Latest news with #foodsystem
News.com.au
a day ago
- Business
- News.com.au
New report reveals how country's food systems letting Aussies down
A shock new report says Australia's $800bn food system is 'falling short', despite producing enough food to feed nearly 100 million people. The CSIRO has completed the first national stocktake of the nation's food system, which identified 100,000 Australian farmers produced enough food to feed 27 million Australians and another 73 million people globally. While Australia claimed it was a food secure nation, the CSIRO said it was based on the bulk amount of agricultural commodities it exported such as wheat and beef. But it did not account for food affordability issues or a diversity of food that met nutritional requirements. The report, titled Food System Horizons, estimated lifestyle diseases caused by unhealthy eating such as diabetes and cardiovascular cost the economy about $49bn through hospitalisation, healthcare and lost wages. It says those hidden costs are the highest in the world per capita and costs the economy hundreds of billions of dollars. 'Currently, millions of Australians routinely rely on food charity,' the report said. 'Australia's food system does not produce enough vegetables to meet recommended daily intakes. 'Production-based analysis of food security also overlooks the critical role that food environments play in shaping dietary choices and health outcomes. 'The promotion of convenient, highly processed foods is costing the Australian economy billions in lost productivity from the impact of preventable, diet-related diseases. 'These challenges suggest a significant opportunity for communities, governments and businesses to work together to create future food environments that are healthier, more sustainable and more equitable.' CSIRO Sustainability Research Director Larelle McMillan said food policy in Australia was currently fragmented across portfolios as diverse as agriculture, environment, industry, social services, health, transport and urban planning. 'We need to move from analysing specific parts of the food system to establishing coordinated reporting for important food system attributes and interactions, thus enabling connected up action for a national food system that serves all,' Ms McMillan said. She said a reporting system would offer valuable insights into where the food system was falling short – for example, almost a third of Australian households experience moderate or severe food insecurity each year – and where it's failing to meet the needs of all Australians. 'This can be used as a focal point to bring together a greater diversity of voice and vision to identify pathways to sustainable, healthy and affordable food for all Australians,' she said. The report found the hidden costs of Australia's food system were as high as $274bn, with the biggest burden on the economy coming from negative health and environmental impacts. Negative environmental factors from farming such as soil, air and water degradation, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and pollution cost the economy about $225bn. The report stated commercial activity across Australia's food system, particularly in the agricultural sector, generated unintended but significant environmental impacts. 'Together, the net present value of the overall negative health and environmental impacts of Australia's food system is around 13 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product,' the report stated. 'These environmental impacts, including climate change and damage to fragile soils, have contributed to a plateauing of agricultural productivity.' CSIRO agriculture and food director Michael Robertson told NewsWire the food system encompassed everything from farming, retail, consumption, logistics, food handling, waste and so on. Dr Robertson said we celebrate the massive performance the farming sector delivered every year in Australia in terms of the amount of food it produces, 'not only for us, but also for export,' he said. 'But we don't connect all that up to other parts of the system that are associated with food consumption within Australia, this is where the hidden cost issue comes in. 'We don't quantify that and add that into the price of food that we pay for, pointing those out shows what areas need attention,' he said. 'By owning it we can start having a conversation nationally about what we might do to reduce those hidden costs,' he said. Dr Robertson said knowing and understanding the state of our food system through regular reporting was the first step in dealing with the complex challenges and opportunities facing Australia's food system. 'Our food system is more than just producing and exporting commodities – it's also about providing equitable access to safe, nutritious and healthy food, produced sustainably for all Australians,' he said. 'We have an intergenerational responsibility to pursue these goals vigorously. 'This national stocktake provides an evidence base to guide our actions as social, cultural, environmental, and economic priorities shift. 'While Australia's wider food system is an economic and production success, generating more than $800bn annually and providing significant employment particularly in regional areas, the intersection of our food system with other critical goals calls for a more comprehensive way to evaluate its performance.'
ABC News
a day ago
- Business
- ABC News
CSIRO takes stock of food system.
