DOES Australia need policy to preserve prime agricultural land in order to become the next food bowl of Asia?
Western Australia's agricultural lobby organisations, grower groups and regional shires have been saying yes to that question for years, and now a review undertaken by the Australian Farm Institute (AFI) has uncovered the same answer.
"We can only go by what the statistics tell us and there are no useable statistics on how much agricultural land is being lost to competing interests and foreign owned farming companies each year," said AFI executive director Mick Keogh.
As the AFI saw it, everybody from miners to environmentalists, overseas investors and urban developers feel their particular interest in land should have priority and that farmers should make do with the land that's left.
But while that debate raged on there was also the ongoing discussion about the need for a 70 per cent increase in food production to feed an increasing world population.
While the AFI questioned what those pressures might lead to in the future, the independent farm policy institute also decided it was time for Australian policy-makers to have a good hard think about future farmland management policies.
The AFI also suggested it might be high time to consider whether the market was the best way to make those land use decisions.
While the AFI's research report Does Australia need a national policy to preserve agricultural land? largely focused on mining and the onset of coal seam gas, the growth of urban areas and the growth of conservation areas as challenges to agricultural land use, it also sparked questions about foreign investment and its place in the agricultural landscape.
Mr Keogh said Australia had the sixth largest land area and the lowest population density of almost any nation on earth so the question of whether or not there would be sufficient quality land available for agriculture in the future hadn't been a high priority issue for the last 200 years.
"An increasing number of people are starting to express concerns that Australia is being too reckless with its best agricultural land and future generations might regret decisions that are currently being made about the future use of that land," he said.
"Agriculture productivity is directly related to the quality of a soil and prevailing climatic conditions and while Australia appears to have plenty of land in reality only about three per cent is actually suitable for cropping and even less of this is considered to be prime agricultural land.
"With urban, mining and environmental demands taking up more land and foreign investors also purchasing significant areas it's legitimate to ask whether Australia can realistically plan to become the future food bowl of Asia."
Despite the amount of foreign investment taking place in WA's agriculture sector, when Farm Weekly asked Agriculture Minister Terry Redman whether WA producers had the opportunity to capitalise on and contribute to Australia becoming Asia's food bowl, he said yes.
"If you look at where WA is located we are geographically placed in the same time zone as 60pc of the world's population," Mr Redman said.
"Most of those countries are talking about food security and most of them will be, if they're not already, net importers of food which puts WA in a really good position to be the preferred supplier to meet the food security needs of other countries.
"But a whole range of things need to happen to have that outcome occur and the first one is that people need to be prepared to put a dollar on the table to secure our food and I don't think that has quite happened yet.
"Logistics and transport issues around getting food out of WA and into those key Asian markets is also important and more sophisticated trade relationships need to be established rather than those countries buying on the spot market."
When asked whether he thought investment by international companies in WA restricted the opportunity for local farmers to become the key food providers of Asia, he didn't see a problem.
"I think they are linked," he said.
"The foreign investment interest in WA gives us a signal of what others think about the future of agriculture which is a good sign.
"We should be seeking out and trying to corral the opportunities that are presented to us.
"The language I use is that I support foreign investment in the supply chain.
"I don't think there would be any WA farmer who wouldn't be happy with a foreign entity building an abattoir, feedlot or flour mill in the supply chain.
"What that does is secures a pathway to market for WA."
In confirming he had been in talks with Lands Minister Brendon Grylls about the development of a WA foreign investment register, Mr Redman also said his plan was to ensure there was objective information available about the uptake of prime WA agricultural land by foreign-owned interests.
The AFI's research found Australia lacked a consistent and comprehensive understanding of where the country's prime land was located, how much of it was being diverted from agriculture each year and whether or not it was under the control of foreign interests.
