Biosecurity for Food Security
It is this system that protects and enhances much of Australia’s national power through the protection of our way of life and hundreds of billions worth of economic benefits to the Australian economy. By underpinning our food security, it underpins fundamental pillars of social order, sustainability and national security. To safeguard it, Australia’s biosecurity arrangements must be fiercely protected and enhanced.
But taking biosecurity for granted surrenders to the strategic naivety that has left the world ill-prepared for crises previously considered preventable. A global pandemic, war in Europe, the specter of nuclear war, kinetic war between Middle Eastern powers and increasing climate threats are all features of our contemporary reality. These threats demand that we avoid strategic missteps by not ignoring the factors that enable them and avoid the agonizing between government and industry over what constitutes sustainable resourcing that is leaving the biosecurity system’s future in the balance. That uncertainty is stifling progress on implementing the 2022 National Biosecurity Strategy, a document released with the endorsement of the Australian government and all states and territories.
A strategic and coordinated approach matters because the system protects our heavily trade-oriented agricultural industry’s contribution to global food security via a production surplus far above domestic demand. However, this surplus is also the source of a misguided assumption that Australian food security is guaranteed.
Food security is defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as: ‘when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ Under these terms, the Foodbank Hunger Report 2023 found that 36 percent of Australians faced food insecurity in 2023, underscoring the socioeconomic factors at play. Similarly, the number of food-insecure people worldwide has increased since 2020, driven by conflict, climate shocks, economic downturn, growing inequality and Covid-19. Complacency in addressing food security will only drive strategic challenges that contribute to instability and armed conflict.
In this way, the system is equally affected by the same pressures as Australia’s defense organization. It bears a similar responsibility to protect Australia’s national interest. It therefore must be valued as such and should become subject to the same conventions: that is, to fund the system as a percentage of GDP that reflects its true value to our economy, our environment, our food security and our way of life.
There will always be many competing priorities, but if we are serious about returning to fundamentals to enhance Australia’s national power, our biosecurity system must be accepted as a pillar of our national security.
Saba Sinai is a lecturer in agriculture at CQUniversity, Australia, and a fellow with ASPI’s Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre. Andrew Henderson is the principal of Agsecure, an independent chair and non-executive director and a former adviser to the federal government on biosecurity and the red meat and livestock sector. Views expressed in the article are the authors’. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
