the following is a piece from the Agri-Food Research Network on food security and the government’s new National Food Policy Working Group

In a context of the Queensland floods and cyclone and the floods in Victoria, many analysts have been asking questions about Australia’s food security. These severe weather events, which have destroyed the capacity of hundreds of fruit growers and pastoralists to deliver food for at least a season, have understandably overshadowed several significant policy decisions which will have long term consequences for Australia’s food producers and consumers.

Over the last six months, the national government has disappointed a wide spectrum of groups with its food security initiatives. The first was a narrowly constituted National Food Policy Working Group to advise the federal Minister of Agriculture on the food and farming sector’s priorities. Then, Australia’s Biosecurity Services Group announced that it would permit the importation of apples from China because it was satisfied that the produce would not pose any biosecurity risk. More recently, Biosecurity Australia has alerted the nation’s fruit growers that it will accept New Zealand’s standard orchard…

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