Increasing education certainly reduces population growth, as does increasing affluence, and that is preferable to the 'ultimate solution'. Getting over the demand for cheap food and building economic systems that enable all to afford the food they need wouldn't be a bad goal. Sustainable systems are easier to achieve if farmers are better paid. Crop yields in Australia have generally increased (per ha) over the last century (despite the use of (more) less productive land) indicating that the popular view of degradation is a myth, but if prices for products decline then practices will become less sustainable. In the end we will only survive if we put a lot of collective work into solving the suite of problems.

Candide
In a nut-shell, I support the principals and aims of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Agenda 21 and millennium development goals of the United Nations Population Fund – Australia is after all a signatory and partner to these conventions. Look/see:

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/index.html

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm

http://www.unfpa.org/about/index.htm

Of course education is key (especially for women), but in a patriarchal society where men play ‘power and control’ games, the solutions to food/population and other concerns will not be easily overcome – but we must try.

Ademac
So, you say 4 light-horsemen to the rescue. You are joking, right?

While death is of itself a ‘no-brainer’; we (humanity) have some control over the other three.
Are you really saying we should just nuke the unfortunate bastards?
Are you really saying we should let the have-nots starve to death?
Are you really saying we should let Malaria/HIV/Aids et al just annihilate the afflicted?

No, it does not matter if you or I survive (and the species will survive in some form), but the means to the end, how humanity travels on that path/that journey, is important.

rstuart
Our species is supposed to be ‘intelligent’. We are supposed to have the capacity to make decisions based on logic and rational thought – differentiating us from all other life forms. My concern is that while we have the ability to show compassion, we are not. If we really don’t care for our environment and all else that depends on it, how can we say we are better than the lowest form of amoeba, whose existence is determined by the most primitive form of natural selection? I am a scientist that thinks there has to be more meaning to life than mere survival of the species. If there is a higher meaning, we are failing dismally.

Australia is very actively promoting Australia's meat industry in many countries where meat has not been a dominant part of the diet.

Between 2000 and 2007, live exporters dumped 414,000 of Australia's livestock overboard (41,000 last year.) These animals could not endure the sea journey. They included cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo and camels.

414,000 livestock could have fed a lot of hungry people, had they been slaughtered in Australia. Oceans and marine life do not take kindly to ingesting millions of tonnes of animal faeces and urine and the carcasses of commercial animals which are potentially contaminated with antibiotics, other pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals and dioxins.

One may say the oceans are vast. "414,000 dead and diseased animals are nothing - mere fish fodder." Sadly that is what most countries purport when dumping pollution in the oceans and recent studies have shown an alarming amount of bioaccumulative, chemical contamination in marine life.

In addition, the 2004 tsunami saw cars to concrete, mud, livestock, pollutants, dead bodies debris etc, belonging to some 12 nations, swept out to the ocean.

Countries are now warning of the risks of eating fish which historically has been a staple food diet for several nations. Mass fish kills are occurring around the planet.

Last year the live export industry realised some $700 million, however, the chilled and frozen meat exports totalled almost $6 billion. Am I missing something here?

Nevertheless Australia's all-out public relations campaign to coerce poor countries to eat more meat does not guarantee an abundance of food crops for human consumption. Does economic bouyancy in international trade guarantee the ecological health of Australia?

A successful PR campaign overseas, by the meat and livestock industry will see an increase in GHGs, depleted valuable resources and additional degradation of this country's fragile biodiversity thus rendering fewer crops for human consumption.

The environmental problems associated with livestock, and the ramifications of climate change may see this nation and its dependants having to learn the hard way.

Disclaimer: I am not a vegetarian.

David Kemp's asks "How ... can Australia contribute to viable solutions for itself and to the wider world?"

And answers himself:-

* "Acknowledging the integrated nature of agricultural and related production within the whole economy would help. It is not a fringe activity that stops at the farm gate. Better policies can only be developed though a more honest understanding.

* Consumers accepting that higher food prices are good for the sustainability of Australia.

* Acknowledging the central role of agriculture in human existence and issuing the challenge to young Australians to get involved in developing the solutions required to feed the world.

* Using Australian expertise to help developing countries solve their food production problems to reduce to a minimum the existence of malnourished, poverty stricken communities."

Professor Kemp is Chair of Farming Systems at Charles Sturt University and has a networking relationship with the CSIRO (not mentioned in his article).

I would be interested in his views to Julian Cribb's (an OLO regular) piece in ScienceAlert.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20081306-17487.html

CSIRO management IMHO, are acting like the amoeba I referred to in my previous post.

I would also be interested in comments from the anti-science lobby, both to Kemps' article and that of Cribb.

The problem lies not only with the CSIRO, universities also have been taken over by the 'business model'. That is, proper scientists and academics no longer run these institutions, they only have a token voice. Students are treated as sources of income and tertiary institutions are run as businesses, slashing courses with low enrolments (no matter how beneficial they may be overall) and increasing academics workloads to the point where they cannot conduct their own research programs.

Agricultural research has been downgraded and almost ignored, because for much of it there is no IP in it. Where the IP is, and much financial gain so important for the 'business model' has been determined to be in fields like medical biotechnology and nanotechnology. CSIRO has spent millions in protecting its IP and completely ignored a lot of "public good" ag research. Even agricultural biotech is seen as a non-event (ie no money in it) because of market resistance, caused in no small part by small ideologically driven groups. Real investment in agricultural sciences has fallen by default to state government agricultural departments, who have incidentally been slowly gutting their primary industries portfolios over a period of many years. If the agricultural research increase is going to happen, it will or at least should be in these departments first, as they have the primary role of extension education to primary producers. Anyone concerned about this trend should be lobbying their respective state governments, they are the only ones who may listen and have the leverage to spur action.