Is Food Security A Threat?

"It’s life or death.”

That is what Dr Joakim Eidenfalk, a security studies lecturer at the University of Wollongong, says when asked how important food security is. It is something that so many Australians rarely think about, heading to one of the huge supermarket chains or the local fast food joints whenever they’re bored or sad or celebrating – because there is the luxury of having food for more than just survival.

According to the Australian International Food Security Research Centre, 805 million people go hungry every day. Dr Eidenfalk says, “It’s important, there is no doubt about that, but it is going to get increasingly important. We’ve only seen the beginning of it, that is my personal view.”

Closer to home, what happens when Australia’s food supply when the oil runs out and the climate changes completely?

That is the question that Liz Morgan, PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning at Macquarie University, sat down to answer when she embarked on her PhD, before breaking it down to researching the role of local government in food security in Western Sydney.

“The conventional food system is broken. We just can’t do food the way we have been for the last century,” she explains.

The idea seems dystopian, almost Hunger Games-esque, that in our lifetime we would be without a regular food supply. That is a problem for the year 3016. However, Elizabeth cites an incident in Lockyer Valley in 2011. The region experienced flooding, which left them with food and water shortages.

“They were air dropping in food!”

It seems foreign, but the effects of climate change and tapped out resources aren’t just fears for developing nations. It is one for Australia and its agriculture industry as well. A new book published by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) suggests that if Australia insists on trying to be ‘the world’s food bowl’ there may be some dire situations.

“We’re close to being at our optimum production. Our yields are very high, and that means we would struggle to improve our production,” said Tor Hundloe, co-editor of Australia’s Role in Feeding the World, to ABC Rural.

It is expected that in 2050, the world’s food production will need to increase by up to 70% in order to feed the estimated 9 billion people that will walk the earth, and if these comments are correct and currently 805 million people are currently hungry, it seems as though these figures don’t add up.