Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity

reuters.com

84 pointstiarafawn44 comments

Score one for anti-protectionism.

Many of Australia'a agricultural markets are isolated by strong biosecurity/quarantine restrictions. Not subsidies, but a form of protection nonetheless. There are even internal borders- transporting produce across state lines is usually restricted.

"The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only."

Norman Borlaug

Nobel Prize lecture [0]

[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture...

A bit ironic to quote that considering how the speech was 55 years ago, and the green revolution is going stronger than ever. If anything the crisis of the next 50 years will be the economic and societal pressures crushing the childbirth rate in Western countries.

It's terrifying that 96% of all mammalian life on Earth is now human beings and our livestock. We might be able to feed more people, but habitat destruction is already the greatest threat to most wild species. Humans are doing fine, but the toll on everything non-human has been enormous. We are living through one of the greatest mass-extinction events in Earth's history.

I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.

You should fear famine. The biggest issues with global warming or famine, are the wars they will cause.

If large prosperous nations cannot obtain food, that is, no one has food to sell, then those nations will take food.

At whatever cost.

If they do not, then such a nation will tear itself apart from within. The options are, take from others, or take from your fellow citizens.

This is the reality, and no amount of hope or wishful dreams will change that fact. People will not let their children starve.

You're absolutely right about the path to war.

This is why famine and access to fresh water are my two biggest worries when it comes to our climate change driven future.

Even softer changes due to climate change are worrisome.

Imagine if ocean currents shifted, which keep Northern California up into BC warmer, and the UK and other parts of Europe warmer.

That's a lot of farmland changed.

The inverse could happen too. Instead of no longer bringing warm water to those coasts, cold water currents could arrive. You could have snow in Norhern California for most of the year, even while the rest of the planet warms.

So many variables.

Canada has immense amounts of bog thawing, and bog/swamp is very fertile land. But it's still further North, which means short growing seasons, and too much sun for some plants per day.

We should be creating crops which can handle those conditions, even if just through normal breeding.

Ah well.

His lecture was in 1970 and the "three decades" elapsed 25 years ago. People are still starving, but not for lack of agricultural production.

Most countries on Earth have declining birth rates, many first world countries have negative population growth.

Overpopulation isn't a thing.

Overpopulation is a thing in parts of South Asia and Africa. Climate change can affect the agricultural output in many countries and thus the land will support less people. The population growth is still very relevant in most of the affected countries. So overpopulation will definitely be a thing, unless there are real technological breakthroughs.

no break throughs needed - provide birth control and education in those regions and the rate will slow

> Australia has among the lowest agricultural subsidies

other countries would be wise to adopt that, but there is zero chance of that happening.

New Zealand did this in the 80s. Caused a lot of pain in the rural community, a bunch of bankruptcies, marriage failures and suicides as farming operations only sustainable because they were subsidised failed.

We now have a very internationally competitive agricultural sector, but yeah, getting there caused a lot of pain.

I disagree, food subsidies are the only alternative to the granary system, or foolishly counting on food imports. Agriculture is an industry with notorious slim margins, but yield can vary up to 30% year to year just on random weather patterns and often effects large areas at once. Combined those are a recipe for an eventual shortage unless you pay to over produce. A farm running on 2% margins on a good year can't risk planting 10% extra if they might not be able to sell it and will take it all as a loss, and so farmers without decent subsidies would only try to produce up to the current demand and not a bushel over it. And if a large agricultural area experiences a bad year, as we have seen happen historically many times over, and everyone was already only planning to barely meet demand, all of a sudden you have a food shortage and people starve. And on top of that weather patterns across the globe are changing and becoming less predictable. Famines essentially became nonexistent in places with decent crop subsidization, but in places without it that still rely on large granary stores shortages still happen.

> other countries would be wise to adopt that

Until they can't import food and can't feed their people

In the US and much of Europe, the subsidies are to NOT produce, not to produce more

To not produce in ordinary times. The thinking is that in time of war it’s easy to then say “go wild” and ensure your food supply is abundant.

And in the US, a lot of the subsidies flow towards food that isn't edible without processing - soybeans and field corn as opposed to sweet corn.

Why? Because they've always grown it. So the subsidies encourage them to keep on growing it instead of diversifying into more competitive or higher value crops.

The subsidy is received by way of reduced insurance premiums. While that does make insurance affordable where it mightn't otherwise be, the rate of reduction is the same across all crops, so the insurance is made equally affordable no matter which crop you grow. Thus, for all intents and purposes, we can completely ignore the subsidy and simply focus on the insurance as that is ultimately what you are suggesting is significant. After all, if the subsidies were taken away, all it would really mean that you theoretically couldn't afford insurance anymore and would do without.

