Why Coles and Woolworths customers will continue to face empty shelves

Empty supermarket shelves still shock Australians, who have become accustomed to being able to buy the food they want. But we can expect to see more empty shelves, more often, in coming decades.

Climate change means extreme events such as floods, bushfires and droughts will become more frequent and severe. Those events will disrupt food supply chains, as people along Australia’s sodden east coast have seen again in recent weeks.

Australia certainly isn’t at risk of running out of food. It produces far more food than it consumes, with around 70% of farm production exported.

What is at risk is Australia’s ability to distribute it.

I was commissioned to prepare a new report on the impact of climate change on food supply, for for Farmers for Climate Action a constituent body of the National Farmers Federation with about 7,000 members.

Farmers for Climate Action is not otherwise politically aligned.

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My methodology included a review of research in this area, interviews with more than a dozen farmers, farmer representative bodies, and other participants in the food supply chain, and a survey of media reporting of recent instances of food shortages.

Among the issues identified were the impact of drought, diseases and stress on livestock, the loss of food due to hotter weather, and shorter shelf lives.

An unexpected finding was the degree to which everyone involved in the supply chain is affected by uncertainty caused by climate change. It is making future weather highly unpredictable, making planning harder for both farms and in transport networks.

Unpredictability makes ensuring supplies hard

A further impact is on lending and insurance, where unpredictability means higher costs for financial products – if they can be obtained at all. Some farmers reported that they were unable to insure due to climate risks. All these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.

There are also opportunities.

Supply chains might become shorter to strengthen resilience and deliver fresher produce to consumers. Farm businesses and food processors are already moving to electrification to manage the risks of relying on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, saving money in the process.

The author of this article is Stephen Bartos, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

Disclosure statement - Stephen Bartos was paid to produce the report Fork in the Road for Farmers for Climate Action, a body affiliated with the National Farmers Federation.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read From field to store to plate, our farmers are increasingly worried about climate change at The Conversation.

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