Australian drought prompts food crisis fears

Record low inflows into the river system in Australia's main food bowl, the Murray-Darling basin, suggest a gloomy future for the country's farmers. A recent set of climate predictions read "more like a disaster novel than a scientific report", the country's agriculture minister was quoted as saying.
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Neil Plummer, from the country’s National Climate Centre, described rainfall during the southern hemisphere autumn as "an absolute shocker", the Independent reported. 

The basin produces 41% of Australia’s fruit, vegetables and grain. But flows of water last month into the two rivers that irrigate the basin were the lowest since records began 117 years ago. 

Australia’s worst drought in a century has forced about 10,000 farming families off the land, the report said, and threatened the economic viability of some agricultural towns.

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