Now Australia's focus is on bushfires again, and the impact it might have on export-oriented food production.
These investments are designed to ensure access to staple commodities and reduce exposure to global food price fluctuations and export bans, which often occur during food crises.
The 41-year-old CEO of a British food-export company, who is divorced, said his ex-wife picked out the old place.
As it is, the food we export to China consumes around 41 trillion liters of water each year, or twice the discharge of the Colorado River, BCG says.
Poor countries' food-export bans and fuel subsidies compounded the problems.
The focus on eliminating export subsidies, which are used far more by the Europeans than by America, obscures the fact that America's export credits and its food-aid programme distort global farm trade too.
The Scottish government has unveiled a new six-year food and drink export strategy for the Asia Pacific region.
Brazil then sees Africa as a means of diversifying its export markets in such sectors as food, seeds and agricultural machinery while internationalising production of its major companies such as oil and biofuels giant Petrobras and mining colossus Vale.
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Within a year or so, we will likely export more fuel and petroleum products than food.
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Thomas, in an interview, said the government was taking steps to reduce stockpiles, including allowing traders last year to export wheat and rice surpluses and increasing food allocations for poor people.
In the meantime, the UN does allow Iraq to export oil to pay for imports of food and medicine (an arrangement known as oil-for-food), although it keeps control of the finances.
Export restrictions also exacerbate the rise of global food prices.
Ready meals will become more popular: Brazilians still cook most meals from scratch, even though the country has some of the world's biggest food-processing companies, which export their tins and sachets to America and Europe.
This was caused by the collapse of food prices with the loss of export markets after World War I and years of drought that were marked by huge dust storms that blackened skies at noon and scoured the land of topsoil.
Similar acts can be expected in the food sector, which is already subject to export limits to conjure more domestic supply (much of which is lost to rot).
Others still are concerned that dabbling with GM food will lead to their being locked out of export markets.
As most of you know, Canada is our single largest trading partner, our top export market, and those exports -- from cars to food -- support some 1.7 million good-paying American jobs.
In the early 1970s similar dollar weakness led to food supply scares and then to a U.S. export embargo by President Nixon, against the advice of his own agriculture minister.
Sudan is letting investors export 70% of the crop, even though it is the recipient of the largest food-aid operation in the world.
Last year's official figures showed a change in the top three destinations for Scottish food and drink products, with the US overtaking France as Scotland's top export market.
Panicked by rising food prices in 2007, more than 30 governments, from Ukraine to China, introduced export restrictions for farm produce.
The firm's first export contract will see its range of products being sold in Dubai and throughout the Middle East through Just Food International.
"Some African countries export fruit and import fruit juice, or export olives and import olive oil, simply because their past colonialists did not teach them how to process food, " he told the AFP news agency.
Despite the pending lifting of the grain export ban, scheduled to go into effect on July 1, the Central Bank of Russia does not expect domestic food prices to rise in response to more of Russian agribusiness shipping grains abroad instead of serving the local market.
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Recently, for example, I was in Nicaragua visiting a new client, a 700-member farmer cooperative that produces coffee for export and corn for domestic consumption The cooperative sells 300 tons of corn annually to its main buyer, the World Food Programme which is used to produce 6.7 million school lunches a year or one meal per day for 44, 000 children for an entire school year.
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