According to a report by the ABC, since 2010-11 Australia's net petroleum stockholdings have fallen from its International Energy Agency obligations of 90 days' worth, in the event of market failure, to just 50 days.

The government's Australian Petroleum Statistics published in November 2018 said this would amount to 21 days of petrol for automobiles, 18 days of diesel and 20 days of aviation fuel, according to the ABC.

Fuel security is a huge issue for Australia. In a vast country with sparse populations away from the eastern seaboard, our food, pharmaceutical supplies, water and energy all rely - to varying degrees - on fuel.

Going hand-in-hand with fuel supplies is the issue of food security. Feeding the population presents exactly the same challenges as ensuring we have enough fuel: We live on a whopping great island in the middle of nowhere.

At the same time as the drought continues to devastate great swathes of this country, there is a new discussion emerging: That of exit plans and whether farming is still viable in Australia.

Now, I can accept there are some "marginal" areas of the country where growing isn't always a good idea and that some particular crops are not ideal, but we have to remember that our farmers, quite literally, feed us.

Without our primary producers, not only would our economy be in tatters, but we would be solely reliant on imports for food.

Australia has long had a reputation as a "clean and green" producer of healthy food.

There is no more obvious example of this than the ongoing baby formula shortages because our Australian brands are so popular with Chinese buyers.

It's been more than a decade since the Chinese milk scandal, which saw an estimated 54,000 babies hospitalised and at least six die because melamine illegally added to cow's milk found its way into Chinese formula, but the demand for Australian products remained unabated.

Likewise, remember the concern in 2015, when dozens of Australians contracted Hepatitis A after eating contaminated frozen berries imported from China?

I know these are only two examples and that the bulk of the food we import into this country is completely safe, but, in many cases, it is also completely unnecessary. We can grow a lot of our own food right here, where farmers are subjected to rigorous regulation and checks.

According to the United Nations World Food Summit in 1996, food security is a right for all people, yet poverty, isolation and other factors already mean an estimated 5 per cent of Australians don't have it.

Imagine what would happen if we cut back on the amount of food produced here and relied increasingly on imports. The cost and quality would be beyond our control.

Earlier this year, Deputy Premier John Barilaro announced some work was going to be done on looking at whether a number of regional airports could be used to form a "paddock to plane" export network.

It was a good idea, so we can only hope it proceeds beyond being simply a proposal and actually helps get Australian produce into more overseas markets.

Food production is not just another industry in this country. We have to eat and we are more than capable of producing a lot of our own food right here.

So when it comes to drought assistance and exit plans, we need to tread very lightly.

There are, beyond doubt, farmers who no longer see a future for themselves in the industry, so help with leaving the land would likely be very welcome to them.

But we need to be very careful not to assume that because a few farms are not viable means that primary production in this country has no future.

This may be "the worst drought in living memory", but it will break and farmers will be able to go back to doing what they do best: Producing food to feed this nation and export around the world.

If the government needs to free up more money for drought support in the meantime, then just get on with it.

Our food security - both in terms of availability and quality - is too valuable to be lost just because an increasingly city-centric population doesn't recognise the importance of what Australian farmers actually do.