The UK Financial Times reports that with credit lines blocked across the world, countries are resorting to barter and secretive government-to-government deals to buy food for their people and prevent further civil unrest.

Rocketing food prices and stockpiles at record lows have already caused civil unrest on three continents during 2008. Such crises are expected to spread as the global recession deepens and countries reduce exports as a means of keeping domestic food prices in check. [Australia is already suffering its own shortage of brown rice with restrictions on purchase at Coles supermarkets.]

 With food the new de facto reserve currency, more than ever we question the NSW government’s madness in placing our rare prime agricultural land and the sustainable providers of Australia’s food security at risk. Quite simply, boom and bust mines have no place in the food bowls of Australia – as anyone trying to put clean, safe, food on their table knows.