Australia's Role in Feeding the World: The Future of Australian Agriculture

Introduction and a mud map

T. Hundloe

A lucky land! Australians can feed on an enormous variety of foods grown in their own country. The foods are as fresh as the next truckload from the local farm, because that is what they are. Our favourites such as bananas we can buy every day of the year. We can put a locally caught prawn on the barbie on each of those 365 days. And we have enough surplus food to feed two-and-a-half times our population. The earnings from our farm exports help put Australia second (out of ~200) in the world in terms of an index based on income, education and length of life (the Human Development Index). However, let us not overstate our agricultural abilities, at least not until we have gathered the data and put it to test of scientific scrutiny.

This brings us to the question of what this book is about. It seeks to bring a degree of realism to the much-touted assertion that Australia will become the ‘food bowl’ of Asia. Undoubtedly Australia, with its ‘clean green’ image, will continue to be an important exporter of farmed products as global demand for food increases, but there are serious biophysical, economic, institutional and social constraints on our ability to produce a greatly increased quantity of food for export.

The questions that arise once we contemplate our future as a serious player in world food supply are many and varied. To what extent will Australian farmers play a role in meeting the increased demand for food? Which overseas markets will be dominant? What products will be in high demand? What are the constraints on our farmers? Are the supreme optimists ‘on the money’ with visions of opening up the north of Australia to intensive agriculture? Are the infrastructure costs too high to warrant more large dams and irrigation schemes? What of the negative impacts of increased agricultural activity on other industries and the environment, including other export-earning industries such as eco-tourism based on the Great Barrier Reef, if the pollutants from farming are not managed better? What technological advances, in terms of making farming more cost-efficient and greener and cleaner, are on the horizon? What can we do to reduce wastage of farmed products? How do we seek to understand and respond to the changes in consumers’ preferences in food?

Throughout this book, key messages will be: don’t count on a constant rate of growth in demand for agricultural products, and don’t believe that our ability to supply these products is not severely constrained. A conservative ‘risk averse’ approach to the future is sensible.

This is an unusual book for the times. Most books dealing with natural resources tend to focus on the harm we are doing to them: polluting waterways, releasing ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, running down our stocks of minerals. Put the emphasis on humans living in cities and most books tend to focus on pollution (again), traffic congestion, slums (if in the poorer parts of the planet), waste disposal and water provision. What a focus on living in urban environments, clean or unclean, overlooks is that cities only exist because humans invented farming; surplus food allowed a wide range of new economic classes to form (merchants, accountants and bureaucrats) and enabled these people to form villages near but separate from the farms.

Today, more than ever, cities only remain viable because of agriculture. If we diminish our ability to grow food, our cities will shrink. Many city dwellers would be forced back to ‘the land’ in an attempt once again to grow enough food to feed themselves. That in itself might not be a bad thing where productive rural lifestyles are feasible. What would be a human disaster would be to fail to feed on an adequate basis a global population that will have increased by more than two billion in not much more than a generation’s time.

The remainder of this chapter is a mud (road) map of what follows. The book is divided into sections. Section 1, The big picture, deals with Australia’s role in as a major farming nation, able to export much of what it produces. Chapters 1–5 cover the gamut of matters that pertain to that role.

In Chapter 1 we go to the question of the extent of global demand for food. Why are politicians, farmers, scientists and environmentalists talking about ‘feeding the world’? The most obvious reason is that there is recognition that the global population is growing, and rather rapidly. The well-researched and commonly quoted increase is in the order of over two billion on top of the more than seven billion alive today. It is natural to ponder how these extra humans are to be fed.

If one is an Australian farmer, there is a good reason to focus on feeding, if not the whole world, at least some of it. We produce significant surpluses of many farmed products and send large quantities of grains, meat, seafood, wool and cotton overseas, much to Asia. And, of course, we all know that China is becoming rich rapidly and is taking to the quality foods we can supply. Diets are changing in China and in the better-off populations of other developing countries. This is to our advantage. Our farmers have an incentive to increase yields (to the extent that this is feasible) and benefit from increased exports. Feeding the expanding middle class in the poorer countries is not addressing the larger issue of food poverty in the world, but our famers can play a worthwhile, small part in the scheme of things.

