NORTHERN Australia can never be the "food bowl" for China, a conservation group claims.
Wilderness Society northern Australia campaigner Gavan McFadzean said northern Australia could not hold the large-scale agriculture that would transform it into a "food bowl" for China.
The comments come after interest from Chinese investors in the Ord Two development zone in the Kimberley.
Regional Development Minister Simon Crean stated on ABC's Q&A program this week it was up to state governments to decide whether to sell or lease their land to foreign investors, but he said Australia could be a big contributor to the world's food security.
Mr McFadzean said a Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce found in 2009 that northern Australia could never be the food bowl of the world, Asia or Australia.
"The task force found that irrigated agriculture in the north could be expanded from 20,000ha to 60,000ha - less than the size of some farms in Australia," he said.
"That answer wasn't good enough for the Coalition even though the taskforce was set up by the Howard Government, so Tony Abbot resurrected Bill Heffernan's scheme again last year.
"Now the Labor party is jumping on the bandwagon, with Australian trade minister Craig Emerson announcing a joint study with the Chinese government into transforming Northern Australia into China's food bowl."
Mr McFadzean said the extra 40,000ha of expanded agriculture would add just 0.1 per cent to Australia's farmed land.
"Australia now feeds 60 million people, so whatever way you cut it that insignificant increase in farmland still leaves a hell of a lot of China's more than 1 billion people with little in their food bowl," he said.
"Most of the rain in the north occurs on the coastal plains, which makes it very difficult to dam. Little rainfall occurs away from the coast where it would be easier to build dams. The rain occurs mostly in short, intense wet seasons, and the rest of the time the land effectively is in drought."
He added that the soils in Australia's north were nutrient poor and highly fragile.
Mr McFadzean said farming the north of Australia would have a detrimental effect on the environment and grazing, fishing and tourism industries.
"Seventy per cent of the world's tropical savannah, which once covered parts of Africa, Asia and South America, has been lost forever, and Northern Australia contains the world's largest remaining tropical savannah habitat," he said.
"It is also home to a breathtaking interconnected mosaic of escarpment county, heathlands, rainforests, coastline, floodplains, mangroves and coral reefs."
He pointed to the Ord Irrigation scheme, a pilot scheme for northern Australian farming, as an example of the concept's failure.
"Our most expensive northern food bowl experiment is now dominated by sandalwood plantations, not food," he said.
"Despite this, state and federal parties on both sides have indicated their willingness to pour good money after bad into Ord Stage 3."
http://greens-win.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/northern-australia-cant-be-chinas.html
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