two population booms on earth: people and animals to feed them: Slim pickings: Ross Garnaut

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October 2, 2008 8:06:45 AM PDT

EarthFirstAlert

[EF!] two population booms on earth: people and animals to

feed them: Slim pickings: Ross Garnaut

earthfirstalert

 

Slim pickings

 

Matthew Warren | October 02, 2008

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/

0,25197,24431870-11949,00.html

 

 

THERE are two population booms on earth: people and animals to feed

them. The human population is approaching seven billion and is expected

to reach nine billion by 2050. In the parallel universe of farms and

feedlots, there are more than 30 billion animals bred to help feed them.

02oct-garnaut

 

Ross Garnaut's report signals significant shifts in our agriculture and

eating habits.

 

World food prices have risen sharply off a combination punch of rising

incomes in developing China and India, and aggressive US policies

supporting the development of biofuels linking grain prices with oil

prices.

 

Increased consumption of proteins -- normally through meats -- is one of

the first rites of passage of the new entrants into the world's middle

class, ahead of buying a car, a washing machine or jockeying for places

in the nearest private schools.

 

The World Bank classified about 5 per cent of the world's population as

making up the global middle class in 1960. Today it is more than 8 per

cent, or 600 million, and predicted to double again by 2030.

 

Rich people celebrate their affluence in a number of ways, but first and

foremost they eat meat. In 2002 per capita consumption of meat in the

richest countries averaged 94kg a year. In the poorest countries it

was 9kg.

 

Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million

tonnes in 1999-2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is

set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

 

But meat production is resource intensive and ruminant livestock such as

sheep and cattle generate substantial amounts of methane, a potent

greenhouse gas.

 

Wayne Myer from the CSIRO estimates there is somewhere between 50,000

and 100,000 litres of water in each kilo of beef. Although this

measurement is over-simple, it depends more on where the water comes

from and what other uses it might have.

 

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about 18 per

cent of global greenhouse emissions come from livestock production.

That's more than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world.

 

Tuesday's final climate change report by Ross Garnaut covers the

well-trodden debate over energy generation and cost, but has also

signalled big changes in Australian agriculture and therefore the future

of the foods that we will eat.

 

Agriculture is expected to be brought into a national emissions trading

scheme by 2015, allowing time for the evolution of sufficiently robust

reporting and auditing systems. This, coupled with the tightening supply

of water in the Murray Darling Basin, means the environmental

externalities of food production will be increasingly internalised in

scarcity and price.

 

Garnaut has signalled the possible decline of sheep and beef meats that

are relatively greenhouse and water-intensive, to less environmentally

expensive sources of protein such as chicken, pork and kangaroo.

 

Coincidentally, it is National Vegetarian Week in Australia. The global

financial rollercoaster has overwhelmed the modest program of

coast-to-coast meat-free barbecues and cooking classes celebrating

vegetarian week, to encourage Australians to reduce the amount of meat

in their diet, both for health and sustainability reasons.

 

The Australian Vegetarian Society points to an impressive list of

celebrity vegetarians including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Drew

Barrymore, Steve Martin and the most unlikely vegetarian superstar of

them all, rock star Meat Loaf.

 

AVS director Mark Berriman points to the resource-intensive nature of

farming practices needed to sustain this growth in meat consumption,

claiming farmed cattle and even fish consume about 16 times their body

weight in grain or fish meal.

 

He hopes Australians heed the rallying cry of Rajendra Pachauri,

chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who last

month suggested people give up meat for one day a week to help address

climate change.

 

" It's possible, " he tells The Australian. " It's just people getting used

to eating less and less meat. "

 

George Wilson from Australian Wildlife Services has another idea:

kangaroos. In August he published a contentious paper proposing the

reduction of sheep and cattle numbers in Australia by 30 per cent by

2020.

 

This would cut Australia's greenhouse emissions by 3 per cent and allow

the kangaroo population to be ramped up from 30million to 175 million.

Kangaroos have a faster digestive process than conventional livestock,

and it produces almost no methane. They also consume less water and have

a gentler impact on fragile Australian soils.

 

Wilson points to the herds of kangaroos regularly seen on golf courses

around Canberra as testament to their gentler tread. " You couldn't

imagine anyone tolerating a herd of sheep or cattle in the same way, " he

says.

