IRONICALLY as an abundance of sausages, bacon, eggs, cereal, fruit and milk was served at a breakfast panel discussion at Melbourne’s Stamford Plaza last week, the key topic was food security.

As waiters brought out large trays from the kitchen of each of the major agrarian food groups, around 50 paying guests from various backgrounds attended the event; ‘The Supply Chain’s Role in Australian Food Security’.

Hosted by the Rural Press Club, representatives from various industries included farmers, Field & Game, Local Government and media.

The panel line up included Victorian Farmers’ Federation (VFF) president, Emma Germano, Bayer managing director of crop science, Warren Inwood, and NSW farmer and international researcher, Dr Leigh Vial, moderated by The Weekly Times’ deputy editor, Camille Smith.

The takeaway message was far and away that food security should underpin all government policy, but instead was often well down the list of items brought to the table.

Ms Germano has been the VFF president since 2020 and is a third-generation farmer. She lived up to her introduction as being passionate about leading conversations on key issues - including food security, sustainability and climate resilience.

She said farmers too frequently faced a plethora of pinch points all along the supply chain including bushfire, diesel shortages, floods, border closures, and said it was alarming that Australia lacked a substantial food security plan.

“The supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” Ms Germano said.

“As we’ve become a richer country, we’ve probably forgotten about (food security) a bit.

“It is just outrageous we don’t have a food security plan in this country.”

She said the notion of farmers being cognisant around food security had been lost down the generations and that they were less inclined to be conscious about it today.

Ms Germano’s grandparents migrated from Italy in the 1930s where they had five potatoes to share amongst eight family members. She said that level of consciousness of having enough food to eat and feed your family had been lost over time through decades of post-war economic growth and development. 

“Now, we are more business-oriented in the system of supply and demand,” she said.

“(But) we have bounced from one disaster to another without stopping to think about the risk to agriculture and the resilience of agriculture long term.

“We almost waste the crises.”

Ms Germano lamented the short political cycles in Australia and how governments moved too quickly onto the next thing depending upon media cycles.

She also said government had too many overlapping “portfolio tensions” in trade, employment, water and environment, as well as navigating geopolitical pressures.

“(National food security) is a whole of government responsibility,” Ms Germano said.

“Sure, we grow enough food for 70 million people - yeah - until you can’t get fertiliser the next day.

“The war in Ukraine - we saw how fickle the actual supply chain is and for us to not have (a plan) mapped out … from a national security perspective - we need to think about geopolitical tensions - we couldn’t have imagined the war between Russia and Ukraine and the trench warfare - yet here we are.”

Dr Vial is a 30-year veteran in the rice industry and has been heavily involved in rice growing in the Riverina and with international programs in research.

When asked if he felt Australian farmers were concerned about national food security, he said that like all members of a capitalist society, most were just trying to make ends meet.

Dr Vial quoted 1700’s Scottish philosopher and author of ‘The Wealth of Nations’ who said “we all act according to our self-interest and as such produce a result for society”.

“I don’t really perceive that farmers are distinctly acting to produce food security - they are running their businesses as best they can,” he said.

“Certainly, farmers in the developing world are closer to the coal face - where food shortages and malnutrition are issues.”

In responding to the periods of drought over the last two decades, Dr Vial said farmers were more focused on presumptiveness of drought and assuming wider variations in production.

“The politics of water had seen too many reforms with little outcome,” Dr Vial said.

“We’ve had wave upon wave of water reform - up to about half a dozen water reforms and each time there is not enough reference to the previous rounds of water reform,” he said.

“There is reference to what the environment needs … what towns need, but you don’t hear about food security talked about.

“It’s all according to philosophy and political reality, but food security is not referenced.”

Dr Vial said with ongoing geopolitical issues and all sorts of intrigue and fluctuations in natural resources, it was safer to assume there would always be drought.

Bayer’s Warren Inwood has spent most of his career working in agricultural science and technology, including overseas, and brought a global perspective to innovation and was passionate about investment in local agriculture.

He said technology played a pivotal role in the supply chain and tackling food security.

Mr Inwood said his company had a strategy to combat challenges on inputs and that governments needed to better understand and support further innovation along the supply chain.

“That’s critical,” he said.

“Over the past 30-40 years (the world’s) population has gone from 3-8 billion and is only going to continue to increase.

“So, any further gains we can make at the farm gate level … is going to be a substantial contributor to producing more, off the same land,” he said.

Mr Inwood said innovation and technology were only part of the equation.

“The reality is, Australian growers are not on the same level playing field as other growers around the world,” he said.

“I’m not suggesting we should have subsidies (like the European Union or United States) but our farmers are competing in a very competitive environment.

“Innovation and technology - must be relied on to remain competitive”.

When speaking about impediments to innovation and technology, Mr Inwood said “one of the biggest limitations is the cost of research”.

“If you look at the global Ag chem market - 90 per cent is generic and off patent,” he said.

“From a grower standpoint of view that’s a good thing - (but) the reality is, long term, that has a strong chance of reducing the rate of innovation. 

