Australia’s food bowl lies empty
As the BBC looks at the impact of rising food prices around the world, Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant reports from Australia on how the worst drought on record has slashed its exports of wheat.
Though located in a remote corner of the planet, the fields of Australia’s food bowl are central to the worldwide price of wheat.
In this part of rural New South Wales, water-starved farms and cavernous empty grain silos have the potential to create a ripple effect which spreads around the globe.
And that is precisely what is happening right now.
Low yield
After America, Australia is normally the second largest exporter of grain, and in a good year it would hope to harvest about 25 million tonnes.
But the country remains in the grip of the worst drought in a century, which is why the 2006 crop yielded only 9.8m tonnes.
Global wheat stocks are at their lowest levels since 1979, and the ongoing Australian drought is one of the reasons why.
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