 

The big challenge with managing kangaroos as livestock is allocating

property rights. They have little respect for fences. Wilson is

conducting aerial surveys of kangaroo populations in southwestern NSW to

try to devise ways of allocating shared property rights to landholders

in a region who would share the proceeds of harvesting. That's an even

more radical step for a naturally conservative farm sector already

eyeing with caution the looming headache of being part of a national

emissions trading scheme and its consequences.

 

Kangaroo meat was legalised in South Australia in 1980 and has never

been technically illegal for consumption in Tasmania. It has gradually

trickled into mainstream supermarkets across Australia, but more as a

boutique or novelty product (kanga bangers) than in direct competition

with established red meat varieties. About 70 per cent of meat from the

3 million kangaroos harvested each year is for human consumption, and

about 70 per cent of this is exported.

 

Australia's food industry acknowledges the continued rise of more

environmentally friendly sources of protein such as kangaroo and chicken

as part of a greater diversification of the sources of protein in the

Australian diet in the decades ahead.

 

Australian Food and Grocery Council deputy director Geoffrey Annison

says, assuming continued growth in living standards and subtle shifts in

climate, there is the possibility of changes in the macronutrient on our

plates. " There may be less beef and more chicken, given the footprint is

smaller, literally and figuratively, " he says. " There could be more

emphasis on plant protein so we could be using legumes a little bit

more.

 

" It's possible there might be one or two completely novel sources of

protein, such as taking soy bean protein and presenting it in a novel

way in the form of meat substitutes. They're already available, and are

relatively high quality, but they could become improved or more

popular. "

 

Significantly, Annison suggests the changes are likely to be subtle

rather than radical, as food technologies work harder behind the scenes

to maintain a supply of fresh and familiar foodstuffs to our plates. He

points to the evolution of salads and other green vegetables in plastic

bags that are now a mainstay of supermarkets across the country.

 

Annison expects the development of sensor technologies to help growers

decide when is the optimal time to pick or harvest a crop, or warn about

insect infestation. He also expects higher value-added production using

glasshouses and other technologies to produce higher value foods such as

strawberries or mangoes in the event that they suffer sustained declines

in production from changes in climate or water scarcity.

 

" Food in the future will be very much like the food we are eating now.

It will taste very much like the food we are eating now, it will

comprise of the same sorts of components, " Annison says.

 

Radical technologies have had a chequered history in the food supply

debate to date. In the 1970s the concept of developing single-cell

proteins for consumption was explored, using petroleum as an energy

source, but was discounted on economic grounds.

 

The idea of producing artificial meat has been around for more than 70

years, and while patents have been issued on some technologies, the idea

has still not been effectively commercialised. In 2005 researchers from

the University of Maryland claimed they could grow meat in test tubes as

part of trials conducted for NASA.

 

" You still need to get the carbon and the nitrogen from somewhere, and

you've got to have a mechanism to assemble them into proteins, and

basically living organisms do that better than any artificial system.

 

" And that's going to be the case in 30 years' time, but maybe not in

150, " Annison says.

 

Genetic modification of crop varieties to improve yields or tolerance to

pesticides has been roundly attacked by some environment groups, yet it

may end up being part of the solution. GM canola trials being completed

by Australian growers for Monsanto are understood to be showing

significant yield increases, with the multinational food technology

company committed to doubling corn, soy and cotton yields by 2030. " If

we are to feed a population expected to increase to nine billion by

2050, agricultural biotechnology will have to form part of the solution

to feed a growing population, using sustainable farming practices and

decreased resources, " says Monsanto chief executive Hugh Grant.

 

The moratorium on GM canola was lifted this year in NSW and Victoria,

with 108 growers ready for their first harvest early next month.

Monsanto say growers are reporting early germination, more robust

plants, less sprays and excellent plant vigour.

 

In a recent paper on the restructuring of Australian agriculture, John

Williams from the Wentworth Group says consumers increasingly want the

full environmental costs and effects of production factored into

commodity prices, without necessarily knowing what the outcomes will

look like.

 

He says concerns over the growing use of " food miles " reporting reflects

the rise of partial and marketing-driven indices in the absence of a

more comprehensive measure.

 

" Unless markets have a strong call and drive for food and fibre products

to be produced according to such a standard, the cost of continued

degradation of natural resources will not be paid by the consumer but

will remain a hidden subsidy that eats into our environmental assets, "

he writes.

 

Williams advocates a push to farm-gate certification schemes and

comprehensive product labelling that reward growers and use the market

to drive more sustainable farm practices. " It is the key to a

sustainable agriculture of the future, " he says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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