Landline: Food shortage: Please, Sir, can I have some more?

DR PETER CARBERRY

In the next 40 years, we have to produce as much food as the world has produced in the last 500 years.

PROFESSOR JOHN CRAWFORD

You can work out on the back of an envelope that we're not going to have enough food in 20 years' time by far.

JULIAN CRIBB

We're running out of water, we're running out of oil, we're running out of agricultural science and technology. We're running out of fish, we're running out of stable climates. So all of those things playing together are creating greater insecurity in the world's food supply at a time when demand is poised to double.

Greengrocer stands next to tables laden with fresh fruit and vegetables in market

GREENGROCER

Baby spinach and salad mix — all $2 here, guys. Who wants 'em?

KERRY STAIGHT

Faced with such abundance and variety, serious food shortages may seem unlikely to many shoppers in Australia. But a growing chorus of experts say it's a crisis that is real and, if ignored, far-reaching.

PROFESSOR JOHN CRAWFORD

Our level of certainty over food security is that we are in trouble and we need to do something about it now.

KERRY STAIGHT

It's a challenge that has confronted food producers before.

Archival footage of workers harvesting wheat fields in India

DR NORMAN BORLAUG

Those who now say that food is not the problem, I say it will be a continuing problem.

KERRY STAIGHT

In the '60s and '70s, the so-called 'Green Revolution', led by a plant scientist Norman Borlaug, more than doubled agricultural outputs by using more water, fertiliser, pesticides and higher-yielding crop varieties. It helped feed the world for 40 years and reduced poverty but it also took a toll on the resources we rely on for food.

DR PETER CARBERRY

So we do need another revolution but it cannot be in the same vein as in the past. It has to be a revolution built on resource-use efficiency, using our resources much more efficiently but still have the production increases needed to meet the demand.

KERRY STAIGHT

So what is Australia's role in this greener Green Revolution?

MICHAEL D'OCCHIO

Australia never has been and never will be a food basket or the food bowl of the world. The reality is that we produce food for 60 million people. We feed 22 million-odd at home and 40 million overseas. But put in the global context, that 40 million that we feed overseas represents less than 3% of global food movements. How Australia contributes to food security globally is through knowledge, training and technology transfer.

JULIAN CRIBB

We're very good at farming, we're very, very good at food production. We have better knowledge about how to handle difficult climates, droughts and floods and things like that than almost anyone else in the world and in a time of climate change, that's exactly the kind of knowledge that you need.