But what is significant about insurance? Since no good discussion is complete without a car analogy, let's go there. Say you always drove a truck. By your logic, auto insurance encourages you to keep driving trucks. Which suggests that if you could no longer get auto insurance, you would start driving a bus/van/car/whatever instead. But what makes you think that? If auto insurance disappeared for some reason, why wouldn't you still keep driving trucks as opposed to buses/vans/cars/whatever? There is probably a reason why you started driving trucks in the first place that doesn't go away even if insurance did.

In the case of corn and soybeans, there is a really good reason why they are grown so much: Because that's where the market is. It is what people want to buy. They are the most competitive and highest value crops in the regions they are grown.

> In the case of corn and soybeans, there is a really good reason why they are grown so much: Because that's where the market is. It is what people want to buy. They are the most competitive and highest value crops in the regions they are grown.

Given the fact that they're subsidised, I doubt that they're the most competitive crops. Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised.

Also, if they're so competitive, then why has the demolition of USAID caused them economic harm? A competitive product doesn't rely on a taxpayer subsidised buyer to make their market.

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/1232435535/how-usaid-cuts-hur...

> Given the fact that they're subsidised, I doubt that they're the most competitive crops.

Every crop is subsidized.

> Competitive crops don't need to be subsidised.

Then no crop is competitive, so what is this alternative product that you are picturing? Stones? Who is going to buy those stones?

> then why has the demolition of USAID caused them economic harm?

John Deere's stock price is basically at its highest point ever. What economic harm are you talking about? When they are warning of imminent bankruptcy, then we can talk about there being economic harm. Some people sitting around complaining about something being different isn't real economic harm, just talk. Actions speak louder than words.

> Every crop is subsidized.

Then there is no free market, so the real value of any of those crops can't be determined.

https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...

Literally tells that the subsidy is insurance. Again, what is significant about insurance in the manner you have presented it?

What subsidies?

https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...

Read closely - it is insurance for a bad crop.

A lot of it also gets turned into biofuels or sent to third-world countries as food aid. That could easily be rerouted in a crisis scenario, if domestic food security became an issue.

The corn that gets turned into biofuel isn't edible without further processing into maize derived products, so in a crisis scenario, hope you can still highly process corn.

You can turn it into animal feed.

The subsidies are generally to have spare production capacity, so as to reduce the risk of famine that can occur from the capitalistic incentives of optimising the system for efficiency above resilience.

(Not that the subsidies are always actually the most sensibly set out: but the general idea of subsidizing farming is an important one)

> The subsidies are generally to have spare production capacity

Maybe originally, but not anymore. Exhibit A: See America's waistline and the reason behind it (hint: farm subsidies and SNAP, two sides of the same coin).

What's needed is for countries to create risk profiles for food availability under different scenarios. At the same time establish maximum risk threshold.

Then pursue whatever strategy gets you there.

and those subsidies go predominantly into R&D rather than propping up fragile businesses

My university has a good anecdote here

Not sure about this year but either two or three years ago over 90% of the University of New England’s grant money (over $20MM) was from the School of Agriculture

I hate many aspects of the Australian economy (especially our lack of economic diversity) but having world-best tech for farming isn’t one of them. America is still leaps and bounds behind us in many different subdomains of Agriculture and Mining

Australia is weak for only really having primary industries, but we sure are very optimised for it

They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm. Maybe that helps.

Land is a huge expense in places with high population density (e.g. India).

Australia also produces a huge amount of high-quality mangoes. In the desert. Respect. They're very very strong on water management.

The land isn't free and arable land with good water is hard to come by.

Mangoes are not grown in the Tanami or Great Sandy Desert. They're not grown around Kalgoorlie (that relies on piped in water from far, far away), etc.

   Mangoes (Mangifera indica) are predominantly grown in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and when combined, produce approximately 95% of the total national crop. Mangoes are also grown in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

from: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/who-we-are/our-industry/

crop map: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/resources/resources-libr...

The areas they are grown have tropical rainforest (Qld), vast Wetlands (those parts of the Northern Territory with fresh water crocodiles, swamps, etc), annual monsoons (Kimberley), etc.

But yes, we do have on point water management.

You're not familiar with the geography of Australia, huh.

A) They're not growing mangoes in the desert. B) They're pretty fucking terrible at water management, google the Murray - Darling and learn you some Australian water management.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Arable farm land is very expensive here.

Land the western australia wheat belt sells for less than $1000/acre. Is that very expensive?

> They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm.

Australia is vast and empty. In the interior, rivers are few and far between and the landscape is flat and featureless. Any 'free' land is going to be essentially desert. Even if you could grow something on it, you wouldn't want to live there.

I mean it’s very very much not free

You can buy and sell x-year leases from the crown. Any with a commercially viable site sell for just below or even more than freehold land (depending on supply)

Farming logistics also works radically differently than in America: the reason our farms are orders of magnitude higher larger than American ranches spatially is because it’s only somewhat profitable at the largest possible scales

The valley I’m from originally (The Tweed) is cane country, and not a single company is viable independently. Hell we only have one mill left nationally that’s not-megacorp owned (note we have no land leases though, it’s all freehold where I’m from)

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