In Chapter 2 we expand on the demand side, while remaining focused at the global scale. We select various countries to illustrate key points. Income elasticities are not the only measures we need to calculate and respond to. Substitution of foods as consumers become richer (red meats for white meats) or what economists term ‘cross elasticity of demand’ is something we will need to keep an eye on.

In Chapter 3 we turn attention to the supply side. Australian farmers won’t be the only ones to play a role in helping to feed an enlarged and richer human population. Not only will we compete with our traditional rivals, there are nations where farm yields are presently low but capable of significant improvement. They could become competitors. There are regions of the world where large areas of land are available for cultivation and likely to be opened up if prices increase sufficiently for farmed products, and if institutional and infrastructure hurdles in these countries are addressed successfully. The challenge for the future if we are set on increasing agriculture involves a choice: open up virgin and/or lightly grazed land for cultivation, or find ways of obtaining greater yields from existing farmed land.

We now come to Chapter 4, which focuses in broad terms on Australia’s opportunities and challenges. Australia’s population is predicted to grow strongly to be in the order of 35 million by 2050. If there is no increase in agricultural production in the country, this would leave a much smaller surplus available for export. However, the Australian farming community is not likely to be satisfied with its present level of production. For some time now eyes have been turned to the opportunities that a rapidly developing China provides. Australian farmers are optimistic that they can produce and sell more.

Chapter 5 expands on the matter of international trade. Notwithstanding that we live in a so-called ‘globalised’ world, much is not easily moved between countries. Money (financial capital) flows freely. What is of importance today are the trade rules that apply globally (that is multilaterally), regionally and bilaterally between trading partners. Other than international negotiations on addressing climate, there is nothing more complex and convoluted than bringing farm produce into a genuine free global market.

These five chapters set the scene for a detailed investigation that follows and the formulation of a blueprint at the end of the book.

Section 2, Biophysical limitations, focuses on the biophysical limitations on Australia’s agriculture and fisheries. A lucky land, we have called it. However, with the good luck of having virtually all possible climatic zones and associated environments from tropical rainforests to alpine snow fields comes the back luck of being an ancient continent with a flat landscape and poor soils over much of the continent. For such a large country, much of it is dry, deserts, in fact ten deserts.

So far Australians have made their luck by keeping the human population low. If we had 60 million people, a very small number for a nation the size of Australia, the best we could do at our present level of agricultural output is feed ourselves. There would be no surplus to export and earn foreign exchange. We would be a very poor country by world standards, a subsistence economy with nothing much to trade.¹

It is one thing to become aware of the need to expand farm production; it is a significantly different matter to get nature to come to the party. We have to work with nature, not against it, yet for much of European history in Australia, we have done the latter. This has come with an environmental and, often, economic cost. As we write, we are still learning how to farm in this ancient island continent of droughts and floods; we should add fires as the third natural attribute of the nation.

Chapter 6 is the first in this section of the book. Curtis Attard discusses climate and rainfall patterns before turning attention to how Australia farmers harvest and use water. The multi-purpose river diversion and water storage Snowy Mountains Scheme serves the nation well with both hydro-electricity and a vast irrigated area, but to be realistic it would not have got approval in the 21st century. Management of the Murray–Darling system is fraught with disputes over water rights. The most famous dam after the Snowy Mountains Scheme is the dam on the Ord River and numerous cost–benefit analyses suggest the Ord River Scheme was a very significant net cost to the Australian taxpayers. In no case has its annual revenue been greater than its costs. What Australia missed out on in terms of large rivers it makes up for in having an enormous supply of artesian water. Where successful bores have been drilled and the bore drains run non-stop, sheep and cattle can survive in the most miserable country.

Chapter 7 is about the soils of Australia; soils, water and climate combine to determine Australia’s future as an agricultural country. The country’s soils are old, shallow and often nutrient-poor. There are also areas, large by northern European standards, small by Australian ones, that contain excellent ‘black soils’. We discuss the negative impacts of cultivation if undertaken inappropriately. These impacts include the loss of soils via water and wind erosion, particularly where land is left bare between the sowings of crops or where overgrazing occurs. Then there are the problems of over-irrigation, waterlogging and salinisation. Less obvious but just as critical in terms of sustainability is the fact that plants harvested remove the elements from the soils that these plants used in their growth. We can consider this to be a form of mining the soil. Soil replenishment is required once yields fall. Soils rebuild at an incredibly slow pace, the rate of replenishment dependent on the base material and the weather patterns that play on it. We need to understand soil.

