Australians are being told the cost of living crisis is easing. But at the checkout, families know better. Grocery prices remain absorbingly high, with no plan to lower prices and increase food availability. Is Australia quietly sleepwalking into a food security crisis?
According to agricultural transparency advocate and Founder at Real Food Price Amberley Brady, the warning signs are already here and they go far beyond inflation.
Food security, Brady argues, is no longer just a farming issue. It is national security issue.
“Food security is about availability, access, utilisation and stability,” Brady said. “It’s about confidence… that food will be despite shocks to critical infrastructure.”
That confidence around food security, she warns, is evaporating.
Australians don’t need to imagine what supply chain failure looks like, they lived it. Covid, as we hate to remember it set the scene for the barbaric behaviour that went on amongst the natural laid back nature of Australians.
During the pandemic, supermarkets ran dry. Panic buying exploded and the world can’t forget it. People were going ham for toilet paper. Distribution systems buckled. And while Australia never technically ‘ran out’ of food, it failed to get food where it was needed.
In a world of cyber attacks, geopolitics, fuel shocks and climate volatility, she says those vulnerabilities haven’t been fixed they’ve now been exposed.
Australia is one of the most food secure nations on Earth.
“We [Australia] create our own food and fibre [to] feed 70 million people,” Brady said. “We are not going to run out.”
So why does it feel like households are constantly on edge when it comes to food?
Because food production is only half the equation. Infrastructure, transport, contracts and pricing power determine whether that food actually reaches consumers and at what cost.
Interestingly, Brady shared how much perfectly good food is thrown away.
Brady recounts conversations with farmers forced to dump tonnes of fresh produce because it didn’t meet superficial supermarket specifications or because oversupply made it unprofitable to harvest.
Entire crops wasted and abandoned. Meanwhile, families pay record prices at checkout and are deciding between if they get the berries and the milk.
This disconnect, she says, exposes a system that rewards efficiency for corporations, not resilience for citizens. This is not the Australia Brady grew up in she recounts.
Higher fuel and transport costs are often cited as justification for grocery price hikes. But Brady questions why prices never seem to come back down.
Australians, she argues, are right to be skeptical especially in a market dominated by just two major supermarket chains.
Food at large is often cheaper in the United States than in Australia, even after the currency conversion.
Brady points to countries like Japan and Hungary, where pricing transparency reforms led to immediate price corrections and reductions.
Australia, she believes should be asking tougher questions and demanding real answers.
Food insecurity isn’t just an economic issue, it’s now a social stability risk and a national security problem.
“When [people] have gone through lack of food and access, it can be anarchy pretty quickly.” Brady warned.
From riots to political upheaval, food shortages have destabilised nations long before wars ever did.
Australia still has time to correct the record. “It should never be a privilege to eat,” Brady said.
The goal should be to strengthen domestic supply chains, enforcing transparency and protecting farmers supplying the produce, which is about resilience and food security for Australians.
