Have we learnt nothing?
Last year, QFVG argued that food should be treated as a national security asset - not just an economic output or social issue. Recent events suggest we’ve learnt less than we thought we had.
Australia likes to think of itself as food secure. We produce more than we consume, export globally, and rely on a reputation for safe, high-quality food. But food security isn’t just about how much we grow. It’s about whether the system that produces that food can withstand disruption.
COVID exposed it first. Empty shelves and broken supply chains forced food security into public view. There was talk of resilience and sovereign capability. Then the crisis eased, and so did the urgency. Now, global conflict is exposing new vulnerabilities with rising fuel, fertiliser, and freight costs.
The Federal Government’s commitment to develop a National Food Security Strategy is a welcome step. But with delivery still over a year away, it also highlights a familiar pattern: we respond slowly to risks that are already accelerating.
The pressures on our food system are not emerging, they are here. Climate variability, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, and input volatility are already shaping what gets planted and what doesn’t.
Horticulture sits at the centre of this exposure. Diesel powers production. Fertiliser drives yield. Freight moves food to market. When those systems tighten, the impact is immediate at the farm gate. And growers are already making difficult decisions. What to plant. What to scale back. In some cases, whether they can continue operating at all.
Once production is reduced, it is not easily recovered. Lost capacity becomes lost security.
Queensland produces around a quarter of Australia’s fresh fruit and vegetables, supporting thousands of regional jobs and billions in economic activity. Yet the system underpinning that output is becoming increasingly fragile - not because growers lack capability, but because the conditions around them are shifting faster than support is reaching them.
We tend to treat food security as something that matters only in crisis. But by the time it shows up in headlines, the damage has already been done.
If we are serious about food security, then success cannot be measured by strategies or announcements. It must be measured by whether growers are still in a position to produce food.
Food security is not a concept to revisit when things go wrong. It is a system that either works every day - or erodes until it doesn’t. And right now, too much of that risk is being carried by the people least able to absorb it - the growers who actually put food on our tables.