Samantha Donovan: Australia's National Science Agency, the CSIRO, has completed the first ever national stocktake of our $800 billion food system. The researchers say while our farming sector is among the best in the world, there are big gaps, like the fact not all Australians can actually afford fresh food. And that view is backed by academics and even farmers groups, who say that for far too long, so-called food policy has focused on farming rather than the bigger picture. Luke Radford prepared this report. Luke Radford: Chances are, when you think about where your food comes from, this is what comes to mind. A farm, where hard-working farmers are toiling away so you can enjoy a parmigiana or a salad or a bit of toast in the morning. But Sustainability Research Director at the CSIRO, Larelle McMillan, says that's just scratching the surface. Larelle McMillan: What we've kind of looked at in this report is everything from nutrition, retail environment, food safety, Indigenous food systems, policy coherence, sustainability aspects, circular economy, hidden costs, as you mentioned, manufacturing and economics. Luke Radford: That report is an all-encompassing look by the CSIRO at the food industry, from the paddock to the plate. The researchers argue that food as an industry is split up into at least 11 different silos, which are essentially separate industries that don't really talk to each other. Larelle McMillan says because it's been that way for so long, we struggle to come up with long-term plans. Larelle McMillan: The food system works for most Australians. We're a food-producing nation. Our farmers do an incredible job of producing food, not just for our national consumption, but for our export markets. But we balance this by noting that it doesn't work for all Australians. Luke Radford: Australian farming is incredibly productive. Just 100,000 farmers feed nearly 100 million people, including 27 million Australians. But the researchers argue that those raw statistics are part of a stark contradiction, because up to 3.5 million Australian households ran out of food at some point last year. Associate Professor Liesel Spencer specialises in food security at the School of Law at the University of Western Sydney. Liesel Spencer: What that really looks like is they run out of food. They go a day or more without eating. The food in the house runs out and there's no more money to buy anymore. So if we're thinking about regulating the whole food system holistically, we have to go beyond just we're doing an amazing job of producing enough food and think about how we're distributing that and how that's available for everybody so everybody gets a fair chance at a healthy diet. Luke Radford: What Associate Professor Spencer and the CSIRO are arguing is that we need to change how we actually think about food. The CSIRO report also calls for a national food plan, something the National Farmers Federation has also campaigned for. Jolyon Burnett is the chair of the National Farmers Federation Horticulture Council. Jolyon Burnett: The compliance burden that producers have to face can make up as much as a third of the cost of doing business for these people. And when margins are shown to absolutely razor thin levels, then you begin to see that price is just one part in a very complex jigsaw puzzle. Luke Radford: Mr Burnett also says even things like nutritional value and how best to provide it need to be re-examined. Jolyon Burnett: We already know that the consumption of fresh produce, fresh fruit and vegetables across Australia is declining. These things are all linked and until we begin to sit down and try and map this out, rather than just whacking band-aids on particular parts of it, we'll continue to see the number of farmers declining. Luke Radford: The Albanese government has committed to a new national food security strategy that it calls Feeding Australia, with more details set to come later this year. Samantha Donovan: Luke Radford reporting.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Farm Aid to Celebrate 40th Anniversary in Minneapolis
Farm Aid will celebrate its 40th anniversary on September 20 with a super-sized show at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, featuring Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and Margo Price in addition to Billy Strings, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Trampled by Turtles, Waxahatchee, Eric Burton of Black Pumas, Jesse Welles, Madeline Edwards, and others that have yet to be announced. Ticket sales begin May 16. 'Family farmers are the heart of this country, and we depend on each other for good food and strong communities,' Nelson says in a statement. 'For 40 years, Farm Aid and our partners have stood with farmers, supporting them to stay on their land even when corporate power, bad policies and broken promises make it harder to keep going. This year, we're proud to bring Farm Aid to Minnesota to celebrate the farmers who sustain us and to fight for a food system that works for all of us. Family farmers aren't backing down, and neither are we.' More from Rolling Stone Neil Young Takes Direct Aim at Tesla on New Single 'Let's Roll Again' Watch Neil Young Jam With Stephen Stills, Break Out Stunning Deep Cuts at Light Up the Blues A Neil Young Tribute With a Heart of Gold Farm Aid has been held virtually every year since the inaugural event in Champaign, Illinois, back in 1985. But this is the first time it's touched down in Minneapolis. It will be the kickoff event to a year-long celebration of Farm Aid. 'We're grateful to our dedicated board members and hundreds of generous artists who have brought us together year after year to celebrate family farmers and highlight the challenges they face every day,' Farm Aid Co-Executive Director Jennifer Fahy says in a statement. 'Our anniversary marks a critical time for the nation to come together in support of the family farmers we all depend on. Our work isn't done. There are significant threats to the future of family farm agriculture and our food system. Farm Aid 40 is an opportunity to call those out and work for the food system that farmers, eaters and our planet all deserve.' The 2024 incarnation of Farm Aid took place at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. It featured the debut of Neil Young's new band the Chrome Hearts. They're set centered around classics like 'Harvest Moon,' 'Heart of Gold,' 'Unknown Legend,' and 'Powderfinger.' They hit the road this year for their first proper tour, and will play Farm Aid at the end of the run. Dave Matthews is spending much of the summer on the road with the Dave Matthews Band. But in keeping with longtime Farm Aid tradition, he'll play an acoustic set with Tim Reynolds at the event. The vast majority of Farm Aid concerts take place at outdoor amphitheaters. This is the first one at a stadium since the 2012 Farm Aid at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
