A conference was held in Melbourne this week to discuss the sustainability of the food industry globally, against a background of escalating global commodity prices and rising concerns about the future ability of the world to feed itself. It was hard to escape the conclusion that many of the proposed 'solutions' to improve food sustainability would seem likely to make future food insecurity much worse.

The conference brought together a range of farmers, food industry people, academics and environmental groups. Some keynote presenters painted a somewhat cataclysmic future in which pestilence and starvation become a constant threat as the world runs out of resources and can no longer produce sufficient food. Issues like Peak phosphorus, peak oil and peak water were raised as real and present threats, with peak phosphorus in particular gaining plenty of attention. Interestingly, little notice seemed to have been paid to the latest US Geological survey results, which indicate that the currently known and accessible global resources of phosphate rock will last for almost 400 years at current utilisation rates - which are actually declining in most developed nations. 

The farmer presentations to the conference painted a completely different picture, with discussion of the dramatic revegetation that has occurred in the Australian farming landscape over recent decades, the enormous and continuing improvements in water, fertiliser and input use efficiency, and the continuing increases being observed in animal and plant production levels, despite an almost 20% reduction in the area of Australia used for farming. It seemed almost as if the keynote speakers exist in a parallel but unconnected universe to that inhabited by farmers!

The mood of the conference appeared to be that solutions lie in casting aside the economic paradigm that currently prevails in the food industry, and completely transforming the food system to remove multi-national corporations, do away with artificial inputs, and promote smaller-scale and local production with 'people' - presumably consumers - in control. The thinking of many seemed to be that a food system driven by profit is undesirable and unsustainable in the future.

Exactly how this future food sector might be controlled and managed was left unclear, although there seemed to be a strong mood in favour of government control and regulation. It was hard to escape the conclusion that this future food industry sounded a lot like some centrally controlled and planned international food industries that have been trialled in the past, and that were less than successful in securing necessary food supplies!