Chapter 8 describes Australia’s major fisheries on a state-by-state basis. These range from the species-rich, but production-limited, tropics to the cold-water fisheries with few species but large numbers of the individual species. Water temperature, sunlight, water depth, nutrient up-welling and major climatic shifts are to fisheries what soils, rainfall and sunlight are to terrestrial farmers. To complement wild harvests, farmed seafoods and aquaculture are discussed.

Having dealt with the fundamental biophysical characteristics of the nation, ones that will have a determining impact on our ability to increase food output, we turn our attention in Section 3, Human and political dimensions, to the human, technical and political dimensions of modern agriculture in Australia, and in particular to how these factors could impinge on efforts to increase production.

In Chapter 9 our focus is the protection of farm land. Farm land is under threat from spreading cities and, in some locations, mining. On these issues economics and economic power play crucial roles. Disputes are inevitable. In our seas, our fisheries are not under immediate threat although concern about land-based pollution and conflict between recreational and commercial fisheries is never far from the surface.

In Chapter 10 we delve into the pros and cons of genetically modified (GM) farmed products. The conventional terminology is ‘genetically modified organisms’ (GMOs). This is one of the most controversial issues we deal with. The benefits and costs of GMOs are contested on various grounds: the GMO companies’ control of farming, environmental spill-overs and philosophical perspectives relating to ‘authenticity’ are on the debit side, while on the credit side is the potential to expand production and feed more of the planet’s hungry.

In Chapter 11 we discuss the very large quantity of food that is wasted, starting on the farm and moving through the chain to the ultimate consumers. Rather than dealing with this matter on an aggregate scale, we focus on one of Australia’s better known industries, growing bananas. This study is the most detailed piece of research to date in Australia on farm waste and its related costs in terms of nutrition lost, greenhouse gases generated and economic costs. Who is to blame if food is not aesthetically pleasing, if a banana is too bent? We might not answer this question in this book, but it cannot go unanswered if food waste is to be addressed.

In Section 4, Australia’s agricultural export products, we explore the major types of agriculture in Australia, more precisely the products that are farmed and are likely to experience stronger demand, both in domestic sales and in Australia’s major overseas markets. Most attention is given to the more significant grain and horticultural crops, but nonfood agriculture is included in chapters on wool and cotton. This makes sense even though our focus is on feeding people. Wool and sheep meat are ultimately joint products, and cotton is a major competitor for land and water in Australia’s rural economy, as well as supplying cotton seed, a by-product of processing, to be fed to cattle and having other uses. Also included is a chapter on the utilisation of agricultural land to provide ‘green energy’ as a supplement to farming.

Chapter 12 is the first of our product chapters. Its subject matter is grain farming. While the major grains are covered, pride of place goes to wheat and rightly so, as wheat and beef compete for number one position on Australia’s league table of farmed products. Not only is wheat a major cereal in the domestic diet (the conventional Australian lunch is a sandwich, and toasted bread is for many a necessary complement to a bowl of cereal or eggs and bacon at breakfast), it is a very important export item. Sarah Blagrove, author of this chapter on grains, discusses a variety of other grain crops; barley and sorghum get special mention.

In Chapter 13 the topic is the beef industry. It was tempting to cover all our major livestock in this chapter, not just beef but also lamb, mutton, pork and poultry, but there are reasons to concentrate on beef. Chapter 16 does focus on poultry and Chapter 17 on eggs. In the case of sheep meat its proportion of the global demand for meat is small, presently at 5%, and expected to be 4% by 2030. Sheep meat is dealt with in Chapter 20, Wool, lamb and mutton. As Australia is not a major pork producer and is not likely to become one, we omit this meat.

Beef goes head-to-head with wheat as Australia’s number one agricultural industry. Where it clearly dominates is in the amount of land it occupies, in the order of 200 000 million ha. The beef industry is not all open-space grazing. Today there is considerable use made of improved pastures (sown with new grasses and fertilised) and feedlots to fatten cattle before sale. The modified pastures are in the higher rainfall and better soil country. Feedlots tend to be sited close to abattoirs and not too distant from ports.

