Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for moving this motion on the horticulture industry, because it gives me an opportunity to talk about horticulture in the area I live in, which of course is Greater Sydney. I doubt that many people know this, but agricultural production in the Greater Sydney region is valued at about $1 billion, compared with the state's $16 billion. So, it is actually an incredibly large part of the food production for the region. In fact, 20 per cent of the fresh food that goes into the CBD is grown in the Sydney basin, including in the member's own seat of Nicholls. It really is quite incredible.

But we can't conclude that this situation will continue, because the planning that the New South Wales government has introduced allows so much of our really good-quality agricultural farmland to be concreted over and turned into urban sprawl. If the current trend continues, in the next decades we're likely to see the 20 per cent of fresh food that is going into Sydney from local farmland go down to five per cent. That is a significant shift, and going the wrong way, given the changing nature of our climate and the kinds of circumstances that will impact our food supply chains locally—bushfires, changing climate, overseas disruption et cetera.

We should be looking at what several other countries around the world are looking at: how we reduce our food miles and fragment our supply chains so that there are a variety of sources of food quite close to where we live. I know that a number of organisations in Western Sydney, including a range of businesses, are working on just that. I want to point out that there's a really great project coming our way, courtesy of the New South Wales state government. I don't always praise the New South Wales state government, but the Western Sydney Aerotropolis research centre for agribusiness is actually a very good idea—a world-class research and innovation centre proposed for the precinct, focused entirely on agribusiness, at the Western Sydney Aerotropolis, which will tap into the region's history of food production—and we have quite an extensive one. We also have quite a history in food processing. In fact, Western Sydney is the largest food processor in Australia. So, we are very much about food; it's just that we don't always realise it.

The plan will be on exhibition until 28 February. It outlines a vision for 10 precincts surrounding the airport. This is a really great project. The University of Western Sydney is well and truly involved in this, as are the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries facility the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute, Richmond High School and Richmond TAFE at Hawkesbury. So, we will be seeing some really high-tech work done in the Western Sydney region, and that's an incredibly important thing.

The world faces a really interesting dilemma when it comes to food production. It's estimated that by 2050 we won't be feeding the 7.5 billion people we're feeding now; we'll be feeding 10 billion. It's estimated that over the next four decades we'll have to produce the same amount of food that farmers all around the world produced in 8,000 years. There will need to be a massive increase in the amount of food that's produced on the land we currently have and with the water resources we currently have while we deal with climate change and while we deal with that fact that whole areas that we currently farm will become less viable. We are facing quite a serious dilemma. In fact, there are many reports now that say that famine will be the issue of the 21st century, and there's no doubt that is right. We can see that beginning to happen now. We can already see the rise of famine across the world due to changing climate. Australia should be in an extraordinary position to contribute. When you talk to our farmers, there is the research being done on farms, the improvement of soil and the use of drone technology. The work that our farmers are doing to improve productivity is quite incredible.

I want to point out just how far it can go. I will talk briefly about the Netherlands. The Netherlands has half the land mass of Tasmania and it has 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It has no land big enough for large-scale agriculture—none at all—and yet it's the globe's No. 2 exporter of food, measured by value, second only to the United States. It's quite extraordinary and it— (Time expired)

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