A well-fed Indo-Pacific is a safe and secure one

This is the core message we heard loud and clear from the National Food Security Preparedness Green Paper released in April this year. For those of us who live and breathe all things food – the realisation that successive Governments have left ‘eating’ out of our own defence strategy was, for me at least, more than a little disappointing.  

“Food hasn’t featured as a priority in the public versions of the Defence Strategic Review or the National Defence Strategy. This has created a gap in Australia’s preparedness activities: if Australia’s national security and defence organisations are preparing for potential conflict, then Australia’s agriculture sector and food system stakeholders should also be preparing for this period of strategic uncertainty,” says the executive summary of the green paper. 

Australia’s food system has long been taken for granted - reliable, abundant, and quietly world-class. But the National Food Security Preparedness Strategy Green Paper lays bare a truth we’ve ignored for too long: the assumption that Australia will always be food secure is dangerously outdated. 

More than 60% of Australia’s sea trade flows through the Indo-Pacific. This region is not only our economic lifeblood but also increasingly a geopolitical pressure point. A food-secure Indo-Pacific is not just a humanitarian or trade concern - it’s a national security imperative. 

Yet, food has rarely been featured in defence strategy conversations. In wartime and hardship, food was once treated as strategic infrastructure. So why has it become so invisible in the corridors of power? I’d dare say the same reasons it has become invisible to many Australians – the mindset that it’s always been there and always will be.  

To safeguard our future, we must elevate food back to its rightful place in national discourse. That means treating food systems as strategic assets, not just environmental or social programs. A sustainable food system must be economically viable for producers, environmentally sound, and nationally secure. 

For years, we’ve called for a whole-of-government approach to food - integrated, proactive, and long-term. The cost-of-living crisis has thrown food prices into the spotlight, but what if the next crisis isn’t affordability, but availability? 

Food is not just a cost to be contained - it’s value far exceeds taste or convenience – it is a national capability to be protected. 

This green paper should mark a turning point in the conversation before our apathy costs us more than we can afford.