Chapter 14 covers a lot of territory, both in geographic terms and in terms of the farmed products discussed. Its focus is Australian horticulture. Horticulture includes fruit, vegetables, nuts, flowers and nursery products. In as much as our interest is food, only the first three are discussed and even then most attention is given to fruits as they, at present at least, provide the best opportunity for expanding exports. That is not to diminish the importance of what was a unique Australian product until the Hawaiian farmers got hold of some cultivars, Queensland nuts (otherwise known as macadamia). Return from a visit to the US mainland and stopover in Hawaii. At the international airport in Honolulu chocolate-coated macadamias are the gift on display, offering to be purchased and presented to your family and friends back home in Australia. Many tropical Australian backyards featured a macadamia tree until a generation ago. Harvest your own at Christmas time. Crack them and, if mixed with chocolate is your preference, dip the kernel in heated chocolate. Eat when cool.

Chapter 15 takes us into sugar-cane country. Australia is a major player in the export of raw sugar. Brazil is the dominant sugar producer in the world, at approximately one-quarter of the annual global total of 180 million tonnes. Growing very close to the Great Barrier Reef, dependent on significant amounts of fertilisers and pesticides that are readily drained into creeks and rivers entering the Great Barrier Reef, sugar-cane growing has become of considerable concern for those charged with maintaining the ecological health of this World Heritage region. The sloshing of a variety of chemicals into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon is the most critical environmental issue facing Australian agriculture.

In Chapter 16 we deal with the poultry (or chicken) industry in Australia. In the global context it is a small industry, but it is able to supply the domestic market and sell very small amounts overseas. What is special about chicken consumption, globally and in the domestic market, is its very strong growth. In the rich countries, chicken meat has gone from a luxury item – the Christmas Day special meal – to the least expensive meat. Economies of scale have made all the difference. Both relative price and the promotion of white meat as healthier than red meat have driven demand, and to meet increased demand chicken farms have grown in size, further reducing price.

It seems right that a chapter on egg production follows a chapter on chicken meat. So we come to Chapter 17. Many an egg is eaten at breakfast. When we think of eggs it is usually in terms of how they are prepared – fried, boiled, scrambled or served as an omelette – for the morning meal. However, considerable use is made of eggs in cake-making, and the ingredients egg powder and egg pulp are not to be overlooked. Australia imports more of these processed egg products than it exports. There should be scope for import substitution.

In Chapter 18 we go back to the sea again. We briefly deal with the history of fishing in Australia, then come to the present day and our exports. Seafood is one item where imports challenge exports. Australians import well over half of the seafood they consume, and local fishers compete with cheap imported product. Looking to the future, again the seafood story is different from that of other foodstuffs. Demand for seafood will continue to expand in Australia, and at the same time overseas demand (the Chinese middle class again) will grow. Given our limited and basically fully exploited wild-catch fisheries, there is little scope other than large-scale aquaculture to meet increased demand. Seafood prices are bound to increase while demand knocks up against inelastic supply.

In Chapter 19 we deal with two more high profile Australian exports, milk and milk products. The Australian dairy industry has undergone dramatic change, with the small farms (running under 100 head) giving way to the much larger ones (of 500 head or more). Economies of scale are evident. While remaining family-owned, large farms employ managers and workers, making dairy-farming a business rather than the lifestyle it was from its inception. Recently robotic milking sheds have been introduced on some dairy farms, reducing the cost of labour. There is talk of large-scale, barn-based farming. And the Chinese are buying farms. Australian milk-based products are destined to become a major export success story.

Chapter 20 takes wool growing, lamb and mutton production as its topic. Australia has a vast herd of sheep today, even if much reduced from its heyday. The nation’s merino wool is still the best fine wool in the world, and its lamb is on par with its New Zealand counterpart. While sheep meat is not predicted to experience the dramatic rise in demand of beef, it will remain an important food both in the domestic economy and as an export item.

