It seems the media has been full of stories about the dangers to farm land from mining and foreign ownership over recent days, but strangely the media seems to take a completely different attitude to what is perhaps the biggest reason for the disappearance of farm land - urban expansion. 

Media interest in foreign ownership of Australian farm land has been quite strong over recent weeks (see here and here and here), and the issue is also alive and well in New Zealand. There has also been a lot of coverage of the conflict between miners and farmers over access to farm land for coal mining and coal seam gas extraction. (see here and here). 

However, the issue that is perhaps responsible for the greatest removal of farm land from production - urban expansion - seems to be covered by the media in a completely different manner. Stories over recent days about the NSW Government moving to fast-track the rezoning of land around Sydney for housing made no mention of the potential impact of an expansion of urban areas on the availability of productive farm land in the Sydney Basin. Perhaps its because urban expansion brings the potential for cheaper housing prices and construction jobs - both pretty popular to urban readers!

Whether or not Australia needs better policies to protect agricultural land from competing uses will be the subject of a forthcoming conference organised by the Australian Farm Institute in Sydney, in late May, 2010.