Strategic cropping land

Agricultural land resources are important to Queensland. They support economic growth in regional areas, they provide a resource base for growing food in the context of increasing world food demand and they are finite in nature.

The Queensland Government is committed to the sustainable development of Queensland’s land resources, including managing competing land uses to ensure balanced outcomes. Loss of Queensland’s highest value agricultural land has the potential to reduce the state’s future capacity to grow crops with associated economic, environmental and social implications.

Intensified land use competition for agricultural land, particularly in relation to mining development, has highlighted shortcomings in the current planning framework to conserve agricultural land. The government is committed to addressing this gap to ensure that the state’s interest in agricultural land is given due consideration in land use planning and development decisions.

The Queensland Government has a strong interest in ensuring that the best land that underpins the agricultural sector is given appropriate consideration in development decisions. Improved land use planning and development approval processes will be developed to balance competing land uses.

A new Queensland policy and planning framework for strategic cropping land

The Queensland Government considers that the best cropping land, defined as strategic cropping land, is a finite resource that must be conserved and managed for the longer term. As a general aim, the exercise of planning and approval powers should be used to protect such land from those developments that lead to its permanent alienation or diminished productivity.

The Queensland Government is seeking to develop a more comprehensive policy that will minimize the loss of strategic cropping land.

This will be achieved by ensuring that government can consider, assess, manage and mitigate the impacts of mining, urban development and other land uses on Queensland’s strategic cropping land.

The policy principles that outline how this will be achieved are:

Planning and development decisions will aim to conserve strategic cropping land for agricultural production.
Development proposals, which government considers are in the overwhelming long term public interest, will only be approved where detailed assessment of the impact of the development on strategic cropping land values has been undertaken.

The proposed framework will consist of four elements:

defining strategic cropping land
developing a new statutory planning instrument
amending resources sector legislation
establishing guidelines for development assessment

For more information, click here.

Government proposes to protect key food producing land

The Queensland Government has moved to give greater protection to the state´s most important food growing land from incompatible development such as mining urban and other development.

“While Queensland has a large area of agricultural land, due to poor soils and climatic conditions, most of it is suitable only for grazing.

“Only 3.8 million hectares, or 2.2 per cent, of the state is currently used for growing crops for domestic consumption and export.

“Not only is cropping land scarce, the soils that make it productive are a finite resource that have taken millions of years to develop.

“If we allow these soils to be destroyed by urban development and open-cut mines, for example, we will effectively be reducing our capacity to grow crops into the future to support Queensland’s long-term agriculture and food production.”

Mr Mulherin said the protection of Queensland’s cropping lands was vital to the state’s economy and positions Queensland for a future when there may be increasing global concerns about food security.

“Cropping land and the industries it supports are a key component of the Queensland agriculture and agri-food system, which in 2006-07 generated $22.7 billion dollars (about12 per cent of the Gross State Product), and supported one in eight Queensland jobs,” he said.

“The United Nations estimates global food production will need to increase by 50 per cent by 2030 and double by 2050 to meet demand.

“And yet the UN estimates up to 25 per cent of global food production could be lost by 2050 due to climate change, loss of agricultural land and water scarcity.

“It is therefore critical that our strategic cropping lands are safeguarded from incompatible development.”

For more information, click here.

Facts and Information

Food security is one of the most important challenges we face today.

It is increasingly clear that the world is experiencing an unprecedented challenge to the security of its food supplies with food shortages triggering dramatic rises in food prices in Australia and internationally. This setting comes against a projected world population of 9.2 billion by 2050, increased demand for higher protein foods, continued subsistence farming in many nations and smaller average harvests around the world as the climate changes.

At one level, agriculture is the most local of all activities. It is reliant on the very land of the nation. However at the moment, the three biggest factors in the world also happen to be fundamental to agriculture: the global financial crisis, the global food crisis and climate change”.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Tony Burke
Ministerial Statement - Global Food Security - Parliament House, Canberra

“Today, the three biggest challenges facing the world are also fundamental to agriculture: climate change, the global food crisis and the global financial crisis.”

