Page 4575 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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than the average Australian. We can all reduce that waste by buying better and by storing things better so that they do not go off. And as a community we can reduce it by initiatives such as OzHarvest, who have just started up a third van in Canberra. OzHarvest provide the administration and logistic support to go around and collect food from restaurants, supermarkets and food wholesalers that would otherwise be wasted, and distribute it to people in need though multiple charities.
Another way of improving our food supply from a global point of view is eating less meat. While our local region produces a surplus of meat, this is not true for most of the world. A 2006 report from the world Food and Agriculture Organisation found that livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. It estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport, and that livestock account for 20 per cent of the terrestrial animal biomass. Most meat is produced using factory farming methods, which compromise animal welfare. Locally, we do this with battery cage eggs, a situation the Greens believe is inhumane and should stop. (Time expired.)
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.55): Food in the ACT is an important issue and it does, I suppose, bring out the crunchy con in me. There is an interesting dichotomy. There is a lot of discussion, there has been a lot of discussion here today, about supporting community farms and allotments and neighbourhood food production, which is beneficial to the community because it is through those mechanisms that we maintain the diversity of our food production. But it does not create the quantity of food that is necessary to feed the community, our community, and if everyone, as a result, went back to backyard food production, we would return to a subsistence society, which is not where the world has been taken in the 21st century.
A lot of the worthy and meritorious things that have been spoken about by members have to be dealt with with a little dose of reality. While we want to maintain our biodiversity and our heirloom tomatoes and the quality and taste of the food that we might eat, in a way this is a luxury. It is a point that I have touched on before when members extolled the benefits of community and farmers markets. Often community and farmers markets produce high-quality and individualistic food, but at a very high price compared to other sources of food, for instance, buying it in the supermarket. An experience that I have when I visit farmers markets is that I get a warm feeling about buying organic or buying heirloom or something like that, but I go away with a somewhat larger hole in my pocket than I do when I buy fruit and vegetables from a greengrocer or from a supermarket. And this is a practical issue that we have to take into account.
That said, I would like to concentrate my comments on food production in the ACT. I would like to begin by reflecting upon the proud history of the ACT region in food production. I was reminded of this last week when I had the opportunity, with others, of spending some time at Lambrigg Station. As students of history and the readers of New South Wales effective social studies circa 1966 would recall, Lambrigg was the site where William Farrer, who was immortalised for some years on the back of the $2 note, conducted his research into rust resistant wheat in Australia and turned
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