Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity(reuters.com) |
Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity(reuters.com) |
Norman Borlaug
Nobel Prize lecture [0]
[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture...
I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.
Overpopulation isn't a thing.
other countries would be wise to adopt that, but there is zero chance of that happening.
We now have a very internationally competitive agricultural sector, but yeah, getting there caused a lot of pain.
Until they can't import food and can't feed their people
Then pursue whatever strategy gets you there.
Not sure about this year but either two or three years ago over 90% of the University of New England’s grant money (over $20MM) was from the School of Agriculture
I hate many aspects of the Australian economy (especially our lack of economic diversity) but having world-best tech for farming isn’t one of them. America is still leaps and bounds behind us in many different subdomains of Agriculture and Mining
Australia is weak for only really having primary industries, but we sure are very optimised for it
Land is a huge expense in places with high population density (e.g. India).
Australia also produces a huge amount of high-quality mangoes. In the desert. Respect. They're very very strong on water management.
Mangoes are not grown in the Tanami or Great Sandy Desert. They're not grown around Kalgoorlie (that relies on piped in water from far, far away), etc.
Mangoes (Mangifera indica) are predominantly grown in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and when combined, produce approximately 95% of the total national crop. Mangoes are also grown in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
crop map: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/resources/resources-libr...
The areas they are grown have tropical rainforest (Qld), vast Wetlands (those parts of the Northern Territory with fresh water crocodiles, swamps, etc), annual monsoons (Kimberley), etc.
But yes, we do have on point water management.
A) They're not growing mangoes in the desert. B) They're pretty fucking terrible at water management, google the Murray - Darling and learn you some Australian water management.
Australia is vast and empty. In the interior, rivers are few and far between and the landscape is flat and featureless. Any 'free' land is going to be essentially desert. Even if you could grow something on it, you wouldn't want to live there.
You can buy and sell x-year leases from the crown. Any with a commercially viable site sell for just below or even more than freehold land (depending on supply)
Farming logistics also works radically differently than in America: the reason our farms are orders of magnitude higher larger than American ranches spatially is because it’s only somewhat profitable at the largest possible scales
The valley I’m from originally (The Tweed) is cane country, and not a single company is viable independently. Hell we only have one mill left nationally that’s not-megacorp owned (note we have no land leases though, it’s all freehold where I’m from)
If large prosperous nations cannot obtain food, that is, no one has food to sell, then those nations will take food.
At whatever cost.
If they do not, then such a nation will tear itself apart from within. The options are, take from others, or take from your fellow citizens.
This is the reality, and no amount of hope or wishful dreams will change that fact. People will not let their children starve.
This is why famine and access to fresh water are my two biggest worries when it comes to our climate change driven future.
Imagine if ocean currents shifted, which keep Northern California up into BC warmer, and the UK and other parts of Europe warmer.
That's a lot of farmland changed.
The inverse could happen too. Instead of no longer bringing warm water to those coasts, cold water currents could arrive. You could have snow in Norhern California for most of the year, even while the rest of the planet warms.
So many variables.
Canada has immense amounts of bog thawing, and bog/swamp is very fertile land. But it's still further North, which means short growing seasons, and too much sun for some plants per day.
We should be creating crops which can handle those conditions, even if just through normal breeding.
Ah well.
Why? Because they've always grown it. So the subsidies encourage them to keep on growing it instead of diversifying into more competitive or higher value crops.
But what is significant about insurance? Since no good discussion is complete without a car analogy, let's go there. Say you always drove a truck. By your logic, auto insurance encourages you to keep driving trucks. Which suggests that if you could no longer get auto insurance, you would start driving a bus/van/car/whatever instead. But what makes you think that? If auto insurance disappeared for some reason, why wouldn't you still keep driving trucks as opposed to buses/vans/cars/whatever? There is probably a reason why you started driving trucks in the first place that doesn't go away even if insurance did.
In the case of corn and soybeans, there is a really good reason why they are grown so much: Because that's where the market is. It is what people want to buy. They are the most competitive and highest value crops in the regions they are grown.
Given the fact that they're subsidised, I doubt that they're the most competitive crops. Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised.
Also, if they're so competitive, then why has the demolition of USAID caused them economic harm? A competitive product doesn't rely on a taxpayer subsidised buyer to make their market.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/1232435535/how-usaid-cuts-hur...
(Not that the subsidies are always actually the most sensibly set out: but the general idea of subsidizing farming is an important one)
Maybe originally, but not anymore. Exhibit A: See America's waistline and the reason behind it (hint: farm subsidies and SNAP, two sides of the same coin).
Every crop is subsidized.
> Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised.
Then no crop is competitive, so what is this alternative product that you are picturing? Stones? Who is going to buy those stones?
> then why has the demolition of USAID caused them economic harm?
John Deere's stock price is basically at its highest point ever. What economic harm are you talking about? When they are warning of imminent bankruptcy, then we can talk about there being economic harm. Some people sitting around complaining about something being different isn't real economic harm, just talk. Actions speak louder than words.
Then there is no free market, so the real value of any of those crops can't be determined.