“Today, we have improved technology – better farming practices, plant breeding and food distribution systems. But we are constrained by limited available agricultural land and shrinking water resources.”

For more information, click here.

The recent tragic infant deaths from contaminated milk from China should serve as a very powerful reminder to all Australians of the need to nurture and value our ability to be self sufficient in safe food production now and well into the future.

United Nations recent report states farmers will need to grow as much food in the next 50 years as we have produced in the last 10, 000 years. We will have another population the size of China to feed in Asia, and equivalent to another China in the rest of the world, in the next 40 years. If their standard of living rises as it should, they will aspire to not just a bowl of rice a day, but some animal protein which again requires an increase in production.

At the 2008 World Food Prize symposium it was stated that we are at a watershed moment in world history where we will be united or divided depending on food policy and production. We will have world war or world peace depending on food policy and production.

As a nation we are blessed with massive coal and mineral reserves, and we do need to develop those resources for the benefit of all Australians, but not at any cost. We need to do it in a way that preserves our food bowls not only for ourselves but for our children and their children.

“We need intensive research into agriculture so that we can meet the challenges of food production and also make the best possible use of our arable resources. What we need is nothing less than a second green revolution", commented Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Friedrich Ber-schauer, Chairman of the Board of Bayer CropScience AG.”

• “In the year 2025 we are likely to be sharing our planet Earth with some eight billion other people. They all hope to have enough to eat.”

• “Securing the world's food supply is one of the greatest challenges of our time. And the agricultural sector faces major challenges here, as global food reserves have already fallen to the lowest level in thirty years. But increasing the amount of land used to produce food is scarcely an option.”

• “All these factors mean that international research and development policies will have to focus more closely on agriculture. This is the only way of securing food supplies in the future.”

For more information, click here.

Today, more than 6 billion people rely on food grown on just 11 percent of the global land surface. Even less ground - a scant 3 percent of the Earth’s surface offers inherently fertile soil.

Source: Charles C. Mann National Geographic (Charles C. Mann is a multi international award winning science author and journalist).

• “Total world food demand is forecast to rise 110 percent in the next 40 years. By 2050 we will be feeding the equivalent of 13 billion people at today’s nutritional levels”

• “The world may also be facing ‘peak land’, meaning it has run out of good arable country”

• “Most conflicts round the world in the last 20 years have been driven, at their core, by disputes stemming from a scarcity of food, land or water.”

• “I doubt the world can produce enough protein from conventional farming systems to feed the equivalent of 13 billion people in mid-century, year-in year-out. To sustain the growth in meat demand alone will require us to produce the equivalent of three billion tonnes of grain – which means, in a nutshell, we need to discover two and a half more North Americas somewhere on the planet”

• “If we don’t, by 2050 we will have more than three quarters of the human population – almost eight billion people, living in places where they are totally without the means or the knowledge to feed themselves. Our giant cities will be gigantic death traps, at the mercy of even minor glitches in regional or global food supplies.”
• ”These challenges are far from trivial. With its current, run-down agricultural science and skills, there needs to be a fundamental shift in understanding among our leaders and society as a whole that food production still underpins our civilisation and merits due attention and investment.”
• ”Australia was a leader in the last Green Revolution and we need to rediscover that spirit and that determination to make a difference”.

For more information, click here.

The World Bank recently noted that “to meet projected demand, cereal production will have to increase by nearly 50 percent and meat production by 85 percent from 2000 to 2030.” And it further cautions that: “managing the aggregate response of agriculture to rising demand will require good policy and sustained investments, not business as usual”. The World Bank, 2008a, World Development Report 2008; Agriculture for Development, Washington.

For more information, click here.

Food shortages this year, caused in part by the diminishing quantity and quality of the world’s soil, have led to riots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Source: Charles C. Mann, National Geographic

The World’s population has consumed more food in the past seven years than it is able to grow.

