A proposed food bowl to be created in northern Australia under a coalition government would feed a three billion-strong middle class in Asia, a senator says.
Queensland Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald, shadow parliamentary secretary for northern and remote Australia, says that by 2030 there will be an estimated 600 per cent increase in key spending by an Asian middle class hungry for better quality food which Australia can provide.
He says there will be 3.3 billion middle class Asians by 2030 who will want "good quality, clean and green food, which will mean greater opportunities for farmers in the Northern Territory".
Senator Macdonald was presenting the Coalition's plan for northern Australia to a community forum in Darwin on Monday.
If the Coalition wins the federal election it has pledged to deliver a white paper on its 2030 vision for northern Australia within 12 months.
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The senator said Australia was one of the few nations of the tropics examining how to produce better food to meet that demand, and to teach neighbouring nations how to do the same.
"The next couple of decades will be the decades of the food boom because the burgeoning middle classes of Asia need food," he told reporters in Darwin.
"Chinese food production continues to lessen as more agricultural land is taken up by cities, so there's a neat fix that allows Australia to use some of our very valuable assets in land and water to feed those ever-increasing demands for food from Asia."
Monsoonal rainfall and high costs of freight are some of the reasons cited for why the food bowl plan has not yet eventuated, despite being proposed decades ago.
But Senator Macdonald cited CSIRO figures showing that northern Australia has between five and 17 million hectares of good arable land.
He said if the region's abundant rainfall could be harnessed, the food bowl would be viable.
The coalition's proposed white paper for the north will also consider ways to boost tourism, encourage people to move to the area via tax concessions, and build an energy export industry worth $150 billion.
