This story is about the impossible challenge of feeding a growing world population while staying true to net zero emissions targets.
Back in 2009 as part of the slow march towards net zero the European Union moved to mandate that all vehicles must swap to a mix of 10% biofuels by 2020.
This kicked off a strong surge in the demand for Australian canola which saw prices hit more than $1000 a tonne.
By all accounts Australian farmers had hit the jackpot and the biofuels gift was set to keep giving all the way to 2050.
What could go wrong?
Something strange happened in June this year when two of the world’s most bullish emissions reduction advocates, Germany and Britain, panicked at the huge spike in grain prices and called for temporary waivers on biofuels mandates to combat soaring food prices.
Funny how a spike in prices sends politicians backtracking on their past commitments.
Why, because the record prices we have been getting for canola were flowing directly into the cost of living and the European voters were not happy.
Voters in wealthy Europe don’t just react angrily to the souring price of power and fuel but also to a rapid rise in the price of food.
So let me map out what the world is facing as we track towards 2050 with a growing global population that likes to eat.
Last year the world produced 3.4 billion tonnes of grain which, when divided by 8 billion people, works out to be about 425kg per year per person or roughly 1.16kg per head per day.
The UN tells us that by 2050 we will have added 1.75 billion to the world’s population to take it to 9.9 billion people and at the current 425kg per head my calculator tells me we will need not 3.4b tonnes but closer to 4.2b tonnes of grain.
But as around half the harvest is consumed by livestock and most of the world is getting richer by the day, these people will want to eat meat which means we will need more grain to feed more livestock.
In the past 50 years, global meat production has tripled while the worlds population has doubled and the formula is not changing, as we get richer we eat more meat.
Today, annual meat consumption in India is 4kg, Africa 13kg, Egypt 26kg and China 60kg.
If we lift the global population by 25% and they are all 25% wealthier in real terms that 4.2b tonnes is likely to be closer to 5.1 b tonnes, or 50% above today’s global grain production.
This could in fact be much higher. Australians consume 121kg of meat and Americans 124 kg per annum so that 5.1b tonnes could in reality be 6.8b tonnes as a growing middle class can consume vast amounts of meat, dairy and eggs.
So, we could well end up having to more than double the globe’s current annual grain production in the next 27 years?
Is this possible?
Well, since the 1970s, yields have doubled on average so that today the global wheat average sits at about 3tn/ha, rice 4tn/ha and corn 5tn/ha.
With the right genetics, chemicals, fertilisers, broadacre efficiencies, precision agriculture, aggregation of small farms plus cropping more of the world’s better pastoral lands then 6.8b tonnes is possible.
Add to that, currently only India and the United States use more than 10% of their land mass (11% and 10%) for arable farming, with Russia at 8%, China 7%, Brazil 5% and Australia 3%.
With the right price incentives and the removal of environmental restrictions we could again pull out the dozers and chains and open up vast new areas of farm land in South America and Africa.
Even here in Australia, at $1000 a tonne for wheat we could quickly put that 100,000 ha of Esperance land that was surveyed off ready to be cleared back in the 1980s into viable farm land, not to mention add vast areas of the Great Western Woodlands.
I can hear the screams of anguish now.
The problem with the loud wailing about land clearing and the environment is it drowns out the cries of hunger from the quarter of a billion people who eat one meal a day.
The wailers are the same voices that remain selfishly quiet when it comes to the implications of the emissions reductions policies they demand our politicians roll out posthaste.
They are the ones who call for more action on climate change but have nothing to say about the 200,000 people a day (80 million a year) that are joining us on planet earth over and above the ones that are leaving us.
To put this in context 200,000 extra mouths at 425kg a year is 85,000 tonnes of additional grain we need to produce a day over and above existing production for the next 27 years.
At an average 2tn/ha that means someone needs to clear an additional 42,500 ha a day for arable farming or find productivity improvements of the same magnitude.
For those who don’t believe in chasing the gods of yield, or are reluctant to accept the merits of GM crops, or think we should ban ag chemicals like glyphosate then they either don’t care about the impact of land clearing on the environment or they don’t care about hungry children or both.
This takes me to the decision by our elites to address what Kevin Rudd called the globe’s greatest moral crisis which is climate change.
The difficult question these elites keep avoiding is how do we marry up the competing demands of reducing emissions in agriculture with needing to grow more food to feed hungry people or people who want to eat more meat.
Rabobank tells us the global agreements signed to achieve net zero by 2050 will mean that our carbon emissions from grain production will need to be reduced by 50% in today’s production numbers and by 80% by 2050.
No one has told us how this will be achieved other than the Greens who are the only honest brokers out there. They are calling for an end to all coal and gas production in Australia and moving immediately to renewables along with steep carbon taxes.
They are refreshingly honest, just as they honestly don’t care about the implications of such policies if enacted globally on the poor and the hungry.
Mind you, the subsequent famine would quickly put an end to the global problem of overpopulation as it rebalances the world to be in tune with net zero emissions.
While the Albanese Government has not told us what their policies will mean for Australian grains and livestock farmers, we do know it has to mean some form of carbon cost added to fuel, fertiliser, chemicals and transport via emission caps on inputs?
In combination, these could see Australia move from a net exporter of grain to being barely self-sufficient.
Don’t believe me, then just look at the Netherlands government’s climate change policies which will see its livestock numbers reduced by about a third as a result of its carbon taxes.
Note that the Netherlands is the globe’s second biggest food exporter by value after the United States.
To address the concerns of a very angry farming community the government has recently announced the introduction of a government program to buy out small farms which can’t manage the carbon taxes. The farmers are still not happy.
Canada’s greenhouse carbon tax currently at $35 will increase by $15 a year to reach $170/tn by 2030 which will see most farmers paying a hefty premium for their fertiliser, chemicals, transport and fuel.
The global green movement would no doubt like to see similar policies enacted in every country.
With most of the world signing up to net zero targets we have to reduce our farming emissions footprint by about 2% a year while at the same time growing our annual production of grain by the same amount.
Something has to give.
My guess is at the first real sign of price and political pressure, those 2030 and 2050 targets will be ignored by most of the developing world. In fact, all indications are few if any countries will achieve their targets, including Australia.
Out of interest, today only Bhutan is on target for net zero. For those who don’t anything about Bhutan, think yaks in the Himalayas.
The political reality is I can’t see big wheat producers like China 133m tonnes, India 101m tonnes and Russia 73m tonnes giving a rats about past emissions agreements if it means cutting grain production and forcing up food prices.
Certainly, after what we saw with the Arab Spring revolution in 2010 and Sri Lanka recently, governments know how hungry people are not particularly interested in the views of their elites when their bellies are empty.
So, to circle back to the beginning, remember how easy it was back in 2009 for the EU to mandate 10% biofuels but by 2022 as the prices of grain went through the roof, they quickly moved to drop the mandate.
My guess is we will be seeing a lot more walking away from 2030 and 2050 emissions targets, otherwise we are going to be listening to the cries of many more hungry people.