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Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

reuters.com

41–45 of 45 posts

Re: Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

#41
post #40
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should fear famine. The biggest issues with global warming or famine, are the wars they will cause. If large prosperous nations cannot obtain food, that is, no one has food to sell, then those nations will take food. At whatever cost. If they do not, then such a nation will tear itself apart from within. The options are, take from others, or take from your fellow citizens. This is the reality, and no amount of ho…

You're absolutely right about the path to war. This is why famine and access to fresh water are my two biggest worries when it comes to our climate change driven future.

Even softer changes due to climate change are worrisome.

Imagine if ocean currents shifted, which keep Northern California up into BC warmer, and the UK and other parts of Europe warmer.

That's a lot of farmland changed.

The inverse could happen too. Instead of no longer bringing warm water to those coasts, cold water currents could arrive. You could have snow in Norhern California for most of the year, even while the rest of the planet warms.

So many variables.

Canada has immense amounts of bog thawing, and bog/swamp is very fertile land. But it's still further North, which means short growing seasons, and too much sun for some plants per day.

We should be creating crops which can handle those conditions, even if just through normal breeding.

Ah well.

Re: Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

#42
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it also gets turned into biofuels or sent to third-world countries as food aid. That could easily be rerouted in a crisis scenario, if domestic food security became an issue.

The corn that gets turned into biofuel isn't edible without further processing into maize derived products, so in a crisis scenario, hope you can still highly process corn.

You can turn it into animal feed.

Re: Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

#43

Score one for anti-protectionism.

Many of Australia'a agricultural markets are isolated by strong biosecurity/quarantine restrictions. Not subsidies, but a form of protection nonetheless. There are even internal borders- transporting produce across state lines is usually restricted.

Re: Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm. Maybe that helps. Land is a huge expense in places with high population density (e.g. India). Australia also produces a huge amount of high-quality mangoes. In the desert. Respect. They're very very strong on water management.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Arable farm land is very expensive here.

Land the western australia wheat belt sells for less than $1000/acre. Is that very expensive?

Re: Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

#45
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of corn and soybeans, there is a really good reason why they are grown so much: Because that's where the market is. It is what people want to buy. They are the most competitive and highest value crops in the regions they are grown. Given the fact that they're subsidised, I doubt that they're the most competitive crops. Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised. Also, if they're so competitive, then…

> Given the fact that they're subsidised, I doubt that they're the most competitive crops. Every crop is subsidized. > Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised. Then no crop is competitive, so what is this alternative product that you are picturing? Stones? Who is going to buy those stones? > then why has the demolition of USAID caused them economic harm? John Deere's stock price is basically at its highest poin…

> Every crop is subsidized.

Then there is no free market, so the real value of any of those crops can't be determined.

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