We have seen the global financial crisis driven by greed and self interest, and we stand the risk of seeing the global food crisis driven by ignorance and lack of interest by the fortunate nations of the world. How can we allow our state governments to destroy our prime cropping farmlands for short-term coal profits when we face a global crisis like this. We need a co-ordinated national policy on food security, or we run the risk of being hit by the GFC.

We are told we will lose one third of the Murray Darling to greenhouse induced climate change, that we will need to plant 10pc of our farmland to trees to counter coal induced CO2, and now we prepare to mine our premium farmlands for even more coal.

The answer is not cheaper food. I'm a farmer and it is unecomic to produce food at current prices.

The problem is people have got used to cheap food and would rather worry about that than the cost of the flat screen plasma TV they just bought. Because food is so cheap and the prices we recieve so little, we are forced to make compromises, such as cropping country too hard or grazinig too hard, which then harms the environment. Cuba has not had access to synthetic fertilisers or chemicals for years, yet still feeds its people because it has developed its organic industry. I was not aware that any GM crops actually had a crop yield increasing gene?

The problem isn't growing more food but more one of eliminating waste. Up to a third of all grain produced in or for the poorer contries is wasted through inadequate storage and transport. Here's a tip - instead of giving GM companies big grants. why don't we give aid to help with infrastucture.

You pointed out the grain issue. How can first-world countries justify feeding 20kgs of corn to produce 1 kg of beef? We should eat grassfed beef. Sure, we'd have to eat less and it would be more expensive, but we'd have all this extra grain to feed the world without growing plants that are unnatural in nature.

How about some of these ideas, Mr Burke? Where is the money for more sustainable agriculture? And, no, I'm not an organic farmer, I just care about having a sustainable world.

GM crops are dependent on an unsustainable farming system. Farmers and others must wake up to the deception presented by GM proponents, otherwise we will face crop failure on a scale never witnessed at any stage in history.

The future of food production must be based on a broad diversity of species and varieties, not limited to a handful of varieties of questionable safety.

May I suggest that Minister Burke spend some time talking with the farmers who presented at this week's Carbon Farmers conference in Orange, NSW. These farmers are producing well above average yields while using significantly lower artificial inputs, - and all without GM. They are also regenerating their soils, which is the real answer to global food security.

GM is part of the solution to slowing the food crisis, it just a shame those Green Groups still fail to see the benefits.

Improving quality of food, not quantity, will do more to aleviate starvation. So far GM is being pushed as more cost effective and to increase yield,. However, if the result is an inferior food, then quantity is irrelavent. More direct input into raising the quality of soil nutrients (other than NPK) in which crops are grown, will have a longer-lasting effect.

And other news that supermarkets could stock their shelves with cheaper foods imported from heavily populated and presumably 'hungry' parts of the world.

This is not to deny that hunger exists. But we need to remember that local wars, local famines combined with lack of transport and sheer poverty are the immediate causes, rather than inadequate global food production.

As soon as 'biofuels' became the latest putative bonanza it was instructive to note how quickly mention of the starving millions faded, to be replaced by truly ingenious explanations of how food production would not suffer.

The Minister should be aware that most people hope for great benefits from the revolutionary new science of biotechnology. What they fear is a food supply that eventually consists entirely of organisms that currently do not exist - 'novel' patented transgenics. These transgenes will inevitably make their insidious way through the entire biosphere, carried by wind, water, birds and other animals including ourselves. And where the transgenes go they carry their patent rights with them. (Read up on the Canadian Court decisions)

The imperatives of corporate business life - the compulsion to grow, to expand, to increase profit by capturing new markets and smothering competition - will see the transgene used as a tool of monopoly.

Quite soon, every plant and animal of commercial value could be replaced by a transgene equivalent.

It may quack like a duck, give milk like a cow or taste like a pig but it won't be the organism that has co-evolved with us over uncounted eons.

Our existing natural world will have been largely replaced by the transgenes, unrecognisable, 'novel' and patented.

Yet some states do insist on reducing that R&D effort.

For confirmation of what's happening, visit: www.foreignaffairs.org/20081001faessay87605/paul-coll ier/how-to-solve-the-food-crisis.html