Tuesday, 22 September 2026

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (23:28): (2817) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture, and the action I seek is for the government to urgently develop a Victorian food sovereignty plan. Recently a report by the UK’s leading security agencies revealed that the UK is at risk of catastrophic food shortages within the next five years due to ecosystem collapse and climate change. These are not just the warnings of another scientist or environmental organisation, who have rightly been banging on about this for decades; these are defence and spy agencies. They are sounding the alarm bells because the risk to food systems is so significant that it is creating urgent threats to national security.

Many of us take the food on supermarket shelves for granted. We grab some, typically overpriced, thing off the supermarket shelf and rarely think much further about how it got there or where it came from. We do not often consider the complex systems behind our food, relying on farms and farmers, food workers, water, healthy soil, pollinators, transport, overseas production of food and farming inputs, and a stable climate. It is only when there are shocks to the system, like the COVID pandemic or an illegal war in Iran, that its fragility is exposed. Yet once these shocks pass, business as usual resumes. Climate change and ecosystem collapses, however, are not passing; in fact they are accelerating. Victoria has been getting warmer and drier over the past few decades. We are seeing more frequent and more severe climate-related disasters, and that includes heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and flooding. Land clearing and habitat loss continues and extinctions are mounting. The shocks that climate change and ecosystem collapses are producing are not temporary blips. If there is not drastic change, we face a future in the very near term where we will struggle to access the food that we need to sustain ourselves. This should concern every Victorian.

With extreme weather events like droughts, floods and fires, crops are damaged, livestock is impacted and harvests are smaller, and it has ripple effects throughout our food system. With ecosystems collapsed, soil and water no longer support food production. The Victorian government has previously recognised that climate change poses risks to agricultural productivity, water availability and the resilience of our primary production sector and that food sovereignty needs to be integrated into our climate adaptation policy, but the lack of action underscores a total underappreciation of the seriousness of the current threats to our food system or the urgency with which we need to act.

We need a food system that can weather the worst and still ensure food is on the table for Victorians; that prioritises local production, diversification of sources, soil health and protection of water; that supports growers and dismantles the unbridled corporatisation and profiteering inherent to the system; and that recognises that access to adequate, safe, nutritious food is a fundamental need and right. It is time we had an immediate Victorian food sovereignty plan.