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Makanan 'selalu' menjadi permaslaah utama dunia

Food 'bigger issue than climate change'

SIMON JENKINS
October 12, 2009 - 12:34PM

AAP

Dealing with the prospect of food shortages in the next 40 years is a bigger problem than climate change, a Senate inquiry has been told.

With the world's population expected to reach about 9.2 billion by 2050, coupled with food demand growing at one per cent per annum, the requirement for food will roughly double by mid-century, academic Julian Cribb says.

Professor Cribb outlined his concerns to the Senate's select committee on agricultural and related industries during a public hearing into food production in Canberra on Monday.

Under current projections, five billion people will face water scarcity by 2050, and Australia won't have enough water to sustain food in 25 years time.

Adding to the mix, a quarter of arable land around the world was degraded in some form and global stock of good farm land was declining about one per cent each year, Professor Cribb said.

Yet more than half of all food produced and about three quarters of all nutrients were being wasted.

"This is the problem of our age, it is more immediate than climate change, it's going to happen a lot faster than climate change," the former CSIRO National Awareness director told the hearing.

Climate change was, of course, a part of the issue, he said.

"But the real impact of this is going to be upon us within a generation."

Professor Cribb, now an adjunct professor at UTS in Sydney, did offer a glimmer of hope.

"Our cities are immense traps of water and nutrients, huge quantities of water and nutrients pour from these places and we, generally speaking, chuck them out to sea.

"So if we can trap even a part of that water and nutrients and recycle it back into agriculture and other nutrients, we're stemming the haemorrhage."

Australia needed to see it as an opportunity, and not a waste disposal activity, Professor Cribb said.

"It's a big industry that we could have here if we wanted to."

However, it would take 25 years to develop technology before introducing it to farms.

"So we've only just got enough time to do something about this."

© 2009 AAP
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