From Denmark to the South of France

So, I've been thinking more about how big Queensland is compared with Europe, and it's just driving home how completely ridiculous our food supply is.

We've been hit by floods basically from Rockhampton down for the last few weeks. Now, not all of that is still under water, but it's pretty much all flood damaged. It's affected a large number of the crops and industries in an area about the size of France. That's pretty impressive.

However, it's also stupid.

Why? Because most of the food consumed in the northern part of the state comes from the south-east corner. This includes the food produced in Northern and Central Queensland. We actually ship most of our fresh produce down to Brisbane for the markets, then have the "buyers" ship it back up to us.

This is all so massive chains like Woolworths and Coles can do most of their work out of the main "center". Unfortunately, that "centre" is actually on the other side of the state. Cairns, Townsville and the surrounding towns and regions are almost totally reliant on the south-east corner to stock our grocery stores.

Let's just put that in perspective, shall we? Imagine, if you can, that most of the food produced in Denmark is trucked to the south of France. From there, it is trucked back to Denmark in order to stock the shelves. Should something happen to any part of France or Germany, the shops in Denmark will struggle to provide staples such as milk, bread and vegetables to the people who live there. Even if the food hasn't been trucked down yet, the supply chains simply aren't designed to put Danish produce directly onto Danish shelves, so it involves a lot of fuss and bother on the part of stores to figure out how to put the locally produced bread into the local shops.

Now, apart from the fact that the food miles are ridiculous (does a banana grown near Cairns really need to travel twice the distance between Cairns and Brisbane in order to be sold in Cairns?), the very thought that a disaster over 1500 kilometers away can stop the milk from getting onto your shelves is ludicrous.

Granted, that doesn't happen very often - but it shouldn't happen at all. It shouldn't be able to happen. I've always been angry about the fact that we get food that's a) older than it needs to be, b) travelled further than it needs to go, and c) is basically what's left after Brisbane has picked over it. Now it's becoming clear that it's also potentially crippling to the economy of the entire state.

This is what I think we should be doing after this particular disaster (are you listening, Anna Bligh?). We need to divide the state up into food catchment areas (FCAs). Each FCA produces all of the staple foods to be consumed within that FCA. So, we have bread, milk, juice, eggs, meat, fruit and vegetables all being produced locally within the FCA, and all going to supply the stores within the FCA. The surplus from those local providers can go to other markets after the local stores have been stocked.

This way, when an emergency like the 2011 floods happens, the rest of the state will be able to help the part that is being afflicted. Isn't this better than having the entire state's food supply compromised because something happened in the south-east corner?

Now, obviously, this doesn't include "luxury" items and things that we wouldn't be able to grow locally anyway. If you can't grow apples in the Ingham FCA, then apples aren't considered a "staple". So long as there is a nutricious selection of locally produced fruits and vegetables grown in the area and supplied to the area, then the exact make-up of that selection is irrelevant. Stanthorpe's excess apples can be our apples. Our excess bananas can be Stanthorpe's bananas.

As long as we send our bananas to the "local" market before sending them on a thousand-plus kilometer journey we'll be making an improvement over the system we currently have.