Farmers are well placed to supply the growing demand for food, according to an agricultural journalist.
Julian Cribb believes Australian farmers are starting to fine-tune their practices to boost sustainability and productivity.
But with depleting resources like water and land, Mr Cribb says farmers need to jump on global opportunities quickly.
“Basically there’s going to be ten billion people eating high protein diets by 2060, which means we’re going to have to double the amount of food that we produce,” he said.
“I sense that farmers generally see more opportunity now than they have seen in agriculture for 30 or 40 years.
“That’s certainly my view that agriculture is going to get some real front page attention like it has never had.”
Mr Cribb sees huge potential in aquaculture as a sustainable way to feed the growing world population.
“The world is running out of fish and yet it wants to eat more protein, so the fastest growing and the biggest food industry in Australia by 2050 is going to be aquaculture, fish farming,” he said.
“I believe we’ll have a $5 billion industry in growing fish.”
“And those fish are going to have to be fed on algae, because we can’t grow enough grain to feed them all, so there’s going to be a huge new industry in algae farming as well.”
Mr Cribb is the author of The Coming Famine.
