As you know, Australia is a huge country, mostly covered by desert where little food can be produced. But there are also areas around the coast with really fertile soils that are perfect for all sorts of food production. Compared to many countries in the world we actually have a huge amount of food for the population. In fact, we export lots and lots of food. So we can produce enough food for ourselves and theoretically could survive without importing any extra food!
But… some countries have soil and weather that is much more suitable to growing certain types of foods. We are a very multicultural country so some foods are imported to cater for different tastes, food that we can not produce here, or at least not without costing a huge amount of money. So economics and politics comes into it as well.
If you are interested, you can find more information on the Government website here http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food part of the department of agriculture fisheries and forestry.
Kate has already given you a good answer about what we can/can’t and do/don’t grow.
I think it’s also good to remember that there are two sides to your question: whether Australia grows enough to eat depends on (i) how much food we can grow AND (ii) how much — and what — we eat.
Australia is short on water for agriculture, and we’ve all heard about the global warming/carbon/greenhouse-gas problem. We, and people who live in other rich countries, use a lot more water and produce a lot more greenhouse gases than people in poor countries because we (i) eat a lot more and (ii) eat a lot more meat.
Have a look, for example, at this news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7600005.stm
which says that United Nations scientists think that, around the world, producing meat generates more greenhouse gas than transport (cars, trucks, aircraft…)!
Disclaimer: I am a meat-eater myself and am not telling anyone to become vegetarian!
We can!! but not everything that we eat currently can be produced in australia. Items like chocolate can’t be grown here in aus…….but as mentioned by others, we export alot of our food overseas.
Hi Alanna, great question. 🙂
As you know, Australia is a huge country, mostly covered by desert where little food can be produced. But there are also areas around the coast with really fertile soils that are perfect for all sorts of food production. Compared to many countries in the world we actually have a huge amount of food for the population. In fact, we export lots and lots of food. So we can produce enough food for ourselves and theoretically could survive without importing any extra food!
But… some countries have soil and weather that is much more suitable to growing certain types of foods. We are a very multicultural country so some foods are imported to cater for different tastes, food that we can not produce here, or at least not without costing a huge amount of money. So economics and politics comes into it as well.
If you are interested, you can find more information on the Government website here http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food part of the department of agriculture fisheries and forestry.
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Hi Alanna and kate,
Kate has already given you a good answer about what we can/can’t and do/don’t grow.
I think it’s also good to remember that there are two sides to your question: whether Australia grows enough to eat depends on (i) how much food we can grow AND (ii) how much — and what — we eat.
Australia is short on water for agriculture, and we’ve all heard about the global warming/carbon/greenhouse-gas problem. We, and people who live in other rich countries, use a lot more water and produce a lot more greenhouse gases than people in poor countries because we (i) eat a lot more and (ii) eat a lot more meat.
Have a look, for example, at this news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7600005.stm
which says that United Nations scientists think that, around the world, producing meat generates more greenhouse gas than transport (cars, trucks, aircraft…)!
Disclaimer: I am a meat-eater myself and am not telling anyone to become vegetarian!
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We can!! but not everything that we eat currently can be produced in australia. Items like chocolate can’t be grown here in aus…….but as mentioned by others, we export alot of our food overseas.
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