Source: Prof Julian Cribb, “The Coming Famine”

It should not be forgotten that prior to the sharp rise in food and fuel prices, some subregions and a number of countries had made significant progress in reducing hunger. This demonstrates that good policies can assist tackle the persistent challenges of hunger. The effects of the food and fuel crisis on malnutrition and schooling can undermine years of progress on the [Millennium Development Goals]. Early malnutrition, while preventable, has irreversible costs as malnourished children cannot develop into healthy adults. … This is a tragic loss of human and economic potential. Unhealthy, less-productive populations are less able to generate the growth needed to lift themselves and their country out of poverty.

For more information, click here.

In the short to medium term the latest (2008) joint OECD-FAO assessment, which covers the period 2008 to 2017, notes that: “For the Least Developed Countries, especially the food-deficit group, the projections thus show greatly increased vulnerability and uncertain food supplies during an era of high commodity prices and high price volatility” and “over the longer term, agricultural supply is facing increased uncertainties and limitations to the amount of new land that can be taken into cultivation”. OECD-FAO, 2008, Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017

For more information, click here.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “If temperatures rise by more than 20 C, global food production potential is expected to contract severely and yields of major crops may fall globally. The declines will be particularly pronounced in lower-latitude regions. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, for instance, yields could decline by 20-40 percent. In addition, severe weather occurrences such as droughts and floods are likely to intensify and cause greater crop and livestock losses”.

Source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

By 2030, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth and farmers will need to produce 30 percent more grain

Source: Charles C. Mann, National Geographic

Recent Production Statistics:

Last year, Haystack Plain farmers, without using any irrigation water
• Have produced enough wheat to make 68 million loaves of bread or feed 27,000 African families for a year,
• Enough sorghum to feed 14 million chickens or produce 79 million beef sausages,
• Enough cotton to make 675,000 pairs of jeans,
• As well as many tonnes of edible chick peas, mung beans and malting barley amongst other specialty crops.

As a nation and as responsible global citizens, can we really afford to destroy forever our very best food producing land?


