A WORLD that’s “drowning” in wheat supply causing “miserable” prices and extended “pain” for family farmers has prompted a flippant quip to make a point about the “interesting” science of global warming, from new Crawford Fund Chair John Anderson.
Mr Anderson is still producing grains on the family’s 102 year-old farm at Gunnedah in north-west NSW, and is now seeing the next generation moving in to take-over the business.
The former Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister made a speech yesterday to open an event in Canberra looking at food security, biosecurity and national security in the Melanesian Arc, where he quipped “not all together flippantly” about a scientific question, underpinning the current global glut of wheat production.
“I’m concerned about the family grain farmer because these wheat prices are very miserable at the moment - but it’s not the first time we’ve seen it,” he said.
“However, I think the science behind this might prove to be very interesting.
“We’ve had unprecedented global production in grain and we’re in danger of drowning in wheat globally, so maybe we’ll have to do something about global warming.
“But that’s just being a bit flippant, to make the point.”
Mr Anderson said the Ukraine was “really starting to muscle up” in terms of boosting wheat production and having a significant impact on the global grains market.
He said the large Eastern Europe country with Black Sea coastline had very rich soils and a reliable climate with input and production costs that were far lower than those in Australia.
“We do need to realise just what a power-house the Ukraine in particular is,” he said.
“It’s a massive area of very, very productive land and it was the bread basket of Europe before the upheavals of the communist era that destroyed agriculture in so much of that part of the world.
“It has taken quite a while since the Iron Curtain was lifted, but they’re now starting to get their act together, like sorting out land title issues and starting to act like capitalists and even importing second hand Australian headers.
“The Ukraine is starting to go about wheat production in a very serious way.”
Of the global wheat price outlook, Mr Anderson said, “I think we may be in for a little bit of pain for quite some time”.
He said however there had been some bright spots for farmers with chick pea prices for example being very high and strong.
But it may take a while to digest the globe’s capacity to produce enormous quantities of wheat and other cereals, he said.
“On the other hand we’ve been here before and sadly, in many ways, it will probably be resolved by a combination of low prices being the answer to low prices and no doubt somewhere around the globe there will be some terrible weather event which you wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he said.
“But certainly at the moment the only thing that carried a lot of farmers this harvest was simple volume - the tonnages they managed to produce - because the prices were pretty miserable.”
Mr Anderson said the solution was the old adage of farmers moving away from crops that earned low prices, to ease the high supply scenario.
“The answer to high prices is high prices and the answer to low prices is low prices,” he said.
“I think we will see people withdrawing this paddock here and this paddock there.”
Having been a member of the Fund’s board since 2010, Mr Anderson has now replaced one-time Labor Agriculture Minister John Kerin who served in the role for six years.
Mr Kerin was acknowledged by the new Chair for his “passionate and determined efforts” working for the Fund and promoting international agricultural research in areas of humanitarian benefit which also advance Australian farming.