Senator Joyce is today the Keynote Speaker at the 2011 AUSVEG National Convention and stated that it was pertinent that he be speaking to food growers given this morning's news.

Global food prices have increased by 36% in the past year, and the World Bank estimates that this has directly forced an additional 44 million people into poverty.

Australia has a moral obligation to produce food, to feed ourselves, and to feed the world. Policies which put aside prime agricultural land and reduce our capacity to produce the vegetables, to produce the wheat, to produce the stock, to produce the rice, or other food commodities, are immoral.

The suggestion that we reduce the allocation of water for irrigation to such an extent that it closes down the rice industry, will mean that somebody else, somewhere else starves.  The suggestion that we use our prime agricultural land to plant trees for carbon sink forests means that somebody who we formerly fed goes without.

Carbon sequestration to improve the productivity of land is a good idea on multiple fronts because it allows us to produce more and to feed more. But carbon sequestration policies that inspire a forest, where once there was prime agricultural land producing food, are of little use to humanity unless we envisage evolving into a higher form of termite.

Australia should be producing food in quantity and quality. We should be doing our very best to make sure the section of the Australian population that has the agronomic, veterinary, and the mechanical expertise and the financial resilience is looked after. This will encourage them to stay and help grow a more productive food growing sector.

Australian farming families are a moral good and this is endorsed by millions of people throughout the world that would be hungry without them.