Dry Land Meets World Demand

How does Australia -- the driest inhabited continent on earth -- manage to feed so much of the world?

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is predicting that Asia's demand for food, including wheat, beef and milk, will have grown by more than 20 per cent by 2010 (Asia Agri-hungry, The Land, July 15, page 30).

These estimates are probably conservative.

Globally about 40 per cent of all grain is fed to livestock.  For some time it has been anticipated that the increase in demand for chicken, pork and beef, particularly in China, will cause a surge in the demand for feed grain.

Australia contributed approximately 14 per cent of the wheat traded globally last financial year.  We are expected to continue as a key grain exporter.

We even export rice to Asia.  Australian rice production over the last 10 years was enough to feed almost 40 million people a meal each day, every day of the year.

However, just last week I received information from my local catchment management group reminding me that I live on the "driest inhabited continent on earth".

When total rainfall is divided by total land area, the Australian situation may look thirsty;  especially over the last few years.  But, we inhabit a large continent, there are few of us, and we don't water our desert.

According to the World Resource Institute, Australia has 51,000 litres of available water per capita per day.  This is one of the highest levels in the world, after Russia and Iceland, and well ahead of countries such as Indonesia (33,540), the United States (24,000), China (6,000) and the United Kingdom (only 3,000 litres per capita per day).

Furthermore, according to the Federal Government's Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000, we divert only five per cent of average annual runoff with most of the rain falling across northern Australia.

This doesn't mean we should pipe water south but it does indicate that nationally 95 per cent of the rain that falls is still for the environment.

Yet the recently signed National Water Initiative had a focus on clawing back water for the environment.

This agreement -- like most government water policy -- is significantly influenced by negative and narrow-minded campaigning from a few environmental groups.

The ink hadn't even dried on the National Water Initiative and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) was campaigning for more water for environmental flows.

Instead of forever doing deals with the ACF, perhaps the National Farmers Federation could encourage government to consider the big picture and the hard data when it comes to national water policy.

Globally the environment must be looked after and people must be fed.  I think the environmentalists call it "thinking globally, acting locally".

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