Australia's volatile climate, which experts warned will produce increasing weather extremes, has already contributed to a loss in farmland the size of Ukraine, a leading analyst warned.

Australia's Climate Commission warned earlier this week of a high risk that the heatwaves, drought, wild fires and cyclones which have reached at least part of the country over the past few months will become more severe.

"Records are broken from time to time, but record-breaking weather is becoming more common as the climate shifts," Tim Flannery, chief commissioner, said.

Yet already Australia's farmland is on the decline, with more than 60m hectares (600,000 square kilometres) - an area the size of Germany and the UK combined, and equivalent to a 13% loss - falling out of production over the past two decades, Luke Mathews, at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said.

"Some of this decline is attributed to urban encroachment, but more is attributed to retired land because of poor productivity and environmental considerations," he said, flagging "limited water supplies" as a major land constraint.

Much of the land lost will have been of poor quality, used only for grazing, but in some areas, notably parts of Western Australia, extended dryness is threatening what have historically been arable farms too.

'Myriad of challenges'

While irrigation offered "some incremental opportunities" to turn the tide and expand arable land, "the overall contribution will be small", Mr Mathews said, warning of a "myriad of challenges", such as pest pressures.

The Ord irrigation scheme in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where cotton crops were lost to the bollworm caterpillar, and sugar production stopped six years ago, highlighted the difficulties.

"Food crops have been grown in the Ord in the past, yet today the region produces sandalwood trees for use in the perfume industry," he said.

Western Australia, usually the country's biggest grain-growing state, has in fact become the epicentre of Australia's drought concerns, with the Climate Commission warning of a 15% drop in rainfall there since the mid-1970s, and the prospect of a further decline to come.

"Model-based projections suggest that the drying trend in southwest Western Australia will continue to intensify to the middle and end of this century," the commission said, warning that projections suggest a further drop in average rainfall of 10% by 2030 and up to 20% by 2050.

Australia's contribution

With Australian yield growth slowing – falling to an average of 0.3% a year for wheat so far this century, from 2.5% between 1970 and 2000 – the country's primary role in helping Asia meet its growing food supplies may in terms of advice rather than produce, Mr Mathews said.

"As to the question of whether Australia will become the physical food bowl of Asia, the answer is no," he said.

"Australia's contribution to global food security, and our contribution to becoming the food bowl of Asia, will be more a function of our technical ability rather than our local productive ability."

'Farmland prices falling sharply'

In Western Australia, one farmer, Aaron Edmonds, warned Agrimoney.com of the depleted hopes already for this year's harvest, before it has even been planted – with dry weather limiting banks' readiness to lend.

Mr Edmonds said: "Western Australia farmland prices are falling sharply if there are buyers. The machinery market has dried up to a virtual standstill and for those farmers with livestock, sheep and cattle prices have fallen in the range of 50-75%.

"This is going to undoubtedly affect volumes of grain that are likely to be available out of this part of the world."


 

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