Probably totally unrelated but why does Australia import so much seafood given our rich resources and our export quotas of such product ? Is our reliance on imported seafood products a result of unbalanced international agreements or as a result of our internal green regulations stifling our ability to produce for ourselves and exports given we have the best managed fishery's in the world ?
"Probably totally unrelated but why does Australia import so much seafood given our rich resources and our export quotas of such product ?" Every time a professional fisherman heads to sea the greenies go MAD! While he out at sea trying to make a living, the greenies are working to lock up ever more of the fishing grounds as "world heritage" or somesuch. Not sure we export all that much except for Tuna, and that is doomed I think. OC
Because Australians demand sweatshop prices these days and feel that Australian producers are ripping them off and so prefer imported products. They prefer to pay for fish caught in the Mekong delta and to eat prawns that are fed on powdered abattoir waste and excrement from strip farms in Thai mangroves.
The misunderstanding of what's going on in the world is astounding. No wonder we end up with the idiots in government we do. The fishery has to be protected so it can continue to produce. If you exploit it too much, it produces less. It is a balance. As for some other comments to my posts..............We consume and service each other. Fix teeth, mow lawns, sell TV's, wire houses, build houses. To fund this completely and utterly unsustainable model, we sell Australian assets (whether privately or government owned that money ends up in the economy). We also populate with rich migrants. So, if anyone can tell me how this can end well, I'd love to know what their logic is. All I ever get is attempts to discredit what I say with semantics like, "oh that was in a drought"....or......someone trying to discredit Katter http://www.politifact.com.au/truth-...-three-eight-years-australia-will-be-net-imp/ Have they considered yields halving in the next 35 years? Have they considered our population doubling over thirty years? What are their credentials? What stats did they use?........AND............What about the question someone posed......"What does it matter if we become net importers of food?"....... TOO FUNNY.......We are so entitled we forget other countries are not there to serve us, we need to trade with them. If there's nothing left to trade.....WE STARVE....Get it? As for our wages. They will worse than halve as the rest of the world sources resources elsewhere. None of it is rare (EXCEPT FOOD). We are in for one hell of a shock in the near future.. Everyone knows we earn double our competitors right? All funded by everything I've already stated............... It's simple. We earn too much, do too little, consume too much, sold too much, populated too much....and now our own kids will pay the price for our generations' largesse. Not very fair huh?
We have no shortage of arable land. IF you are correct and food prices increase rapidly that'll be the trgger needed to move scarce factors of production into producing food. The economy will move from subsidising impoverished farmers by doing other things to doing more food growing and less other things. Nothing cures high prices like high prices.
I agree. There is a limit to all that too though and don't forget yields halving and population doubling.....Two EXTREMELY significant factors.......... I just wonder why we want to put ourselves in that situation, to me it's mainly the electorate not understanding where we are at and politicians getting away with running an economy by spending the future. There's been bugger all hard ship in two generations and most people think this is how the rest of the world lives. In reality, Australia is a tiny opulent oasis among global chaos. There are hundreds of millions of people to our north living in terrible poverty. I've seen it myself, very sad....... Simply, there are too many people and we are about to make that exact mistake in addition to selling our farms. It''s so dumb; it defies all logic. The problem with crash's is they do exactly that, they crash...... You don't see them coming, and then BAM.....We will get there, I just hope it happens after I've left the planet and that my loved ones are wise enough and resourceful enough to be okay......Mark my words, there will be rich in Australia that continue to gorge themselves while others around them starve, just like most of the rest of the world is doing right now. The irony is, the dumbest people will be affected the most and they're the ones voting for the idiots leading them to the slaughter. What a world huh?
The article you linked to said that isn't even going to happen. This alone puts a big question mark about your whole argument. You are also assuming that the yields will decrease year on year on year for 35 years --- a situation very not likely to happen.
WTF? The article I linked was because someone asked to link a source for my assertions. The declining yields and population projections are accurate and the genius's aren't considering these when they ride off Katter. Google it yourself.... https://www.google.com.au/#q=australia+net+importers+of+food AND then add the extra problems of population and declining yields BOTH ARE FACTS, NO ONE WANTS TO CONSIDER BECAUSE IT SUITS THEM NOT TO.
"a situation very not likely to happen." What? As a scientist I can tell you it's very much more likely that decline in yields will accelerate. Painful and definitely easier to pretend otherwise but very true. We are doomed and it's the ignorance of Australian voters that's taking us there.
Can you actually provide a link to the science underlying your declining yields assertion? Doubling population can readily be accommodated. Prices will drive both supply as well as people's diets into completely different areas. There is no shortage of potential biomass production for human foods. (There is a plethora of local and international Government interventions and supply chain disruptions that can prevent many viable opportunities from being exploited, however, but that's a completely different issue.) Are you RC logging onto the forum under a new username?
"Doubling population can readily be accommodated."..........We are poles apart in our views. All the leading ecologists in the world including Flannery and Suzuki, say we have a sustainable pop of about 9 million. It's not just about food. It's transport, roads, waste, water......Why are we doing it? and don't say to provide for an aging pop because that is BS. We are importing a mirror of our present demographic. It's a scam to give big business more profit that will bring us all down.
You yourself agreed there was no shortage of arable land so by itself that supplies enough food except if yields decline significantly (still waiting for your evidence). Transport infrastructure and the like exist because of the very large efficiency improvements associated with cities which actually reduces waste, materials and energy requirements per capita. Price driven diet changes toward veganism or even incorporating insects (like the Thai etc) are other very easy ways of sustainably feeding more people with the existing land committed to food production. Incorporating more science into crop production for substantial benefits is still possible even in capital intensive production systems like we have in Australia (cf Yield Prophet for a "basic" tool) and much of the rest of the world has significant catch-up to do to even match our levels.
Yeah. Flannery is a form of paleontologist, and Suzuki is a marine biologist, isn't he? They have no training in 'climatology' which when I did my learning was not even invented.
I'd also like to see what you're read/heard that claims agricultural yields will drop so dramatically. Do you think all the agricultural sector experts in animal husbandry and crop improvement have retired and not passed on their skills? My friends who are farmers are doing Ok, no yield problems there. Have you ever watched Landline. The things you say about yields are straight out of 'The Silent Spring' which was written almost 50 years ago and has proven to be very wrong. We've had a very long discussion on SS a few months ago about world population. Some people believe, myself included, that population globally is on a plateau as developing nations get richer and their new middle classes have fewer children. The West is already on a plateau, only pumped up by us importing the productive young people of the developing world as immigrants to the detriment of their home countries. You're very combative and seem to take no criticism. We're all strong willed on this forum, butting heads with absolutely everyone who questions you and implying everyone but you is wrong on everything won't lead to you making many friends. When I joined the forum I spend weeks reading and absorbing the actual silver and super and actual stacking/investing information here before I threw my weight around in the Markets and Current Affairs sections. There are a lot of financial problems coming on the horizon but I think you're exaggerating everything. Please take this as constructive criticism.
They have relevant credentials. Far more than the consumer driven businesses and politicians driving population growth at our detriment.
