Australia is a major agricultural producer and exporter, with over 325,300 employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing. Agriculture and its closely-related sectors contribute a 12% share of GDP. Farmers and graziers own 135,997 farms, covering 61% of Australia’s landmass. We analyse how to better manage our rural industries for the good of farming families and the nation.
by Chris McCormack NFF’s covid19 recovery paper misses the mark Climate change and free-trade policies are seen as part of the cure Yet the evidence shows that these policies have, if anything, exacerbated the difficulties facing farmers The National Farmers Federation’s Get Australia Growing: Ideas for Economic Recovery paper, released in June, is a hotchpotch…
by Chris McCormack Murray Basin Rail Project could cost double the budgeted $440 million Rail upgrades essential but gauge standardisation questionable Auditor-General says project “not yet achieving the outcomes expected” The Murray Basin Rail Project (MBRP), which aims to upgrade and standardise 1,055 kilometres of rail lines in Victoria’s northwest, linking freight trains to the…
by Michael Ord A Building Queensland report into the troubled Paradise Dam has been before the Queensland state cabinet as Bundaberg region farmers appeal for a delay in plans to reduce the dam’s spillway level by five metres before the 2020-21 wet season over safety concerns. The dam was constructed between 2003 and 2005 under…
The Keelty Report, investigating water sharing in the Southern Murray-Darling Basin, has arrived but the response from Basin communities that have been urging a rethink on water policy has been one of disappointment. “The Keelty Review can best be described as a waste of taxpayers’ money that must be embarrassing for our Federal Government,” said…
Foreign purchases of prime agricultural land up 180 per cent in three years Foreign-owned land equates to eight times the size of Tasmania Foreign non-tax paying entities out-bid locals for land by 10-25 per cent To what extent have foreign buyers made inroads into purchasing Australia’s prime agricultural land? Head of the NSW Farmers’ Federation…
by Patrick J. Byrne Even if this year’s spring brings major rains, the severe two-year drought in the Murray-Darling Basin has demonstrated that the $13 billion federal Basin Plan is unworkable, putting major rural industries (and government seats) at risk in Australia’s major food bowl. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent appointment of Keith Pitt as…
Late in 2019 the Coalition Government set up a loan scheme for drought-affected farmers under the Regional Investment Corporation (RIC), yet drought-stricken farmers face waiting times of up to a year. The scheme is appropriately generous with no application or exit fees, two years’ interest free, then three years’ interest only. Loans of up to…
he building of these water storages meant that water was not wasted in flood events or sent out to sea but able to be regulated and used for agricultural production 12 months a year.
“It is not the drought causing farmers to leave in droves, it’s governments taking 30 per cent of irrigation water under the new Murray Darling Basin water plan that is based on ‘erroneous’ science that is driving farmers out of business,” according to a long-time Murray River farmer. Neil Eagle is a farmer of over…
Draconian Queensland laws dictate farming practices along Great Barrier Reef Laws not based on science but a reaction to UNESCO pressure Farmers incur increased costs, complexity and control from bureaucrats Queensland’s ALP Government is continuing its war against farming and private property rights with the latest of its Orwellian laws, which restricts where and…
Federal and state clearing laws usurp private property rights Hundreds of farmers face prosecution for clearing land The Queensland Government is rendering people’s land worthless State and federal laws regulating land use in Australia are analogous to totalitarian control, where landowners are fined and jailed for utilising their own land. The difference an exclamation…
In Prosperity and Distress in Australia’s Cities and Regions, Scott Baum, William Mitchell and Michael Flanagan have mapped a Prosperity and Distress Index (PDI) for federal electorates. While the level of stress is uneven within electorates, the city-country divide is stark. (See map below) Prosperity and Distress in Australian Localities 2016 The map shows prosperity…
Australia ranks only 23rd in the world by irrigated land area The Bradfield scheme would go far to reducing the 25 per cent official unemployment rate in outback Queensland The scheme could drought-proof 15 per cent of Queenland Australia has lost the vision of undertaking grand engineering schemes since the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme…
The lamb and sheep industry is an important component of Australia’s economy. In 2015–16, Australia’s lamb industry made up approximately 6 per cent of agricultural production and 4 per cent of agricultural export income. Many farming families rely on the lamb industry, and have prospered due to increasing demand both locally and overseas. Since the…
