Australia's farmers on the front line of global weather extremes

This week's burst of catastrophic bushfires in Australia continues a run of extreme weather events that, aside from the toll in human suffering, is pushing up the cost of doing business in the Australian agricultural sector. Australia is one of the world's most efficient food producers, particularly of grain, meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables and wine. It vies with other exporters such as Brazil, Argentina, Canada and New Zealand for a large slice of the $1 trillion a year global market for imported food. And in a world where contaminated soil, acid rain, poisonous water, disease and pestilence blights much of the food production capacity in the big consuming nations of China and India, Australia's reputation for a clean and relatively unstressed growing environment has given it a marketing edge. But over the last decade its primary producers have had to run a gauntlet of climatic extremes that is testing both their resolve and their resources. With 20% of Australia classified as desert, farmers have always had to be conscious of how, when and where to use their soil, water, fertilizer and other agricultural inputs. The new problem for Australian farmers is the business cost of volatility, exemplified by the intensity, duration and extent of these catastrophic weather events. Droughts are longer, fires are fiercer, hailstorms are more damaging and floods cover greater parts of a country that is 50% larger than Europe and is exceeded in size only by Russia, Canada, China, the United States and Brazil.

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