Australia warns climate shocks and fuel stress are weakening food security
Researchers in Australia warn that extreme weather, fuel and fertiliser shortages, water stress and concentrated retail power are eroding the resilience of the country’s food system.
Australia has long seen itself as a strong food producer, but researchers now warn that this position can no longer be treated as secure. The analysis says the country produces enough food to feed about 75 million people and exports roughly 70% of what it grows and makes. Even so, a combination of climate, energy and infrastructure risks is steadily weakening the resilience of that system.
The authors point to Australia’s national climate risk assessment, which has already identified growing threats to food systems. More frequent and more intense heatwaves, floods, droughts and bushfires are affecting crops, livestock, fisheries and transport. The pressure is being amplified by fuel and fertiliser shortages linked to the Iran war, stronger competition for water in the Murray-Darling Basin, wider supply-chain disruption, concentrated supermarket power and rising food costs.
The social indicators are already troubling. According to the analysis, one in five Australian households skipped meals or went whole days without eating in 2025. The problem is not only access to calories but also diet quality. In 2022, 36% of children and adolescents and 56% of adults fell short of recommended fruit and vegetable intake, while 42% of calories consumed came from ultra-processed foods. Prices are also shaped by market structure, with Coles and Woolworths accounting for 67% of supermarket sales.
Agriculture is already absorbing visible losses from extreme weather. In 2019, floods and sticky mud trapped and killed up to 500,000 cattle. Record floods caused a national lettuce shortage in 2022. Banana, mango and avocado crops were hit in 2023. In 2025, more than 100,000 cattle died in Queensland floods, and this summer more than 48,000 cattle were dead or missing after flooding in northwest Queensland. Heat stress is also reducing animal performance and damaging vegetable yields and quality.
Water and land-use pressure remain central structural risks. The Murray-Darling Basin supports 40% of Australian farms, around 8,400 irrigated businesses and about $30 billion in food and fibre output each year. At the same time, major cities are losing food-producing land to housing growth. Sydney currently produces about 20% of its own food, but under projected development scenarios that could fall by 60% by 2031, leaving the city only about 6% self-sufficient. Around Melbourne, peri-urban farmland still supplies about 41% of the city’s food needs, but those areas are also under development pressure.
The authors argue that the response has to go beyond protecting large national supply chains and should include stronger local and more diverse food channels. They point to Lismore after the 2022 floods, when supermarket shelves stayed empty for months but farmers’ markets resumed within a week. On that basis, they call for better food-security planning, stronger soil and water management, more support for local producers and less reliance on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides through more sustainable farming systems. The broader message is that even a major food exporter can become vulnerable quickly when climate shocks and resource stress hit a highly concentrated market structure at the same time.