The loss of long-time National Party seats in the New South Wales election begs the question: what is going on in the rural sector? The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (SFFP) won the National Party strongholds of Murray (taking in a major irrigation districts in southern NSW) and Barwon (which covers 44 per cent of…
The Yeoman column in The Australasian (November 4, 1865, page 13), expressed the obvious concern at the time about a widespread, severe drought. The author was not to know at the time, but the drought he was commenting on would extend until 1868. It is now becoming a serious question with us whether we are…
The “worst in living memory” is a phrase the media has taken to using to describe the severity of recent damaging weather, be it drought, flood, storm or heatwave. But, even with the best of intent, “living” memory is often inaccurate, particularly when it relates to recollections of events that may have occurred 70 or…
Online interactive map pinpoints farms for harassment Activist groups characterise raising animals for food as tantamount to murder Activists in contact with many different animals risk $28 billion industry through contamination The legitimacy of several animal-activist groups’ registered charity status has been called into question after a group called “Aussie Farms” produced a website featuring an…
Events outside the control of farmers have long been an inevitable aspect of rural life Financial products that do not allow for the inevitable lean years are not fit for purpose Semi-autonomous communities are key to rectifying crises Few would dispute that today many rural enterprises, on-farm and off, are struggling. Unfortunately, disasters have…
Devastating droughts are nothing new in Australia Fish-kills as we have seen recently, however, are new Production along Murray-Darling worth $19.4 billion a year Some of the dead fish could have been up to 60 years old Was the recent mass fish-kill in the Menindee Lakes along the Darling River the result of drought…
The current approach to managing the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) seems to be a classic case of “straining out gnats while swallowing camels”. The Federal Government plans to return an additional 450 gigalitres of water “to the environment” as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) via $1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money…
The controversial question of irrigation along the Fitzroy River has arisen in recent months. The Fitzroy is located in the West Kimberley in Western Australia and flows for 733 kilometres from the King Leopold and Mueller Ranges into King Sound. The river has a catchment area of 93,829 square kilometres. Advocates for utilising the Fitzroy’s…
Murray Goulburn’s (MG) decision to close three of its milk processing plants in Victoria and Tasmania with the loss of 360 jobs[1] could spell the death of the small rural communities that are heavily reliant on employment in MG’s plants. For the smaller communities of Kiewa in Victoria and Edith Vale in Tasmania, MG was…
The Federal Government has committed to building new dams. On the mighty Murray River, they should build Lock Zero near Wellington, South Australia, and dams on the Jingellic arm of the river in NSW and the Buffalo River near Myrtleford in Victoria. These new dams are badly needed to stave off a catastrophe for regions…
In 1891, at the end of Melbourne’s first property boom, the nation’s original capital was the largest city in Australia with almost half a million inhabitants. Melbourne or bust. It constituted 42 per cent of Victoria’s population and, as Geoffrey Blainey observed, “some economists thought that such a centralising of the people in a capital…
They call this Wodjil land. It’s sandy, dusty and very pale and not much good for growing crops. The name “Wodjil” is likely to be associated with the Noongar name for white fellas, “wodjila”. The Noongars inhabited the southwest of Western Australia for some 45,000 years before the white fellas arrived. This Wodjil land now…
A perfect storm has hit the dairy industry – deregulation of dairy and water, falling export prices, drought, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, duopoly supermarket price wars, debt and issues of corporate governance. $10 million milkman: Gary Helou In Victoria, a rural tragedy is unfolding as herds of cattle are going from dairy farms to saleyards…
The worsening state of the dairy industry is symptomatic of the broader rural crisis that has just been investigated by Queensland’s farm debt inquiry. That inquiry has recommended the creation of a rural and industries development bank. Protesting Victorian farmers have called for assistance because prices for milk have declined even as production costs have…
Since Australia signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with the United States, Thailand and New Zealand, its balance of trade in agriculture and food manufactures has deteriorated with these three countries. In contrast, in trade with countries where Australia has no FTAs, Australian enterprises have outperformed partners to record a generally improving surplus in agriculture and food trade. Free trade agreements have…
