Courtesy of the Weekly Times
AUSTRALIA should not rush to sell farm assets to foreign investors until it develops a national food plan, a Sydney forum has heard.
In a speech to a Sydney Food Fairness Alliance and NSW farmers forum, Lynne Wilkinson, the chief executive of Ausbuy, an organisation that promotes Australian-owned and grown food, called for a moratorium on the sale of Australian farmland to foreign investors.

"It is extraordinary that in the coming week submissions for the National Food Plan are due and yet we are allowing the sale of key strategic assets regardless," she told the forum.

"What is the rush?"

She questioned the sale of Cubbie Station to Chinese and Japanese investors, "when the Murray Darling Basin Plan has not been resolved and Cubbie represents 14 per cent of of the Darling River's flow".

"The mantra is we need foreign investment," she said.

"But at what cost to our future and our farmers, our skills and the food security of our cities and our food processors."

Ms Wilkinson said Australia needed a wake-up call on food security.

"There are chemicals still used overseas that are banned here which Australia no longer tests for because of budget cuts," she warned.

"Increasingly we have to rely on the word of the people selling us their food."

She also slammed unplanned urban sprawl in Sydney which was an incursion on arable farmland.

"Other cities such as London have created green belts where food is grown for the populace with buffer zones to avoid contamination," she said.