TFGA article - A city-centric view leaves our food security under serious threat I imagine that if you asked Australians where they believed the majority of the total value of the nation’s goods and services was produced most would say the mines in WA and Queensland or the vast farmlands of this Big Country. Well, they would be wrong. Its in the cities. According to a report just released by the independent think tank, the Grattan Institute, 80 per cent of the value of all goods and services produced in Australia is generated on just 0.2 per cent of the nation’s landmass, mostly in the cities. “Today, cities are the engines of economic prosperity,” according to the researchers. This may look like a statement of the bleeding obvious. However, it is not that straightforward. The Grattan Institute defines economic activity as the dollar value of goods and services produced by workers within a particular area. It thus comes as no surprise to discover that economic activity is concentrated most heavily in the central business districts and inner areas of large cities. According to the report, the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs generated $118 billion in 2011/12, almost 10 per cent of all economic activity in Australia, and triple the contribution of the entire agriculture sector. And they did that from a combined total area of just 7.1 square kilometres. The Sydney CBD alone produced $64.1 billion worth of goods and services: about $100 for every hour worked there. The businesses in these areas provide intellectual and highly specialised services such as funds management, insurance, design, engineering and international education. They employ highly skilled, tertiary trained individuals, who live next door to other highly skilled, tertiary trained individuals. In WA, the brain power within the Perth CBD spreads itself across all sectors, notably in manufacturing and mining with a strong representation of accountants, administrators, geologists and specialist engineers. However, it could be argued that, while these inner city businesses have been churning out the invoices and creating frequent flyer points for their customers as they pay, they don’t actually put food on the table, in the literal sense of the phrase. What do these people eat and where does it come from? The Grattan Institute says that, a century ago, one in three workers was employed in primary industry, and almost half of the population lived on rural properties or in towns of less than 3000 people. By 1960, manufacturing had grown to make up almost 30 per cent of GDP and employed one in four Australians, with a big presence in suburban areas. “A great reshaping of Australia’s economic geography is underway,” it says. “The nation has moved from prosperity coming from regional jobs in primary industry a century ago, to suburban jobs in manufacturing after World War Two, to city centre jobs in knowledge-intensive businesses today.” The particular problem that the think tank is highlighting is the increasing urbanisation of Australia, the spread of the outer suburbs, away from these very concentrated areas of most feverish economic wealth generation. “For the sake of the economy and the fair go, we have to find ways either to enable more workers to live closer to these centres, or to reach them more quickly by road and public transport.” Which rather glosses over the rather basic question – what do people eat and where does it come from? Australian farmers produce about $40 billion worth of food each year and export about $30 billion worth. The food industry accounts for 1.68 million people, or 15 per cent of total employment. But we’re up against it. In 2010, a Senate select committee found that there is intense competition for land producing food from housing development, hobby farms, forestry, biofuels and mining, “making the price of agricultural land so high in some areas that it is not economic to grow food”. It said: “Australian governments need to give serious consideration to mechanisms for protecting our most fertile agricultural land from alternative uses in the interests of our long term productive capacity and food security.” There are lessons for all of us in this In the long run, everyone needs to eat. Hard-nosed economists would have us disregard this truth. They believe the market will solve everything and, if we’ve got enough money, we’ll be able to buy whatever food we want from producers in other countries. Good luck with that. When it comes down to survival, history shows people will fight to protect their own food supply. As recently as 2006, the pasta riots in Italy proved nothing has changed. Where will that leave us when we have allowed Australian farmers to be driven out of business? We have to give serious thought to where our priorities lie – before it is too late.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 02:49:12 +0000
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