The new Agricultural Competitiveness white paper delivers some important policies to farmers and underscores the high-risk nature of farming in Australia. However, it focuses policy on the export market, when most farm product is sold into the domestic market. It is sometimes said that if you had a million dollars, you would be better betting…
Central Queensland farmers and residents, whose properties were flooded by water released from the Callide Dam during the February 20 onslaught of Cyclone Marcia, are considering taking legal action against the dam-owner, SunWater. The Callide Dam in central Queensland Almost 400 homes in Biloela, Jambin and Goovigen, as well as many nearby rural properties, were…
Australian farmers receive only 10 to 15 per cent of the final sale price for their produce, even when they have done most of the work, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce told the National Farmers’ Federation’s recent national congress, which was held in Canberra. Here is part of the opening speech he delivered to the congress…
Russia’s targeting of $A400 million of Australian food exports and the government’s muddled response are just the latest setback for a sector struggling under failed policy approaches. Dr Mark McGovern Agriculture is Australia’s only “strongly competitive industry”, according to recent reports from consulting firm McKinsey and the Business Council of Australia (BCA). Yet, the…
Australia won’t become a food bowl to the world or Asia, but it can become the delicatessen to Asia if key issues facing farmers are addressed. Rabobank argued this case in its submission to Barnaby Joyce’s inquiry into agricultural competitiveness. Rabobank is a Dutch-based, cooperative bank that operates in 42 countries, with 92 branches in…
Calls for an Australian reconstruction and development bank to take the risk out of $7 billion in bad farm debt has been supported by federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce. Further, Senators Nick Xenophon (Independent, South Australia) and John Madigan (DLP, Victoria) have introduced a bill prepared to establish an Australian reconstruction and development bank (ARDB),…
“We must get a better return back to the farm gate, and fighting to keep families on their own land must be the core of agricultural policy,” declared new Minister for Agriculture and National Party deputy leader, the Hon. Barnaby Joyce, in his recent maiden speech in the House of Representatives. After serving as a…
Restrictions on the foreign buy-up of farmland are needed, at least until an accurate register of foreign ownerships is established. However, the issue is complicated by the fact that many farmers would be happy to sell to anyone wanting to buy their farms, because of the parlous state of many rural industries. One indicator of…
Private debt overhang is a problem for many Australians. In the cities, it is mortgage and household debt, much of the latter on credit cards at prohibitive interest rates. We all know in our hearts, but prefer to put out of our minds, the fact that debt has to be paid back. That process is…
Peter McHugh is chief executive of Causeway Produce Agency, a company which supplies quality grain and feed supplements to the cattle industry in Townsville, North Queensland. This article appeared in the Townsville Daily Bulletin in response to a lengthy letter which appeared previously in the newspaper from Jenny Brown, headed, “Live export is a costly…
The famed SPC Ardmona cannery has slashed its fruit intake, cancelled contracts with farmers and called for an emergency tax on imported canned fruit to save the industry. In the Goulburn Valley around Shepparton in north-east Victoria, 114 farmers have either had their quotas for next season cancelled or slashed. The cannery has announced that…
The worsening crisis in the dairy industry is symptomatic of a deeper malaise afflicting Australia’s farming community. In mid-January, over 600 people attended a dairy crisis meeting in the Kolora-Noorat Football Club rooms in south-west Victoria. The meeting demanded a fairer farm-gate price for milk, because the big supermarket chains’ milk price war is driving…
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan in the famous poem, “before the year is out”. He then cites the obstacles to agricultural production in Australia — drought, floods and bushfires, to name a few. “John O’Brien” (pen-name of Father Patrick Hartigan) certainly understood his country people. Farmers know there are few certainties in agricultural production…
Large, sausage-shaped storage bags dotted across the rural landscape are a sign of the disaster unfolding since the single selling-desk for wheat was abolished three years ago. Many growers have been left to store their wheat on-farm, using huge white plastic bags holding around 250 tonnes of wheat. This system of storage has been forced…
Failure by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) to consult local stakeholders on water-planning is likely to see the second Murray-Darling Basin draft plan rejected by Basin communities. When the MDBA released its first draft Basin plan last year, angry communities across the Basin publicly burned it, as reported in News Weekly (October 30, 2010). Front…
