Introduction: The food security problem in Australia

Abstract

Australia exports more than half its agricultural production by volume, and participates in addressing global food insecurity through food aid and technical assistance on agricultural production for developing nations. However, some Australians are food insecure and poor nutrition is responsible for about 16 % of the total disease burden and implicated in more that 56 % of all deaths in Australia. The two overall and closely linked concerns in Australia are food security and food sovereignty; improving the diet of Australians and maintaining its own capacity to produce and deliver healthy diets. These concerns are not easily resolved because of the dependence of the food system on high demand resources such as fossil fuels, fertilizers, water and productive land and the need to maintain profit in the system. There is also a growing appreciation that Australian agriculture is likely to be profoundly affected by climate change and the political response to climate change. Four reasons for taking immediate action on these concerns are suggested. There are moral (human rights to food) and economic (having a productive workforce) reasons and two practical reasons; as a rich country Australia has the ability to experiment to find better arrangements within the social-ecological system, and trends in the external drivers such as population growth, resource costs, and biodiversity decline indicate that these concerns will grow. These four reasons suggest there will never be a better time to try new arrangements to get improved outcomes for Australians and the environment that supports them. New arrangements in the social-ecological system need to address three major issues; people's access to food and equity, about how food is produced and traded, and how the land use planning processes could protect the long-term viability of food production, particularly around major Australian cities. The chapter concludes with a summary of each chapter in the book. The chapters are grouped into three sections that address the major issues in food security and sovereignty in Australia; (1) food equity and access, (2) food production and trade, and (3) land use planning.