More Mouths, Less Food
Have you noticed fewer cows and lambs in the fields? Australia's domestic food production is not keeping pace with our population growth. The drought played its part, but the decline has been going on for some time and our reliance on imports has been increasing markedly.
Thankfully, we still produce most of what we eat within Australia. Agricultural production totalled $48 billion in the year to June 2010, that's about $2,175 per head of population. That compares with just $8.5 billion in food and live animals imports --- about $380 per head of population.
The bed news is that domestic production is in relative decline. Over the last 20 years the value of agricultural production per head has increased by 13 percent --- well below the rate of inflation --- whilst imports of food and live animals has gone up almost 3.5 times, five times the rate of inflation (measured using CPI).
Fruit and vegetables account for 18 percent of our imports, with the value of these imports having grown 370 percent in the last 20 years. Dairy and cereal imports have grown more (by 5.6 times and 8.5 times respectively) but the major change has been in meat imports. In the year to June 1990 Australia imported $21million in meat products --- 20 years on that figure has risen 27 times to $565 million.
Perhaps not surprisingly, if we're importing far more meat, and producing less of our own, as you'd expect, we're also exporting far less. We exported $14.2 billion in meat products in the year to June 1990 --- that figure fell 55 percent to $6.3 billion in the year to June 2010.
The agriculture industry in NSW and Victoria has been hit the hardest over the last two decades. Revenue has fallen about 25 percent in each state (not adjusted for inflation) whilst the growth in WA (up 40 percent) has not been enough to keep pace with CPI (which went up 70 percent over this time). The only real growth has been in Queensland, which nudged slightly over CPI (growing by 80 percent) and now accounts for almost a quarter of all agriculture (up from 19 percent in 1990).
Presumably, this is simply a reflection of arable land in the south being replaced by houses and industry. It's not necessarily a bad thing if it simply reflects a restructuring of the economy. Agriculture is increasingly playing a lesser role in the growth of our GDP, whilst in the last year more than a quarter of our economic growth came from mining and 13 percent from banking. If we're to let our agriculture industries continue to slide it would be nice to see a broader diversification of production to replace it --- you know, manufacturing stuff. Or we could just wait till the mineral boom is over and then look at the issue.
In the meantime, next time you throw some meat on the barbie, there's an increasing chance it'll come from overseas. Another slice of mad cow anyone?
ABS Data sources:
- International Merchandise Imports, Australia, October 2010
- International Trade in Goods and Services, Australia, September 2010
- Australia National Accounts: State Accounts, 2009-10
Read more By The Numbers articles by Phil Dobbie here.