		Strategic cropping land Agricultural land resources are important to Queensland. They support economic growth in regional areas, they provide a resource base for growing food in the context of increasing world food demand and they are finite in nature. The Queensland Government is committed to the sustainable development of Queensland’s land resources, including managing competing land uses to ensure balanced outcomes. Loss of Queensland’s highest value agricultural land has the potential to reduce the state’s future capacity to grow crops with associated economic, environmental and social implications. Intensified land use competition for agricultural land, particularly in relation to mining development, has highlighted shortcomings in the current planning framework to conserve agricultural land. The government is committed to addressing this gap to ensure that the state’s interest in agricultural land is given due consideration in land use planning and development decisions. The Queensland Government has a strong interest in ensuring that the best land that underpins the agricultural sector is given appropriate consideration in development decisions. Improved land use planning and development approval processes will be developed to balance competing land uses. A new Queensland policy and planning framework for strategic cropping land The Queensland Government considers that the best cropping land, defined as strategic cropping land, is a finite resource that must be conserved and managed for the longer term. As a general aim, the exercise of planning and approval powers should be used to protect such land from those developments that lead to its permanent alienation or diminished productivity. The Queensland Government is seeking to develop a more comprehensive policy that will minimize the loss of strategic cropping land. This will be achieved by ensuring that government can consider, assess, manage and mitigate the impacts of mining, urban development and other land uses on Queensland’s strategic cropping land. The policy principles that outline how this will be achieved are: Planning and development decisions will aim to conserve strategic cropping land for agricultural production. Development proposals, which government considers are in the overwhelming long term public interest, will only be approved where detailed assessment of the impact of the development on strategic cropping land values has been undertaken. The proposed framework will consist of four elements: defining strategic cropping land developing a new statutory planning instrument amending resources sector legislation establishing guidelines for development assessment For more information, click here. Government proposes to protect key food producing land The Queensland Government has moved to give greater protection to the state´s most important food growing land from incompatible development such as mining urban and other development. “While Queensland has a large area of agricultural land, due to poor soils and climatic conditions, most of it is suitable only for grazing. “Only 3.8 million hectares, or 2.2 per cent, of the state is currently used for growing crops for domestic consumption and export. “Not only is cropping land scarce, the soils that make it productive are a finite resource that have taken millions of years to develop. “If we allow these soils to be destroyed by urban development and open-cut mines, for example, we will effectively be reducing our capacity to grow crops into the future to support Queensland’s long-term agriculture and food production.” Mr Mulherin said the protection of Queensland’s cropping lands was vital to the state’s economy and positions Queensland for a future when there may be increasing global concerns about food security. “Cropping land and the industries it supports are a key component of the Queensland agriculture and agri-food system, which in 2006-07 generated $22.7 billion dollars (about12 per cent of the Gross State Product), and supported one in eight Queensland jobs,” he said. “The United Nations estimates global food production will need to increase by 50 per cent by 2030 and double by 2050 to meet demand. “And yet the UN estimates up to 25 per cent of global food production could be lost by 2050 due to climate change, loss of agricultural land and water scarcity. “It is therefore critical that our strategic cropping lands are safeguarded from incompatible development.” For more information, click here. Facts and Information Food security is one of the most important challenges we face today. It is increasingly clear that the world is experiencing an unprecedented challenge to the security of its food supplies with food shortages triggering dramatic rises in food prices in Australia and internationally. This setting comes against a projected world population of 9.2 billion by 2050, increased demand for higher protein foods, continued subsistence farming in many nations and smaller average harvests around the world as the climate changes. At one level, agriculture is the most local of all activities. It is reliant on the very land of the nation. However at the moment, the three biggest factors in the world also happen to be fundamental to agriculture: the global financial crisis, the global food crisis and climate change”. Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Tony Burke Ministerial Statement - Global Food Security - Parliament House, Canberra “Today, the three biggest challenges facing the world are also fundamental to agriculture: climate change, the global food crisis and the global financial crisis.” “Today, we have improved technology – better farming practices, plant breeding and food distribution systems. But we are constrained by limited available agricultural land and shrinking water resources.” For more information, click here. The recent tragic infant deaths from contaminated milk from China should serve as a very powerful reminder to all Australians of the need to nurture and value our ability to be self sufficient in safe food production now and well into the future. United Nations recent report states farmers will need to grow as much food in the next 50 years as we have produced in the last 10, 000 years. We will have another population the size of China to feed in Asia, and equivalent to another China in the rest of the world, in the next 40 years. If their standard of living rises as it should, they will aspire to not just a bowl of rice a day, but some animal protein which again requires an increase in production. At the 2008 World Food Prize symposium it was stated that we are at a watershed moment in world history where we will be united or divided depending on food policy and production. We will have world war or world peace depending on food policy and production. As a nation we are blessed with massive coal and mineral