In Chapter 21 we tell the story of cotton. Growing cotton in Australia competes with food crops and grazing for land and water. It is an industry with a fascinating local history. During the American Civil War, with the blockade of the southern ports from which cotton was sent to the English and Scottish mills, mill-owners searched for alternative supplies. Cotton was grown during this period near what became Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. It failed. Today Australia ranks number four in the world in cotton exports. It is now grown on western plains on a scale that brings great economies. Some is rain-fed, but some is dependent on vast quantities of dammed water.

Chapter 22 is a case study of an agricultural region, rather than focusing on a product. The Atherton Tableland is a unique landscape, having magnificent World Heritage listed rainforests interspersed with some of the most productive farming land in Australia. It sits in direct contrast to the dry, desolate grazing land that comprises most of the Australian continent. On the Tableland, a farmer can wave to his/her neighbours. You might be running cattle; they are growing tropical fruits. In contrast, in the ‘Outback’ Australia, one can drive for hours to reach your neighbour’s homestead.

We come to the penultimate chapter, Chapter 23. In a book on agriculture one could wonder why devote a chapter that talks about ‘farming’ the sun and the wind. We do describe a group of wind turbines in the countryside as a ‘wind farm’, and likewise a cluster of solar panels (also in the countryside) as a ‘solar farm’. The former are becoming popular in the southern parts of Australia, particularly along the coastal region subject to the ‘Roaring Forties’. It is not unusual to see cattle grazing under wind turbines.

Rural solar farms will come about. As we write there are a small number of proposals in the approval stage. These cover land and deny other uses of it. The economic decision will be the opportunity cost of covering grazing land with paddocks of panels. One expects only poor quality land, in close proximity to feed-in power stations or sub-stations, to be attractive for solar farms.

Section 5, Towards a sustainable future, concludes in providing a blueprint for Australia’s role in feeding an increasing global population.

SECTION 1

THE BIG PICTURE

1

Feeding the planet’s growing population

T. Hundloe

Introduction

Sit back and hope for the best as Charles Dickens’ Wilkins Micawber would have us do, and Malthus will haunt the globe in a generation’s time.² The Rev. Thomas Malthus (see Box 1.1) had a major influence on Charles Darwin, who in the 1830s read the former’s book on doom and gloom, and in particular human population collapses through starvation. The fight for available food by the same species, rather than each animal species playing predator–prey in the jungle, was a fundamental insight contributing to Darwin’s development of the theory of evolution. The survival of the fittest was both intra- and inter-species. Humans were not excluded. A population with more people than could be fed would face dire consequences, not only for the starving but also for those seeking to safeguard their food sources.

As we race from a world human population of ~7.3 billion to in the order of 9.7³ billion in 2050, we must ask: how are we to feed these extra mouths? The Malthusian question is: does the planet have the resources and have we the intelligence to ensure that this number of people can be fed, clothed and housed? Of course, we must try. But that is not the answer.

An immediate halt to population growth is not possible, as at the moment there are simply too many young people in countries where large families are the norm and who will go on to produce offspring. This demographic imperative means there will be no significant slow-down in the growth of human numbers at least until 2050, maybe even further into the future.

So we are obliged to attempt to feed the vastly increased numbers. What will be the role of various countries? There are countries that at present are relatively efficient agricultural producers and major exporters. The United States, Canada, Australia and Brazil come to mind, although production capabilities in Brazil are less advanced. Can these countries up the ante? There are also countries with significant areas of potential farm land, for example South America. Then there are countries like Russia and some of the other ex-Soviet nations where agricultural production has declined from its level of the Soviet era, waiting for the establishment of the right institutional settings to reinvigorate it. In 2011 in Russia, the decline in area sown was 35%, equal to the total sown area of Germany, France and Spain, and the number of cattle had decreased by 65% (Schierhorn et al. 2014). There is immense potential for agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa, but a question mark hangs over the likelihood of that potential being realised. As Meredith (2014) relates, a religious divide between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian-animist south, tribal animosities, greed and corruption, lack of financial resources and an ability to borrow severely hinders development, in particular the building of the infrastructure required of modern agricultural enterprises. Renowned economist Jacques Attali, in his prediction of the future in a book appropriately titled A Brief History of the Future (2009, p. 117) comes to similar conclusions: ‘the African continent will… fail to become an economic player of global importance’. He argues that by 2025 Africa will be only able to feed 40 per cent of is expanding population. Forget feeding the world if you can’t feed yourself.

