JAKARTA POST (23-01-2015) YOUR LETTERS: FOOD PRODUCTION IN ASEAN, AUSTRALIA The following two letters refer to the article, “Get ready for future crisis in food production in Southeast Asia” (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 17) by Goh Tian and Jonatan A. Lassa. Very little rice leaves Indonesia’s borders as the country does not really export rice. Indonesia imports around 3 million tons of rice annually, mainly from Thailand and Vietnam and a little from Australia. Indonesia has been striving to reach rice self-sufficiency for several decades and simply, Indonesia’s consumption and demand for rice surpasses what it can produce. Having already achieved rice self-sufficiency, Australia was exporting an excess of around 460,000 tons of rice to 60 countries around the world, but mainly to the Middle East, US and several countries in Asia. Extreme weather has affected crops in Australia, including in the Riverina area, but farmers have been adapting. Keep in mind that Australia is a very large country, and when one area is degraded for crowing a particular crop another area elsewhere in Australia becomes more suitable for growing that crop. Flooding in 2012 certainly affected rice production in the Riverina area, but rice is grown mainly in three areas in Australia, recently expanding to the state of Queensland, particularly for the specialty Koshihikari rice crop, which is used for sushi and has seen rising exports to Canada, the UK, Southeast Asia, South Korea and now Russia. Since the 2012 floods, Australia has produced more rice than it consumes. In Australia, the annual official figures for rice are calculated from March to February. Australia is expected to export around 475,000 tons of rice in 2015, up 3 percent from the 460,000 tons exported in 2014 thanks to a production increase. Australia is expected to produce 894,000 tons of unmilled rice (around 644,000 tons milled) in the 2015-2016 period. It can be concluded by these figures that the Australian rice-growing industry is not collapsing as a result of climate change, but is rather adapting to it. Eddy Saf Jakarta The fact remains that the main crop-producing area of Australia is stressed. One fortunate bounce-back should not be taken as evidence of successful adaption on its own. The main rice crop-producing area in Australian remains centered in Deniliquin in the Murray Darling Basin, an area under intense environmental pressure. The author used the collapse in rice production from temperature (probably water shortage) as a warning for what can be expected in future. As the tropical zone enlarges, the temperate zone below it is being pushed south. South of Australia is nothing but ocean. But even before that extreme case is reached, the amount of suitable available land for crops will shrink rapidly. Early movers in the “adaptation” stakes are wine producers, some of whom are in the process of moving to Tasmania. This small island has neither the land area nor sufficient soil type or topology to accommodate all of the main lands’ cereal crop production. One of the issues for Indonesia is the loss of rice and farm land to speculative and ill thought land “development”. Large areas of once productive land are being converted into housing. Where I live the majority of houses in these estates are empty. This conversion process is essentially irreversible. The land is filled in with low quality top soil, rock and construction site waste.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 09:20:27 +0000
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