reserves, and we do need to develop those resources for the benefit of all Australians, but not at any cost. We need to do it in a way that preserves our food bowls not only for ourselves but for our children and their children. “We need intensive research into agriculture so that we can meet the challenges of food production and also make the best possible use of our arable resources. What we need is nothing less than a second green revolution", commented Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Friedrich Ber-schauer, Chairman of the Board of Bayer CropScience AG.” • “In the year 2025 we are likely to be sharing our planet Earth with some eight billion other people. They all hope to have enough to eat.” • “Securing the world's food supply is one of the greatest challenges of our time. And the agricultural sector faces major challenges here, as global food reserves have already fallen to the lowest level in thirty years. But increasing the amount of land used to produce food is scarcely an option.” • “All these factors mean that international research and development policies will have to focus more closely on agriculture. This is the only way of securing food supplies in the future.” For more information, click here. Today, more than 6 billion people rely on food grown on just 11 percent of the global land surface. Even less ground - a scant 3 percent of the Earth’s surface offers inherently fertile soil. Source: Charles C. Mann National Geographic (Charles C. Mann is a multi international award winning science author and journalist). • “Total world food demand is forecast to rise 110 percent in the next 40 years. By 2050 we will be feeding the equivalent of 13 billion people at today’s nutritional levels” • “The world may also be facing ‘peak land’, meaning it has run out of good arable country” • “Most conflicts round the world in the last 20 years have been driven, at their core, by disputes stemming from a scarcity of food, land or water.” • “I doubt the world can produce enough protein from conventional farming systems to feed the equivalent of 13 billion people in mid-century, year-in year-out. To sustain the growth in meat demand alone will require us to produce the equivalent of three billion tonnes of grain – which means, in a nutshell, we need to discover two and a half more North Americas somewhere on the planet” • “If we don’t, by 2050 we will have more than three quarters of the human population – almost eight billion people, living in places where they are totally without the means or the knowledge to feed themselves. Our giant cities will be gigantic death traps, at the mercy of even minor glitches in regional or global food supplies.” • ”These challenges are far from trivial. With its current, run-down agricultural science and skills, there needs to be a fundamental shift in understanding among our leaders and society as a whole that food production still underpins our civilisation and merits due attention and investment.” • ”Australia was a leader in the last Green Revolution and we need to rediscover that spirit and that determination to make a difference”. For more information, click here. The World Bank recently noted that “to meet projected demand, cereal production will have to increase by nearly 50 percent and meat production by 85 percent from 2000 to 2030.” And it further cautions that: “managing the aggregate response of agriculture to rising demand will require good policy and sustained investments, not business as usual”. The World Bank, 2008a, World Development Report 2008; Agriculture for Development, Washington. For more information, click here. Food shortages this year, caused in part by the diminishing quantity and quality of the world’s soil, have led to riots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Source: Charles C. Mann, National Geographic The World’s population has consumed more food in the past seven years than it is able to grow. Source: Prof Julian Cribb, “The Coming Famine” It should not be forgotten that prior to the sharp rise in food and fuel prices, some subregions and a number of countries had made significant progress in reducing hunger. This demonstrates that good policies can assist tackle the persistent challenges of hunger. The effects of the food and fuel crisis on malnutrition and schooling can undermine years of progress on the [Millennium Development Goals]. Early malnutrition, while preventable, has irreversible costs as malnourished children cannot develop into healthy adults. … This is a tragic loss of human and economic potential. Unhealthy, less-productive populations are less able to generate the growth needed to lift themselves and their country out of poverty. For more information, click here. In the short to medium term the latest (2008) joint OECD-FAO assessment, which covers the period 2008 to 2017, notes that: “For the Least Developed Countries, especially the food-deficit group, the projections thus show greatly increased vulnerability and uncertain food supplies during an era of high commodity prices and high price volatility” and “over the longer term, agricultural supply is facing increased uncertainties and limitations to the amount of new land that can be taken into cultivation”. OECD-FAO, 2008, Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017 For more information, click here. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “If temperatures rise by more than 20 C, global food production potential is expected to contract severely and yields of major crops may fall globally. The declines will be particularly pronounced in lower-latitude regions. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, for instance, yields could decline by 20-40 percent. In addition, severe weather occurrences such as droughts and floods are likely to intensify and cause greater crop and livestock losses”. Source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) By 2030, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth and farmers will need to produce 30 percent more grain Source: Charles C. Mann, National Geographic Recent Production Statistics: Last year, Haystack Plain farmers, without using any irrigation water • Have produced enough wheat to make 68 million loaves of bread or feed 27,000 African families for a year, • Enough sorghum to feed 14 million chickens or produce 79 million beef sausages, • Enough cotton to make 675,000 pairs of jeans, • As well as many tonnes of edible chick peas, mung beans and malting barley amongst other specialty crops. As a nation and as responsible global citizens, can we really afford to destroy forever our very best food producing land?
	Would you like to receive our regular updates & Newsletter? Name: Email:


	Copyright 2009 © FutureFood Qld. All rights reserved. Home \| Facts \| Membership \| Press Releases \| Contact Us \| Links \| Support Us