The worth of water

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

- United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts that the global demand for food, feed and fibre will nearly double by 2050. By then, it's expected that Earth's population will have increased from around 7 billion to almost 9 billion. Considering that 1 billion people already live in chronic hunger, it is easy to become despondent about the prospects of feeding the world now, let alone with another 2 billion people.

Population is just one of the factors that impact food security. Global food systems intersect with poverty, urban planning, water management, pollution, and preserving wilderness, and fluctuate in response to trade agreements, policy and governance, and international relations. Extreme weather events, as Australians have witnessed with recent floods and cyclones, and civil and global unrest, as conflict in the Middle East has shown, can also wreak havoc on the production and distribution of food. The changing climate is also having an impact on agricultural systems.

For Professor Snow Barlow of the Melbourne School of Land and Environment (MSLE) the evidence of climate change is unequivocal and our agricultural systems must adapt or suffer: 'It's clear that southern Australia is as badly affected or worse affected than most countries in the world.' In Victoria, for example, he cites evidence of changes to the seasonality and patterns of rainfall. Winter rain has decreased over the last fifteen years, he says, with falls in summer tending to stay the same or increase slightly.  Traditional farming practices, in some instances, are producing declining outputs as a result.

The key to coping with this change in the weather and maintaining food production, according to Professor Barlow, is for Australia to transform its farming strategies to take advantage of the new weather systems, and to mitigate less favourable conditions.

An expert on the adaptation of primary industries to climate change and climate change policies, Professor Barlow is also Deputy Director of the Farms, Rivers, Markets (FRM) project that will develop new methods to efficiently manage surface and groundwater resources for both agriculture and the environment.

The University of Melbourne's Dookie campus, which plays a major role in MSLE's research and teaching in sustainable food production and includes a working commercial farm, will be used to identify and test these new methods. Other project partners include the Melbourne School of Engineering and the Department of Primary Industries.

To our advantage, while Australia has a 'third world climate change problem', as he puts it, it also has a first world agriculture system and scientific research base. Because of these factors, Professor Barlow says, the world is closely observing our response to the changing climate and its effect on agriculture. While the work being done at Dookie, for instance, is informed and determined by the climate, weather and area-specific conditions of southern Australia, much of the research, such as that being conducted under the FRM project, will be applicable to other geographical regions.

Improving efficiency in irrigation

One of the areas of expertise of Professor Iven Mareels, Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering, is large-scale irrigation. 'Ninety per cent of all the river basins on Earth are managed by people. More than 70 per cent of all the water we use is for food production.' Engineering, he explains, is fundamentally about the efficient use of resources. Agricultural water use, as it is generally practiced in Australia and elsewhere, is very wasteful, and engineering has much to offer in refining and developing efficient irrigation systems.

Transporting water over large distances through artificial irrigation channels typically results in wastage of 50 per cent; 2 litres of water must be extracted from the environment to give 1 litre to the farmer. The waste, however, doesn't end there.

Farmers, Professor Mareels says, often overestimate the water they require – relying on the appearance of their crops rather than the amount of moisture in the soil to time watering. 'They oversupply the land, they get drainage issues and they typically waste about half of the water they receive.'

Professor Mareels' interest is in helping farmers take the guesswork out of the timing and amount of water use. This advice, when coupled with lining channels to cut wastage and the use of moisture sensors in the soil, can increase the efficiency of water use to about 70 per cent. If such measures were implemented across Australia, says Professor Mareels, we would be able to increase our agricultural output to feed double the current population of Australia and to restore almost the full natural flow of our rivers. Economy in water management is one of the major factors that will help ensure continuing food security in Australia, Professor Barlow says. 'Even with less water – which we will have in southern Australia – we can maintain our food production, if we use it a lot more efficiently.' This counsel extends to city dwellers. 'We need urban targets as well as rural targets in water use.'

Somewhat perversely, the world actually produces more than enough food for its current population. Rising prices, however, can make it difficult for those on low incomes to afford nutritious food. In February this year, the FAO Food Price Index rose for the eighth consecutive month and was at its highest since its inception in 1990. Factors such as the increase in demand for biofuel (around 25 per cent of the US maize crop and 40 per cent of the EU canola harvest goes towards the production of ethanol or biodiesel) and the rising demand for animal protein put pressure on food prices. So too, does the trend of investors treating food as another commodity ripe for speculation and investment.

Three pillars of food security

Professor Jon Barnett (BPD 1993), a political and economic geographer in the Department of Resource Management and Geography, characterises food security as resting on three broad pillars: food production and transport systems; food prices and incomes; and public health, sanitation and energy systems. In his opinion, the University is strong in research and expertise in the first and third of these pillars.

'In terms of food production systems – plant biology, agronomy, farm management, agricultural economics – the University has a broad range of expertise and we're certainly one of the leading universities in Australia, if not the leading university in these aspects of food production systems. … We're obviously very strong in public health and in medicine. … We have some capability with respect to the prices of food and the ability of people to buy food, but the University could certainly benefit from having more of the development economists and economic geographers who study these issues.'

