If Australia were cut off from global supply chains, we’d only have about five days’ worth of perishable food.
By the time it reaches your bowl, your Quaker Oats may have completed an international round-trip. The grain might be grown in Australia, but much of it is processed in the US before we import it back as the final product.
Bare supermarket shelves will become a more common sight if governments don’t act to prevent food insecurity caused by climate change and supply chain problems, a recent report found.“If there’s instability like there is now where supply chains are impacted, we then can’t bring in the food. Or if we do bring it in, it’s at a price that the consumer can’t afford,” La Trobe Institute for Agriculture and Food director Antony Bacic said.
With 70 per cent of agriculture shipped abroad, Australia has substantial credentials as an exporter of food – but predominantly in its rawest form, as primary products such as wheat or meat. By contrast, our food manufacturing and processing sector – which makes what’s called“I think it’s been a failure of government policy to, in fact, set up a competitive internal environment that allows our industries to flourish here,” Bacic said.
Even the future of Australia’s mighty $49 billion agricultural sector is looking shaky. Thanks to climate change, production of major export commodities such as wheat, beef, dairy and sugar will fall as much as 19 per cent by 2050, the Climate Group’s report found.
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