Box 1.1: Rev. T. R. Malthus

Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society (the short title) in 1798. His key message was that the human population grows exponentially, while food supply grows in a linear fashion. Malthus was a statistician, geographer and economist. He was misunderstood in his day by progressive thinkers. However, his view was no more radical than that of that famous economist Adam Smith, who predated Malthus in pointing out the link between food output and human population growth. Malthus was a friend of David Ricardo, who did not disagree with him on the need to manage population growth. Malthus had a fundamental influence on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in their development of the theory of evolution and an enormous influence on the liberal economists John Stuart Mill and John Maynard Keynes. Keynes ranked Malthus with the great economists. Ironically for Malthus’ pillorying by Marxists, China’s one-child policy was pure Malthus.

On the other hand, recommencement of agriculture in the presently derelict Russian fields awaits the appropriate financial incentives. Sooner or later, the Russians will do the sums on the rapidly increasing middle-class population in east and south-east Asia and take advantage of the opportunities.

Our own country, ‘clean, green’ Australia, is a superpower agricultural producer at the moment, but there are serious queries about our scope to increase production sufficiently to be a major player in meeting the increased global demand for food. Undoubtedly we will be a minor player. Where between minor and major will we sit? This is what this book is about.

The book strips back the rhetoric that asserts that Australia will be the ‘food bowl of Asia’, that we have vastly undeveloped agricultural potential if only we build a few more mega-dams and irrigate vast tracts of land. Australia has a key role to play, but not necessarily according to the wisdom of those who promote the cultivation of land where the rainfall is unreliable and the soils deficient. We will come to where our potential is, as well as point to the obvious pitfalls that lie in wait if we become over-confident in our agricultural abilities. A mildly conservative realism is our stance.

Feeding everyone

The starting point has to be a focus on global demand for food and global agricultural resources, most importantly soils and rainfall (water availability more generally), and the local and international transport and storage infrastructure that is required to move huge amounts of foodstuffs from where they are grown to where they are consumed. Just under one billion people suffer from severe hunger as we write. Add a further 2.4 billion needing to be fed by 2050 without increasing the food supply, and do your own arithmetic.

Domestic and international trade rules can both help and hinder the expansion of agriculture, particularly in the poor world. These are matters the global agricultural exporters (and importers) can work to progress through the World Trade Organization – still stuck in the Doha Round! Even if we solved these issues there is something more basic, more challenging and without an easy answer. It is the lack of money of the poor of the world. One gets to eat no more than one can pay for. It is not widely appreciated that the starving in the world today could be adequately fed if they had the money to purchase food. The planet produces enough food at a global scale to feed all at more than a subsistence level. Starvation and malnutrition are the results of inequality. Or, if you like, inequality is the cause of the dramatically reduced life spans of the poor, under 50 years in the povertystricken world, compared to the mid 80s in the wealthy countries. This equates to 30 years of lost life due to starvation, malnutrition, disease and failed governance. As the eminent 19th century economist John Stuart Mill argued, efficiency in production, a matter of sound economic performance, is one thing, but it has to be treated separately from an economics of distribution of the goods and services, including food, that are produced. This Australian farmers cannot fix.

Of all the experts, economists should be best equipped to work to make headway towards the welfare of all the planet’s citizens, not just the rich who have the financial capability to eat well – and in some cases, too much. The planet’s farmers obviously will increase the supply of food, but whether the increase is enough and sustainable are matters we will shed light on, if not answer conclusively.

Certain inefficiencies in farming, the over-use of water being one, are relatively easy to measure, document and fix. However, it will be necessary to be able to point to combined economic and environmental benefits of farming using minimal water before notice is taken. From a farmer’s perspective, the economic benefits will have to be made obvious. Where water is provided free to farmers or heavily subsidised by taxpayers, we cannot expect wise use of water. This remains the case in certain areas of Australia. Of course, water extracted from ever-flowing coastal streams could remain without charge in the future, particularly if the farmers pay for their extraction and ensure the water returned to the environment is free of residual fertilisers, pesticides and other pollutants.

