Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/less-rain-more-wheat-how-australian-farmers-defied-climate-doom-2025-07-29/

by tiarafawn • 12 months ago

84 44 12 months ago

skywal_l• 12 months ago

"The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only."

Norman Borlaug

Nobel Prize lecture [0]

[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture...

XorNot• 12 months ago

Most countries on Earth have declining birth rates, many first world countries have negative population growth.

Overpopulation isn't a thing.

gefriertrockner• 12 months ago

Overpopulation is a thing in parts of South Asia and Africa. Climate change can affect the agricultural output in many countries and thus the land will support less people. The population growth is still very relevant in most of the affected countries. So overpopulation will definitely be a thing, unless there are real technological breakthroughs.

pseudo03• 12 months ago

A bit ironic to quote that considering how the speech was 55 years ago, and the green revolution is going stronger than ever. If anything the crisis of the next 50 years will be the economic and societal pressures crushing the childbirth rate in Western countries.

slavik81• 12 months ago

It's terrifying that 96% of all mammalian life on Earth is now human beings and our livestock. We might be able to feed more people, but habitat destruction is already the greatest threat to most wild species. Humans are doing fine, but the toll on everything non-human has been enormous. We are living through one of the greatest mass-extinction events in Earth's history.

I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.

decimalenough• 12 months ago

His lecture was in 1970 and the "three decades" elapsed 25 years ago. People are still starving, but not for lack of agricultural production.

dinkblam• 12 months ago

Australia has among the lowest agricultural subsidies

other countries would be wise to adopt that, but there is zero chance of that happening.

mike-the-mikado• 12 months ago

other countries would be wise to adopt that

Until they can't import food and can't feed their people

robbiep• 12 months ago

In the US and much of Europe, the subsidies are to NOT produce, not to produce more

EdwardDiego8• 12 months ago

New Zealand did this in the 80s. Caused a lot of pain in the rural community, a bunch of bankruptcies, marriage failures and suicides as farming operations only sustainable because they were subsidised failed.

We now have a very internationally competitive agricultural sector, but yeah, getting there caused a lot of pain.

profsummergig• 12 months ago

They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm. Maybe that helps.

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.

exaltedsnail• 12 months ago

This couldn't be further from the truth. Arable farm land is very expensive here.

defrost• 12 months ago

The land isn't free and arable land with good water is hard to come by.

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.

from: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/who-we-are/our-industry/

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.

porjo• 12 months ago

They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm.

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.

lmpdev2• 12 months ago

I mean it’s very very much not free

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)

EdwardDiego8• 12 months ago

You're not familiar with the geography of Australia, huh.

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.

abdullahkhalids• 12 months ago

What's needed is for countries to create risk profiles for food availability under different scenarios. At the same time establish maximum risk threshold.

Then pursue whatever strategy gets you there.

quitit• 12 months ago

and those subsidies go predominantly into R&D rather than propping up fragile businesses

lmpdev2• 12 months ago

My university has a good anecdote here

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

AngryData• 12 months ago

I disagree, food subsidies are the only alternative to the granary system, or foolishly counting on food imports. Agriculture is an industry with notorious slim margins, but yield can vary up to 30% year to year just on random weather patterns and often effects large areas at once. Combined those are a recipe for an eventual shortage unless you pay to over produce. A farm running on 2% margins on a good year can't risk planting 10% extra if they might not be able to sell it and will take it all as a loss, and so farmers without decent subsidies would only try to produce up to the current demand and not a bushel over it. And if a large agricultural area experiences a bad year, as we have seen happen historically many times over, and everyone was already only planning to barely meet demand, all of a sudden you have a food shortage and people starve. And on top of that weather patterns across the globe are changing and becoming less predictable. Famines essentially became nonexistent in places with decent crop subsidization, but in places without it that still rely on large granary stores shortages still happen.

neonate• 12 months ago

https://archive.md/yxoUc

cadamsdotcom• 12 months ago

Score one for anti-protectionism.

ikr678• 12 months ago

Many of Australia'a agricultural markets are isolated by strong biosecurity/quarantine restrictions. Not subsidies, but a form of protection nonetheless. There are even internal borders- transporting produce across state lines is usually restricted.

Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

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