Food

Peak oil will have major ramifications on food security for our citizens and on Tasmania’s farm sector. For backgrounders click here and here.

Peak oil & Tasmania's food security.

Jan 012011

by Sandra Murray

Most people are familiar with the term ‘national security’ but relatively few are familiar with ‘food security’.

Food security means more than relieving hunger. Put simply, it means that all people have enough to eat at all times in order to be healthy and active, and do not have to fear that the situation will change in the future.

It means that sufficient food is physically available, accessible and affordable¹ and envisions local cooperation, self-empowerment, and advance planning as the ideal ways to ensure healthy, consistent nourishment for everyone².

Often considered an issue only for poor or developing countries, food insecurity also exists in Tasmania today and is likely to be as high, if not higher, than in other Australian states. Over 64,000 Tasmanians, or 13% of the population live on or below the poverty line³.

Existing food security challenges combined with challenges caused by looming oil depletion (peak oil) are likely to mean huge escalation of food prices and reduced food choice. It means that we will need to take a leap from our reliance on industrial grown, processed and transported mainland food to engaging with locally grown food.

This shift will demand tremendous lifestyle changes for many of us who are used to drive-thru fast food and purchasing out-of-season fruit and vegetables shipped, trucked and flown thousands of kilometres to our nearest supermarket.

Understanding the impacts
Climate variability (flood and drought) may be already having a major impact on availability, affordability and continuity of our food supplies. Combined with Peak Oil the likelihood of a food crisis happening in Australia now appears very real. A recent report by the PMSEIC Expert working group warns that nationally we can expect to see years where we will import more food than we export and supports the need for a coordinated national strategy to prevent this⁴.

In our state both the Tasmanian Food Security Council⁵ and Tasmania Together 2020⁶ state the importance of Tasmanians having access to good food. This means that regular supplies of locally grown basic food staples, for Tasmanian consumption, such as grain and cereals, some varieties of legumes, lentils, fruit and vegetable (often sourced from interstate or internationally) should be our priority, especially if Tasmania is to become more self-sufficient and more resistant to the challenges that lie ahead.

Building resilience into our food security.
The first steps our Tasmanian communities can take to peak-oil proof our diet is to get local.

In most regions of Tasmania, community groups are already starting to put the goals of community food security into practice. As awareness of peak oil grows, many are starting to understand the meaning of a post-oil future. Their efforts include establishment of community gardens, farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, permaculture groups, food justice movements, and relocalization initiatives. In an oil-deprived future, ventures such as these will be the keys to community health and survival.

Local government needs to play a key role by supporting and helping to develop locally relevant, integrated and long-lasting strategies to address community food security challenges⁷.

We need to create a Tasmanian food future based in diversified farming, thriving social enterprises, and expanding community food systems: from backyard gardeners to Community-Shared Agriculture could be our future.

We need to create an alternative local food system that can withstand systemic shocks based on the principles of resilience, fairness, democracy and sustainability⁸.

References:

Global Food Security and Australia.

Peak Oil and Community Food Security.

A Social Inclusion Strategy for Tasmania.

Australia and Food Security in a changing world.

Tasmanian Food Security Council. (2009)

Tasmania Together Plan.

Food For All Program.

Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance Manifesto.

(Sandy Murray is a dietitian and lecturer at the University of Tasmania. She shares and promotes the benefits of eating local food and is a passionate supporter of community gardens, the Tasmanian farmers and encouraging people to grow their own.)

Peak Oil and Tasmania’s farming sector

Jun 252010

by Robin Krabbe

Oil depletion will impact heavily on Tasmania’s farm sector. Rising prices of inputs will translate to increased food prices and decreased supplies of food through the market, worldwide. The cost of chemicals and fertilisers – a major cost for many farmers – is directly linked to the price of oil.

Fertilisers are the biggest consumers of fossil fuels in agriculture and, if they cannot be produced commercially using renewable energy in amounts sufficient quantities, oil depletion will ultimately have a major impact on the price and availability of virtually all foodstuffs.

Understanding the impacts
A huge amount of information relating to the non-sustainability of large scale monocultural agriculture from a number of aspects can be accessed on the internet , including the impacts of peak oil and climate change.

To help understand the implications of peak oil and climate change on agriculture, it will be helpful for we citizens to discuss these issues with each other and to get involved with local groups – in particular environmental groups who are concerned about these issues. Sustainable Living Tasmania Tasmania in the South, the Launceston Environment Centre in the North and the North-west Environment Centre in the North-West are examples. They are all helping communities understand the impacts of oil depletion.

Building resilience
The good news about addressing peak oil and climate change is that our responses can deliver positive effects for individual and community health and well-being. And for environmental health. Even if peak oil and climate change did not exist, there are many other spin-off benefits to building reliance at the individual and, very importantly, at the community level too.

Producing food communally has many social, environmental and economic benefits.

In the agricultural sector there are two key responses in agriculture to peak oil and climate change. Both involve win-win processes for both human health and environmental health.

2) A focus on local production, to reduce the use of fossil fuels in transporting food and other agricultural products.

Local production (you will start to hear the term relocalisation being used) involves much closer feedback loops – meaning that we have vastly increased knowledge of what inputs are going into our food production, and therefore enhanced control over how our food is grown.

Sustainable agricultural techniques also have the benefit of reducing external inputs. For example, organic, regenerative, low-input, and/or closed loop farming, is typically more labor-intensive, and one way of sourcing the increased labour is from urban areas, necessitating a shift of the workforce from highly populated urban areas – eg from Hobart to less populated rural areas, such as Western and North-Western Tasmania.

In addition, carbon sequestration tends to occur at particularly high levels in organic systems, therefore agriculture is one of the most effective strategies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Reference:
Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply by Richard Heinberg. This is an excellent summary of how unsustainable agriculture evolved, and gives some good pointers on restoring sustainability.

(Robin has worked for the CSIRO and the Department of Primary Industries Victoria for 17 years. She is completing a PhD at the University of Tasmania, investigating the impact of community food networks and community currency systems on socio-ecological sustainability.)