Other reasons for inefficiencies, such as food wasted on the farm, in transport and at the wholesale/retail end, are also easy to measure and report on, but it is not obvious how to change the situation, particularly where the focus is on the consumer. The behaviour of rich consumers who can discard food without thought is not going to be easy to change. It is difficult to think of an economic disincentive (a ‘waste tax’ on the uneaten component of a restaurant meal) that would have public support, let alone be practical. Yet something has to be done to reduce the waste of food. It is not only the waste of food itself, but also waste of non-renewable fuels and fertilisers, as well as the labour and land that are used in farming the food that no one gets to eat, that needs to be recognised. Food would be much cheaper if the farmers could sell all that they grew rather than consigning large amounts to the waste bin because retailers believe consumers want, for example, perfectly round oranges, a fruit that nature has decided should not be round. The case of waste we illustrate in a novel case study (see Chapter 10).

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has done the sums on feeding the world. The global demand for food in 2050 (or, rather, ‘need’, so as not to confuse this with the economists’ concept of ‘effective demand’ where people have the ability, otherwise money, to purchase food to meet their needs) will increase by ~70%. A greater increase is required in grain production, which sits at present at a staggering 2.5 billion tonnes. The FAO says double this amount of grains will be needed. Grain feeds humans not only directly but also indirectly through grain-fed animals.

Much grain is grown to be fed to cattle and other livestock because humans in general are omnivores, eating as high as possible up the food chain. This would seem to be the dietary preference of most. Vegetarians are likely to believe that it should be easy to convert meat-eaters. Health. Ethics. Saving the planet. Dietary habits suggest otherwise, and the preferences of the growing middle class in the developing countries indicate it is not just time-worn tastes but a human trait to seek a great variety of foods, and to feed as omnivores.

In the very long term, if the price of land and fertilisers increase dramatically, it is possible that the high price of eating at the top of the food chain will change the dietary preferences of all but the wealthy. We will be forced into eating lower down the food chain.

Today, the vast bulk of vegetarians are so simply because they cannot afford meat. If, and when, these people become wealthier, they will seek out various meats. Feeding the world is a moving target. The richer one is the more meat one eats. At a high income level, for example that of middle-class Australia, meat consumption plateaus.

There are parts of the world where populations are large already and continue to grow rapidly, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, and where much farming is very small-scale and basically subsistence-based. Sub-Saharan Africa is a resource-rich region with water available in abundance if large-scale farming were to be attempted. Consider the Congo (Zaire) River. In terms of water discharge, it is second only to the Amazon. It winds through 10 countries, and if several dams were built (two exist) it has the potential to provide hydro-electric power for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa plus much water for irrigated agriculture.

However, the biological diversity values of the rainforests in the Congo River Basin suggest the need for considerable caution. So do existing land uses and customs. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is a large variety of ecosystems, from dense rainforests to the extensive savannahs (valuable to local people in their capacity as cattle herders), to land available for village gardeners. Massive changes in farming culture, let alone agreements among the mosaic of tiny and large countries that are Sub-Saharan Africa, would be needed if this part of the world were to develop agriculture along the lines of the industrialised countries.

Some suggest that this, the 21st, is ‘Africa’s century’. However, as already pointed out, various matters stand in the way of this: political and religious tensions (often leading to war), corruption, ineffective institutions of governance, tribal land ownership, inadequate transport infrastructure, and lack of financial capital. Because of these constraints, and no realistic model on which to base forecasts, this region’s future is unknown and unknowable.

Of course, this need not stop one from guessing. It is possible that large amounts of foreign investment in both agriculture and related infrastructure will bring the economies of scale that will allow Sub-Saharan Africa develop its own self-sufficient food supply and, following that, produce a surplus to sell in foreign markets. How investors could justify this is not obvious, as Jacques Attali’s gloomy prediction of 2009 suggests. It is just as likely that rich nations with excess financial capital and concerned for their own food security will invest in Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim of developing large farms to produce exports to the investing country. At present coffee, cotton, flowers and tobacco are obvious examples. In this case no more than ‘trickle down’ benefits go to the local populations. This is an element of the ‘dependency theory’ advanced by various economists – the idea being that the wealth of the rich countries is dependent on the poverty of the poor.

Getting rich and changing diets