Climate change, trade policies and food security: implications for Australia

Summary

The project seeks to examine empirically the relative importance of drivers of Australia’s agricultural production and bilateral trade patterns over the next four decades. The project will use an applied general equilibrium model of the global economy (known as GTAP) to project national food and other production and trade to 2030 and 2050, providing a pair of baselines representing low and higher global farm productivity growth over the next four decades. Those baselines will be compared with scenarios involving (a) differential impacts of climate change on national agricultural sectors and labour forces, (b) alternative farm productivity assumptions in emerging economies, including those receiving foreign direct investments in farming and agribusiness, and (c) endogenous changes to agricultural and other trade/industry assistance policies in different parts of the world. This will be reported in a series of three core papers, along with its consequences for Australian agricultural production and bilateral trade patterns.

Program

National Rural Issues

Research Organisation

The University of Adelaide

Objective Summary

The key objective of the project are to provide a clearer understanding of the forces or drivers of global food market outcomes over the next four decades, and of the uncertainties associated with them.