In recent years, and especially since the global food shortage in 2008, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have all been engaged in massive agricultural purchases around the world and in Australia - as outlined in these maps of Australia and the globe.
New South Wales Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan says Australia risks losing control of its wealth-creating agricultural assets. He believes the Federal Government is not paying sufficient attention to the issue of global food security.
Senator Heffernan says the Foreign Investment Review Board does not monitor foreign acquisitions of Australian farming land and Australia is being complacent about the fact that a number of wealthy nations that face future food security concerns are now investing strategically in agricultural property overseas.
Anuhrada Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute, a California-based think tank, estimates that as much as 50 million hectares worldwide has been purchased in this way. In some cases, she says, food land is being diverted to grow biofuels.
During Senate committee hearings into food security issues last month, the general manager of the FIRB’s trade policy division, Patrick Colmer, conceded that under existing investment regulations it would be possible for an overseas company to buy up an entire district, farm by farm, without ever coming to the attention of the FIRB.
Senator Heffernan says there is no monitoring of purchases by the sovereign wealth funds of other countries.
"At the present time there is no differentiation between private investment and sovereign investment," Senator Heffernan said. "We need to put all of this on a register, we need to lower the trigger point for reporting foreign asset sales, and we need as part of our sovereignty to consider [our own] strategic investment in Australia."
At the moment the Chinese state-owned company Bright Foods is in the market for Australian dairy, wine and sugar assets.
Earlier this month it was outbid for CSR’s sugar subsidiary Sucrogen by a Singaporean company, Wilmar International, but it has also expressed interest in purchasing a number of vineyards in south-eastern Australia owned by Foster’s. In the cattle industry, the giant Brazilian conglomerate JBS Swift is rapidly buying up abattoirs and feedlots in Australia’s south-east.
North-western Tasmania represents a microcosm of some the issues being played out globally.
Many dairy farmers are trying to bail out, after being comprehensively defeated in a long and bitter dispute over milk prices. Many say they would welcome overseas investors.
"It actually costs us to go to work," said dairy farmer Jim Hersey from Smithton. "We’re currently getting paid 31 cents a litre, and it costs us about 38 cents a litre to produce."
There's More - Click Here
Who can blame the farmers when they're being squeezed by the retailers on one side and undercut by cheap imports on the other?
k7bQ~~60_7.JPG "the_hawk*"){kind=avatar}
