American domination plan!!

[sakebomb 0]

Sounds like unfair trading, how dare Australia be so selfish by trying to look after local interests!

 

 

 Quote:

US questions 'Buy Australian' push.

 

The United States is questioning whether a "Buy Australian" campaign is in the spirit of the free trade agreement.

 

Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran supports a farmers' campaign to get the supermarket chains to stick with Australian fruit and vegetables over cheaper imports.

 

An agriculture counsellor with the US Embassy in Canberra, Andrew Burst, says a buy local campaign could endanger our export markets.

 

"It doesn't really sound like free trade to me and we have entered a free trade agreement between our two countries on January 1," he said.

 

"I'm not saying this is contrary to the free trade agreement. It's just doesn't sound to me that it's in the spirit of free trade."

 

Coles says there has not been any feedback that customers want country of origin labelling on their fruit and vegetables.

 

New labelling has been introduced in Western Australia to identify where imports come from.

 

But Ted Moore from Coles says that will not happen in other states, and national laws are adequate.

 

He says the only resistance has been through a WA newspaper campaign.

 

"No clamour of the consumers at the fruit and vegetable section to say 'I want labelling of country of origin, I want labelling of state of origin'," he said.

 

"They have been happy to have the imported food, which is less than 5 per cent of what comes in and it's usually apart from the nuts, and they are always labelled as imported, everything else is Australian."

Also an interesting article about Americas concern about the closening of ties between Australia and China, have to worry about their agenda!

[mattlucas 0]

We get the same kind of thing in Canada

 

But it is the Americans who say "Buy American"

Some sort of patriotic thing to keep jobs in the states

[Ocean11 0]

If I go to my local JA supermarket, there's fruit and veg grown just up the hill from the supermarket. Whereas if I go to one of the other chains, they have stuff from all over the world.

 

How does it help to reduce global warming to have oranges sent from California to Ehime, some of which will inevitably be unfit for sale on delivery?

 

If that's what free trade is (it isn't anyway), it's a disaster.

[damian 0]

I bought 'fresh' tuna last night. It had been imported from Brazil. I remember when all the fish I ate, and I ate a lot of fish of a lot of varieties, came from no more than 5km off the coast of where I lived in Sydney. What are countries like UK going to do for food volume and variety when the cost of transporting food from another country skyrockets? My strongest motivation for the future is to live in a country that can produce enough food domestically for its existing population.

 

Free trade agreement: America often doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the word 'free', even though they claim to have invented it in the last 400 years (unless you were a black slave).

[dale#1 1]

BPC, didn't you know America is Land of the Free.

 

?

[NoFakie 45]

In terms of food self sufficiency, the UK isn't too bad. People eat an unsustainable amount of meat, but the UK currently exports more wheat that it imports. A lot of native varieties will re-emerge if imports are priced out. You'll have the surviving dozens (out of hundreds) of British varieties of limited species instead of the single varieties of different species the supermarkets import. Britains got fertile soil, a lot of rain, nutritious runoff into coastal regions, and increasingly mild winters, so it doesn't look too bad, the wild card of global warming notwithstanding. A rise in sea level would wipe out lots of farmland.

 

If you're going to point the finger, Japan's food condition looks pretty micey. You've got fish coming in from all over the world, massive amounts of animal feed, and lots of extra grains for humans, stuff that people need as opposed to just fancy lettuces, superstandardized fruit, or the usual coffee/tea/tobacco/narcotics. In the worst case, an Argentina-style currency meltdown here, maybe triggered by a major Kanto earthquake, could cause geniune hardship.

[damian 0]

I wasn't actually pointing the finger and did have Japan in mind as the candidate for least sustainable.

 

My excursions into the English countryside always have me remarking on the appearance of the land being one huge green healthy fertile looking farm. I think it will fortunately serve England into the future, not withstanding sea level rises. (aside: I still have huge difficulty believing that seas will rise that much in a meaningfully short period of time).