Norman Borlaug
Nobel Prize lecture [0]
[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture...
I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.
Overpopulation isn't a thing.
other countries would be wise to adopt that, but there is zero chance of that happening.
We now have a very internationally competitive agricultural sector, but yeah, getting there caused a lot of pain.
Until they can't import food and can't feed their people
Then pursue whatever strategy gets you there.
Not sure about this year but either two or three years ago over 90% of the University of New England’s grant money (over $20MM) was from the School of Agriculture
I hate many aspects of the Australian economy (especially our lack of economic diversity) but having world-best tech for farming isn’t one of them. America is still leaps and bounds behind us in many different subdomains of Agriculture and Mining
Australia is weak for only really having primary industries, but we sure are very optimised for it
Land is a huge expense in places with high population density (e.g. India).
Australia also produces a huge amount of high-quality mangoes. In the desert. Respect. They're very very strong on water management.
Mangoes are not grown in the Tanami or Great Sandy Desert. They're not grown around Kalgoorlie (that relies on piped in water from far, far away), etc.
Mangoes (Mangifera indica) are predominantly grown in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and when combined, produce approximately 95% of the total national crop. Mangoes are also grown in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
crop map: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/resources/resources-libr...
The areas they are grown have tropical rainforest (Qld), vast Wetlands (those parts of the Northern Territory with fresh water crocodiles, swamps, etc), annual monsoons (Kimberley), etc.
But yes, we do have on point water management.
A) They're not growing mangoes in the desert. B) They're pretty fucking terrible at water management, google the Murray - Darling and learn you some Australian water management.
Australia is vast and empty. In the interior, rivers are few and far between and the landscape is flat and featureless. Any 'free' land is going to be essentially desert. Even if you could grow something on it, you wouldn't want to live there.
You can buy and sell x-year leases from the crown. Any with a commercially viable site sell for just below or even more than freehold land (depending on supply)
Farming logistics also works radically differently than in America: the reason our farms are orders of magnitude higher larger than American ranches spatially is because it’s only somewhat profitable at the largest possible scales
The valley I’m from originally (The Tweed) is cane country, and not a single company is viable independently. Hell we only have one mill left nationally that’s not-megacorp owned (note we have no land leases though, it’s all freehold where I’m from)