Securing Food and Water

Australia is easily the world leader when it comes to amount of arable land per capita. That gives us a massive advantage in any situation where food resources are scarce globally.

We also have a lot of fresh water, although a lot of it is at the wrong end of the country.

Natural disasters do befall mankind quite regularly, but to prepare for them can be very expensive, and most politicians are not keen to spend money on events that have a slim chance of occurring during their time in office. This is the very reason why Hurricane Katrina damaged New Orleans so badly, and that the work that should have been done years before, has now been done after the hurricane.

Climate change and major volcanic eruptions (which can cause many years of low temperatures and low sunlight globally)  are the biggest risks to Australia’s crops. And if other countries suffer crop failure, having a local surplus will mean we aren’t relying on expensive or even unavailable imports.

We recommend storing suitable foods for emergency purposes, funded and managed by the government.

It need not be expensive. For example, the government can pay for extra months of grain storage. The grain then travels to its market, and is replaced with the next batch of grains. This is how individual survivalists rotate their supplies, without the food going stale, and with the only extra cost being that of storage.

In an emergency, we will at least have a few months worth of food, or we can help out other countries in need.

With water, there has long been a proposal to send water from the North to the South via mega pipes or canals. This idea should be explored again, with the value of emergency and backup supplies factored in.

Likewise the technology for solar desalination plants is becoming affordable, and public-private projects for food supplies should be investigated. A purely private project, growing lettuces,  is already underway in South Australia.

Either could  help expand the variety of foods crops that are grown in Australia, and lessen food imports.

Note: food and water are only the beginning. Instead of keeping the bare minimum global standard of back up oil (and cheating by counting supplies en-route) we should bak much on hand, given that our country would grind to a halt without petrol or diesel.