It's time to stop the great food heist powered by big business. That means taxation, regulation and healthy school meals
Our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose – to mass produce cheap calories to prevent famine – it is now a source of jeopardy, destroying more than it creates. A quarter of all adult deaths globally – more than 12 million every year – are due to poor diets. Malnutrition in all its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity – is by far the biggest cause of ill-health, affecting one in three people on the planet. Ultra-processed foods are implicated in as many as one in seven premature deaths in some countries. Every country is affected by malnutrition but it is the poorest, most marginalised people who are most likely to become malnourished, get sick and die too soon. Our food system is also sickening our planet – generating a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and driving a raft of environmental harms. As economies grow, countries move from rural, low-productivity agricultural systems – focused on staples – to more diversified systems, including legumes and nutrient-rich foods, and on to commercialised systems, inundated with ultra-processed foods. The global north started to move through this dietary transition in the middle of the last century – about three generations ago. Many countries in Latin America and Asia have made the same journey in just one generation and Africa is now becoming more obese as it switches to ultra-processed foods. The global food system has been captured by a few rapacious transnational companies that profit from public ill-health while using an array of tactics to stop governments getting in their way. When viewed through the prism of power, this is more like a heist than a dietary transition. We need to transform the system into one in which the health of people and planet is prioritised above the relentless drive for profit. It is too late for incremental change and yet more tweaking at the margins – we need a radical overhaul. Everyone has a role in turning things around but we need governments to lead, to set the rules and to govern. First, governments must have budgets to procure healthy foods (and limit ultra-processed foods) for schools, government agencies, hospitals and clinics. In Kenya, Food4Education has delivered more than 21m nutritious hot meals to schoolchildren. Tens of thousands of young children are fed well every day, keeping them in school and able to learn. The Kenyan government is working with the charity to scale its operations up to cover all schools by the end of the decade. In Brazil, the government funds healthy meals for millions of pupils in public schools, a third of which have to be bought from local farmers who practise organic, low-carbon farming. Momentum is building. School-meal plans now operate in nearly every country, reaching more than 400 million children at a cost of about $48bn a year, and 108 countries have come together in a global School Meals Coalition. Second, governments have the power to regulate advertising, labelling and marketing of unhealthy ultra-processed foods. For Guido Girardi, a senator in Chile, it was simple: children's right to food and health was being violated by the predatory marketing of ultra-processed foods. From 2006 to 2022, Girardi struggled against the food industry and fellow politicians to bring in regulation. But Chile now leads the world in terms of a comprehensive package of measures that include front-of-pack labels, restrictions on media marketing to children, 18% taxes on sugary drinks and a ban on the sale and marketing of junk food in schools. A 2018 New York Times headline proclaimed the slaying of Tony the Tiger as cartoon characters were taken off cereal packs in Chile. Within a year, driven by these new laws, children's exposure to ads had dropped by 73%. Within three years, consumption of calories, salt and sugar from regulated products across the country had fallen by a third. Front-of-pack nutrition labels are now on products in Peru, Israel, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, with others in the pipeline in Africa and Asia. The third action required concerns taxes and subsidies. Governments can disincentivise buying unhealthy foods (through taxing harmful products) while earmarking tax dividends to incentivise healthier food purchases, such as subsidies for low-income families. In Mexico, the idea of introducing a tax on sugary drinks had been debated for several years in the 2010s, after the public health catastrophe of the presidency of Vicente Fox, a former chief executive of Coca-Cola in Latin America. In a classic case of the revolving door between public office and the private sector, Fox had brought in his Coca-Cola pals to run key departments in 2000. Coca-Cola's sales went into overdrive after bottling concessions were tripled and water was sucked out of aquifers. By 2006, one in six adults in Mexico had diabetes, with 40,000 deaths a year attributed to over-consumption of soft drinks. Despite strong pushback from the drinks industry, in 2014 a new government launched the world's first tax on sugary drinks. Two years later, sales of these drinks were down 12%, while water sales went up by a similar percentage. The biggest benefit was seen in the poorest households. Taxes work. More than 120 countries covering more than half the world's population have started implementing them. It is a huge global success story that is now being extended beyond sugary drinks. Colombia was the first country in Latin America to introduce a tax on ultra-processed products, in November 2023. These interventions work, and when they are joined up in a comprehensive national policy, supported by multiple government departments, they can be transformative. Our global food system is not nourishing us. The good news is we now know why, and we know enough to turn things around. We need to harness the growing body of evidence and experience from around the world to propel us forward into a better food future – one with people and planet at its heart. Dr Stuart Gillespie is a non-resident senior fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute. His latest book, Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet, is published by Canongate
