Australia intends to have about a 300 000 migrant intake this year, this is mainly to address shortages and fill vacancies in skilled and professional jobs.
Australia is in the position of being a major raw materials supplier to China and as such has a booming expanding economy, as well as on average growing enough excess food to export that is said to be equivalent to feeding at least 40 million people.
In the last several years however the drought that has afflicted us means that instead of our usual 1 million tonne plus rice export trade this has gone down to about 70 000 tonnes this year, a million tonnes of rice of the international market must have a not inconsiderable impact.
I do agree that over breeding in certain parts of the world is a problem for food production.
Just the other day on the radio there was a report that the average yield in Africa has been reduced to a third of what it was in the 70's, the major cause of this being that land that was once allowed to lay fallow to recover its nutrients is now used continuously because of population pressure. The lack of education of women who do the bulk of farming is a major factor in this as well as overpopulation, but the influence of very conservative forms of catholicism and Islam mitigates against this education happening if it includes any content about birth control or womens sexual rights.
I think that if one looks at the poorest most backward countries in South America and Africa it is no accident that the Catholic church is prominent in these countries. The prevalent poverty and lack of education mean that the medieval superstition that that institution promulgates and is largely ignored by European Catholics, holds sway.
Much the same thing can be said of Islam in its more extreme forms, in South East Asia we luckily have a very tolerant Suffic form of Islam that allows for real social progress, it is not happening quickly enough however. Just across our Northern border we have the largest Islamic nation on the planet, an estimated 220 million people, that is completely dependent upon wet rice production, a fairly small glitch in the monsoon is all that it will take to trigger a catastrophe of major proportions.
rcw
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