“In a capitalist society, revenue and profit promote innovation and research and development.

“You need a stream of revenue to foster that innovation.

“But in reality, it’s harder to find safe affordable products for growers, and regulatory frameworks are (making it) very challenging to register those products.”

Mr Inwood felt the most vulnerable points along the supply chain were the vulnerabilities in climate and cropping patterns which created uncertainty and challenges in forecasting. 

He said offshore manufacturing was also crucial to inputs for Australian farmers.

“Most of the production of raw and active ingredients comes from Germany or the US,” he said.

“That’s a long way to Australia and that’s a real challenge in the supply chain.

“There are so many interdependencies in that supply chain to get product from active ingredients to formula and to farm gate as fertiliser or crop protection inputs.”

“That volatility brings uncertainty and challenges and a lot of risk taking.

“Lead times on active ingredients can be 18 months to two years.

“So, when you are forecasting that far out, that becomes really challenging in terms of predicting what the market and growers want.”

Mr Inwood said the other significant impediment was accessing skilled labour to run research plants and that Bayer made that as part of their submission to the government inquiry.

“For us to be seen as a reliable export partner - we need access to skilled labour,” he said.

Ms Germano queried the relevance of government legislation drawing a distinction between skilled and unskilled.

“Who cares - we just need more people,” she said.

She said the other point was that 75 per cent of people already working (on farms in Australia) were Australian.

Ms Germano also made the point that Australia needed to be geostrategically mindful of “dredging the Pacific of their able-bodied men and women”.

“Two thirds of the world’s trade pass through a small part of the world,” she said.

She said conversations were too limited on the issue.

Ms Germano said on the one hand there needed to be focus on international diplomacy around recruiting a significant number of participants from the workforce in the Pacific, as their governments were unlikely to be happy about it. 

She said, on the other, the media and or public needed to be less bothered about “one worker going missing”, and if there was an instance where some have been underpaid - that doesn’t mean “they’re all being exploited”.

Mr Inwood said the point about bringing in workers from the region, and not just the Pacific, but also from South East Asia, was that for many years their food security was about accessing fertiliser and water, but now it was more about labour productivity.

“You’ve got smaller farm holdings deciding if they will work and earn $4 per day or do (they) head to the city to work for $20, or head to Australia for more?” he said.

He described recently seeing agronomically exquisite terraced rice production fields in East Timor and plenty of water, but said it was barely producing anything.

“Young people have left, and the older generation have looked at the metric and thought - it’s not worth it,” Mr Inwood said.

Ms Germano said the region was connected to us and we had a responsibility to build productivity and not just trawl the region of able-bodied people.

Collectively the panel agreed that too much focus on policy in Australia was about ideology.

Ms Germano felt that while the younger generation genuinely cared about where their food comes from, often debate around it descended into ideology.

“In a lot of countries religion and culture traditionally underpin decision making but we don’t have that in Australia - so people go looking for ideology,” she said.

“Inner city people are moving more and more green.

“Either we are catering to the far right or far left.”

“The proposed ban on exporting some ingredients in the EU was a major concern for Australian growers,” Mr Inwood said.

He said this policy was based on ideology, it was “quite arrogant”, that it was not based on science and their proposal meant they’ll resort to imported food.

Mr Inwood said it was very concerning that EU’s overall production and inputs would decline and that they wouldn’t be replacing those products, upon which Australian agriculture relied so heavily.

“Another country is essentially dictating what products or innovations we have access to and can use,” he said.

“Fungicides and herbicides are on that list (of proposed banned products) which will absolutely impact productivity in Australia and have knock on effects.”

Mr Inwood said through the export bans - poorer countries would also lose access to vital chemistry to produce affordable nutritious food.

“Our government needs to stand up and demonstrate leadership and push back because it will have far reaching effects on humanity and especially food security,” he said.

“We need to tell the story about Ag and what great caretakers we are of our land and the contribution to food security,” Ms Germano said.

“Many of our farmers are really good at sustainable farming and want to pass that (innovation) onto the next generation.

“The majority of the community is for us - but they do not necessarily understand. 

“Especially with so many mixed messages and the political reality of the whole thing shifting to the left (and) all governments care about - is votes.”

Ms Germano cited the example of the live export debate and that ideology underpinned the decision to phase sheep exports out - not animal welfare.

She said the narrative ignored important aspects of the debate including the success of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System.

“If you cared about animal welfare - do you not care about live exports from (other countries)?” Ms Germano asked.

“It’s not commonsensical - people on the street understand that - but they’re not influential in the media.” 

She said it was the same story with caged and free ranged egg markets with an inquiry focusing intently on ideology and as a result, eggs went up to “$20 per dozen … and we are now importing caged eggs from Singapore”.

“We are talking about ideology and if the industry does not start connecting with hearts and minds, we are going to miss the market and we won’t be influential,” Ms Germano said.

“We need to be talking about food security - we have to focus on the most important thing - every single conversation should come back to food security.”