NORTHERN New South Wales farmer, Sam Heagney, Mungindi, has produced a video explaining to Australians in this difficult time that food security is assured with the nation’s farmers producing enough food to feed 75 million people, three times our population.
Aussie farmers grow enough food for 75 million people – 3 times our population! We will keep supermarkets full of affordable, safe, nutritious food through this Corona Virus crisis.
Everyone stay safe & look out for one and other#wevegotthis#calmthefarm#itstartswithag pic.twitter.com/U0Mvg2IAm2
— Sam Heagney (@samheagney) March 23, 2020
Like most things, food security has a formal definition and it’s worth keeping that in mind. “Food security exists when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.”
Food security doesn’t mean every food item from anywhere in the world has to be available every day of the year. Even in this crisis, despite panic buying and problems with delivery, we haven’t had any real threat to food security.
This sounds lovely until you remember the inputs required
Australia is meant to hold 90 days of fuel reserves. However it only has about 30 days reserve and asks USA to hold the rest there – not very secure
Just tried to order fertiliser, it has to come from USA again
There is a shortage of herbicides . Most of these come from China , well at least the tech does
Something like 80% of our medicines come from China, and we will not talk about face masks etc
We have ignored supply security for far too long . The corona virus is exposing all these cracks in the system
Yes we do export a lot of food commodities but we also import a lot of processed food . We are a net importer of ham and bacon , processed sea food ( probably a lot caught in Australian waters?)
This anomaly was first identified about 20 years ago with the customs house agreement
Maybe the speaker needs to do some deeper research or simply just walk down the local supermarket isles and see how much is imported
The classic was several years ago when ham was advertised in our local Woolworths as 50% local ingredients
I am still perplexed which half was local and which half was imported
The reality is that it was all imported but our confusing regulations allow local transport and processing to be counted as local ingredients
The worrying part is that this myth of how much we export is still believed by the majority of Australians and until we wake up to the reality , nothing will be done about real food security