Food Security In Australia

The Earth's population is currently estimated at 7.5 billion people and is increasing at a rapid rate. With no signs of population growth slowing down and an ever-increasing demand for food, food security is arguably one of the biggest challenges facing the global community today. To meet the current demand, agriculture sectors around the world have implemented the use monoculture, a practice employed to improve farming efficiency and yields, but at time causes damage to the environment. For the purpose of this essay, global food security is a term that refers to the supply of food in a sustainable manner, and its accessibility to individuals. Sustainable is defined as a method that does minimal or no impact to the biodiversity and can be practiced

Although Australia is an arid country and has faced severe water shortages, it remains a major food exporter (Ejaz Qureshi, Hanjra and Ward, 2013). Approximately 40 per cent of Australia’s agriculture takes water from the Murray-Darling Basin (Ejaz Qureshi, Hanjra and Ward, 2013), making it arguably the biggest asset to Australia’s food security. However, challenges from climate change could have a severe impact on the Australian agriculture industry, as seasonal rainfall could alter or reduce and temperatures in that area rise, which would pose an increased strain on the water supply. It is predicted that the impact from climate change could result in water scarcity in the region, from increased and longer periods of drought (Ejaz Qureshi, Hanjra and Ward, 2013). Despite all this, Australia’s agriculture continues to be globally competitive as a result of low cost and economically efficient farming policies and practices (Gourley and Ridley, 2005). The environment suffers due to these economic policies as profits are placed before environmentally sustainable practices. Farming regions along the Murray-Darling Basin have transitioned from traditionally family farms to large scale monoculture plantations producing mainly cotton and wheat (Thompson, 2011). As a consequence, the ecosphere following the Murray-Darling basin has drastically changed as vegetation is removed and sustainable

Ethiopia’s agriculture industry for example, is threatened by the effects of climate change as it has predominantly rain-fed monoculture plantations of sugarcane, corn and coffee (Beza and Assen, 2017). Because Ethiopia’s existing agricultural policies encourages large-scale agricultural investment in the arid and semi-arid lowlands, Western companies have introduced monocultures Beza and Assen, 2017). The expansion of farming in these areas has meant that there have been unstainable practices of land use occurring, for instance, the use of large-scale irrigation and chemical fertilisers (Beza and Assen, 2017). This is problematic due to the varied rainfall in Ethiopia as it has three different climate zones, each determined according to its elevation as it lays between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer (Ethiopian Treasures, 2003). It has been predicted that droughts and floods will be more frequent and severe, creating even more implications for Ethiopian farmers as water becomes more scarce and expensive given that 80 percent of farmers live on less than $2US per day (Maxmen,