Biodiversity Loss

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (14:48): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development on the topic of biodiversity loss and agriculture.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: The world is at a critical threshold for biodiversity loss. Globally, the average size of monitored wildlife populations have shrunk by 73 per cent in the last 50 years. Freshwater ecosystems have seen a drop of 85 per cent, and while estimates vary this could be as much as a hundred times higher than the natural baseline. It's being driven by anthropogenic overpopulation, climate change, exploitation and habitat destruction. This is a crime scene with the fingerprints of the human species all over it.

Up to 70 per cent of cancer-fighting drugs have their origins in the plant world and at least 10 per cent of the World Health Organization's basic and essential drugs have their origins in flowering plants. Insect pollinators are of critical importance to human life and health, as is the quality of the biodiversity that we interact with and amidst which agriculture, critical to our human health and the state's economy, occurs.

Scientific evidence shows that the long-term use of pesticides in agriculture has increased resistance and production costs, and also disrupted natural pest control mechanisms and non-target species. Biodiversity stabilises ecosystem productivity and productivity-dependent ecosystem services by increasing resistance to climate events. Regenerative agriculture, organic agriculture and natural farming are all viable alternatives to conventional agricultural practices. Not only do they secure critically important improvements to biodiversity, they also bring economic benefit. All South Australians benefit from those impacts.

My question, therefore, to the minister is: what proportion of South Australian agriculture occurs using these practices, and what is the government doing to support farmers in the transition to such farming, which brings such economic and other benefits, yet come at an initial cost to those farmers?

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries) (14:50): I thank the honourable member for her question. In terms of the specifics, I am happy to take that on notice and bring back a response. In a general response, certainly there are advantages to having multiple types of production systems, and I think there's a constant effort to be able to improve practices; that means both in terms of yield and productivity but also in terms of avoiding anything that may be detrimental to the environment. It's important that we continue with all of those efforts.