These researchers investigate questions of labour markets, livelihoods and the factors that affect food prices in developing nations. He cites strong interest in subjects such as 'Famine in the Modern World' and 'Food for a Healthy Planet' as grounds for the University offering more options to students interested in the causes of poverty and hunger, and in development in general.

As for the prospect of the globe being able to feed an extra 2 billion people, for Professor Barnett, it is less a question of technology and more a question of policy, good governance and stability.

'This [future food security] is really a problem of human systems, such as the interactions between the global economy and its effects on food prices, production and distribution, and the way different countries and national governments go about their processes of managing their economies, food systems, and social services, in ways that provide jobs, control food prices, and ensure people have access to clean water, energy, healthcare and education.

'We see in countries where there is some degree of economic growth and good governance that rates of malnutrition fall. That's certainly happened in those countries in Africa where political systems have been reasonably stable. If you look at rates of malnutrition in east Asia, they've fallen massively because of stable governments and good growth.'

Integration of food price and nutrition

As Professor Rick Roush, Dean of MSLE, sees it, for Australia, one of the biggest food security issues now is the 'integration of price and nutrition for low-income Australians'. Essentially, Professor Roush says, the challenge for agriculture is to increase efficiency so that more food is produced with fewer resources – water being one of these.

With the vast majority of the world's arable land already in production, producing more food isn't simply about increasing the acreage available for cultivation or pasture. 'If anything,' he explains, 'we are losing some of it to urbanisation, erosion, and desertification. The amount of arable land we have is actually shrinking. So we're left with either intensifying production or carving out more rainforest.'

It is technology, he believes, such as that being developed and trialled in the FRM project, that will drive the innovations which will allow us to keep food prices down in the present and to increase food production in the future.

In Australia, our modern, and largely urban perspective on food means we tend to view technology with suspicion – witness the Coles' hormone-free beef campaign earlier this year. Many of us prefer to picture tidy herds of lovingly tended goats and small holdings of heirloom vegetables as food production models rather than intensive broadacre farms. Some might baulk at dairy cows wearing pedometers that monitor their movement and provide a precise measure of the food and water they require; or resist the reality of satellite tracking systems allowing farmers to plant crops at a carefully calibrated distance from last year's seed to ensure the most efficient fertiliser use. Yet such measures can mean more food is produced using fewer resources and creating less pollution; more sustainably in fact.

As one of Australia's leading research organisations – second only to the CSIRO (as measured by research expenditure) – the University of Melbourne is in a unique position to engage with 'wicked' problems like food security that require a multidisciplinary approach and partnerships between government, industry and other institutions.

'If we're going to feed the world in 2050,' says Professor Barlow, 'we're going to need a lot more investment in food production research at all levels.' Careers in this area will span many sectors including policy, sociology, economy, and engineering, he believes. 'There will be a lot more jobs in this area, because there will be a lot more investment in this area. There has to be.'

Alumni working for a food-secure future

David Aughton (BE 1978)

David Aughton is Executive Director of Rubicon Water, a leading engineering and technology company providing specialised products and services to manage water more efficiently.

He offers a good news/bad news summation of global water use [see boxed text]. On one hand, the waste is huge; on the other hand, the possibilities for increased agricultural productivity with more careful management of the globe's water are enormous.

He believes Australia should assume some of the responsibility for ensuring global food security given the resources we have available. With greater efficiency in water use, he maintains, we can do this and meet both Australia's agricultural and environmental water needs.

Rubicon Water has a longstanding research partnership with the School of Engineering and Professor Mareels. 'We've been running collaborative projects for almost fourteen years,' David explains. 'We've been funding a number of programs and we'll continue to fund programs in postdoctoral and postgraduate research.'

Syed Ali (MDevSt 2003)

Syed Ali has worked in the development sector since 1994, shortly after completing his bachelors degree at Tufts University in the US. He returned to study in 2003 and completed his Masters in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne. Syed has worked for several years in poverty alleviation and rural development in Pakistan, where around half the population of 187 million face food insecurity, and food production is still recovering from the devastating 2010 floods.

He is currently undertaking fieldwork in that country for his PhD under the co-supervision of Dr Violeta Schubert, in the School of Social and Political Science. His thesis focuses on the impact of state and international donor policies on the landless poor in rural Pakistan.

'I hope that my PhD work will enable me to further understand and demonstrate the influence that particular types of policy-making have on the lives of poor rural masses in my country.'

In Pakistan, Syed says, government agricultural policies ignore the needs of smaller and landless farmers and place an emphasis on agricultural exports. The mismanagement of the existing food supply and the hoarding and illegal smuggling of food items also undermines food distribution systems.

Tim McClelland (BAgrSc/BCom 2006)

Tim McClelland is Yield Prophet Co-ordinator with the Birchip Cropping Group (BCG), a not-for-profit agricultural research organisation led by farmers in the Wimmera Mallee region of Victoria. Yield Prophet is an online crop production model designed to present grain growers and consultants with real-time information about their crops.

It generates crop simulations, assisting farmers to make decisions to maximise production. BCG aims to improve the prosperity of rural and farming communities, Tim explains. Prosperous farmers, he says, can help to ensure that there is adequate food for Australians in the future as well as contributing to the food security of our trading partners around the world.