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
This mindset can get agriculture off the commodity rollercoaster
Today's U.S. farmers and agricultural businesses are navigating a complex landscape, with unique near-term and long-term challenges that include intensified global competition, record trade deficits, rising costs, and more frequent and extreme weather events. These challenges have created economic instability across the entire agriculture sector with U.S. row crop farmer net income remaining persistently low for the third straight year. Estimates from the University of Illinois show that corn and soybean farmers could face a net loss of between $50 and $70 per acre this growing season. On top of this, global acreage has leveled off at 2.3 billion acres and the average yield for corn and soybeans has also slowed. This uncertainty affects not only those who grow our food but also reverberates throughout the entire food system, threatening the stability we all depend on. It's clear that our sector must get off unpredictable commodity rollercoaster and create a more predictable future for farm families, agricultural businesses, consumers, and communities. Drawing on Land O'Lakes, Inc.'s 104 years of experience as a cooperative, we have learned that collaboration is crucial for bringing stability and predictability to the food and agriculture sectors. The ag community represents only around 1% of the population but, by working together, we can capture efficiencies and reinvest in innovation, expand market opportunities, and support the communities and local businesses that are essential to our nation's food supply. Become a student of the game At Land O'Lakes we have a saying that 'Our success starts with our member-owners' success.' What this means is that our decisions and investments must be made with our cooperative owners in mind. This mantra has never been more important than today when external factors are pressuring our bottom lines and muddying the decision-making process. In agriculture, we're seeing pressure on the supply side as a result of global trade dynamics, a reduction in demand due to dips in commodity prices, and a rising cost to serve. All of which results in a tightening of margins up and down the food value chain. To be clear, these challenges are hardly unique to our sector, and I see the remedy as equally universal. Business leaders must double down on being students of the game, keeping a pulse on market dynamics and geo-political developments to stay on offense. And it's not enough to simply insulate your own business, we must think more collaboratively to identify solutions that serve partners up and down our value chains. Inject predictability into our food system To address the pressures facing American farmers, we must move beyond traditional methods and invest in modern technologies and data-driven solutions that provide detailed plans down to the acre and animal, help minimize risk to inject predictability into farm operations. By creating standardized, reliable, and secure datasets, the industry can provide insights that help farmers respond to environmental and market challenges, manage supply chains, and track production volumes with unprecedented precision. As I look across this sector, I'm especially inspired by how Keystone Cooperative is working to drive predictability. This Indianapolis-based cooperative is using precise, field-level data to help growers respond to seasonal challenges and maximize their ROI by applying the right crop protection products at the right time and in a precise location. For Land O'Lakes, data is the cornerstone of our innovation strategy. Through the WinField United Innovation Center, a leading agricultural applied research facility, we collect and analyze roughly six million data points annually to help farmers increase production, improve efficiency and optimize resource use. Those insights are then being delivered in a manner that reduces the risk farmers face each day. This includes low-interest financing, prescription programs with a performance warranty, and an AI assistant that provides real-time solutions to problems farmers encounter throughout the growing season. The power of the cooperative mindset In an era where traditional business models often prioritize short-term profits over long-term resilience, the cooperative model offers a compelling alternative. We like to say our capital is patient, meaning we can take a longer-term point of view—considering future generations as much as quarterly performance. With a reach that touches 50% of the U.S. harvested acres, over 100 million animals daily, and 13 billion pounds of milk per year, the Land O'Lakes cooperative system also demonstrates the strength of collaboration and shared purpose. By working together with established business leaders that have earned local trust and demonstrated the ability to drive change, we can strengthen the economic prosperity of our shared businesses and communities. The cooperative structure also fosters unique partnerships between stakeholders within and outside the agriculture sector. There's a deeper level of commitment to shared success that shows up in business initiatives and community building alike. For instance, Land O'Lakes is collaborating with CentraCare to help establish the University of Minnesota CentraCare Regional Campus where medical students receive education, training, and career development opportunities in rural communities where local medical services are desperately needed. Going forward As we look ahead, I want to challenge other organizations to adopt this collaborative approach. Think externally and selflessly. Think long term. Think evolution. Even if you're operating outside of the cooperative framework, this mindset can help solve the challenges we all face, enhance economic performance and uplift the communities we serve.