Ballarat farmers blockaded McCain Foods with tractors to get a fair price for their potatoes, while Coles supermarket chain has slashed the price of milk, triggering a Senate inquiry. Last month, Ballarat potato-farmers blockaded the local McCain Foods processing plant with their tractors after the company cut its offering price to farmers to $25 per…
Recent massive deluges and floods demonstrate that Australia has the periodic rainfall to secure the nation’s growing water needs, if there is the political will to build new dams. The floods across the eastern states have inflicted a terrible loss of life, and major damage to towns, cities, farms, infrastructure and industry. In the wake…
Angry farmers in Griffith, New South Wales, have burned copies of the Murray-Darling Basin draft water plan that would destroy their towns and to protest the Basin plan’s consultation and planning process. Front-cover photo is courtesy of The Land, Fairfax Media, NSW. It was just one of a series of angry confrontations between farmers and…
Over a year after the tragic bushfires which took 173 lives on “Black Saturday”, February 7, 2009, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission has heard compelling evidence about the necessity for fuel-reduction burning, an issue which prompted the largest number of submissions to the Royal Commission. The interim report of the Royal Commission last August made…
The Australian Farm Institute has become the first leading Australian farm organisation to conclude that there is virtually no chance of achieving world free trade in agriculture. Opening up the US, EU and Japanese markets to free trade in agriculture has been the cornerstone of Australia’s agricultural policy, as pursued by the National Farmers Federation,…
Victorian dairy-farmers have started the season with an “indicative” price of just 26¢ per litre, which Gippsland processor Rakesh Aggarwal says is below the cost of production. While “free market” economics is heavily punishing rural Australia, the US Government has just announced that its Dairy Product Price Support Program will see US consumers forced to…
Australia’s food security is threatened less by the drought than by long-term falling farm profits. Patrick J. Byrne reports. Around the year 2000, Queensland University of Technology economist, Dr Mark McGovern, presented to farmer forums figures showing the declining value of net farm production, i.e., the total sum of all the profits of Australian farmers.…
The tragic impact of drought on rural families has been acknowledged in a recent government report. Tim Cannon reports. The tragic impact of drought on farm families and rural communities has been highlighted in a recent report by a Federal Government-appointed “expert social panel”. Commissioned by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Tony Burke,…
One of Australian farmers’ few remaining advantages over cheap foreign imports is their reputation as producers of clean and green food and fibre, writes Peter Westmore. Following a six-month study, the independent Quarantine and Biosecurity Inquiry, headed by a former head of the Prime Minister’s Department, Roger Beale, is shortly due to report to the…
Food riots in a number of developing countries have begun to refocus the attention of governments after decades of policy neglect. Patrick J. Byrne reports. Worldwide, just over a billion people survive on US$1 a day, the line of absolute poverty, while a further 1.5 billion make do on US$1.00-1.50 a day. Bob Zoellick, president…
The rural crisis has its background in economic policy, writes Ben Rees. There is much wringing of hands and many crocodile tears from politicians and parts of the media over the state of rural Australia. Historic drought is the catch-cry of some distressed politicians while climate change is the clarion call of others. Well, no…
Some 800 farmers from the Murray-Darling Basin protested recently over government failure to consult them over water policy. As Australia’s drought reaches proportions not seen since Federation, 800 angry irrigators met in the Victorian town of Mildura on the Murray to call for assistance and to protest over policies that threaten the future of irrigation…
In contrast to Australia, Taiwan is raising its quarantine bar against agricultural imports from disease-affected countries, thereby ensuring that Taiwan’s own produce enjoys the highest reputation in domestic and overseas markets. Jeffry Babb reports. Travellers flying into Taipei 25 years ago did not have any quarantine worries when carrying fruit and vegetables – passengers were actively…
Wheat farmers have been given until March 1 next year to form a new single selling-desk system, or face possible deregulation of the wheat marketing system. Patrick J. Byrne reports. The Prime Minister John Howard has bowed to strong pressure from the big wheat industry groups and the National Party, agreeing to continue the single…
As farmers struggle to recover from the drought, wheat-growers need stability and certainty, something the wheat single selling-desk provides. Patrick J. Byrne reports. If the Federal Government wants to either remove the single selling-desk for export wheat from AWB or abolish the desk, it will have to also protect the commercial interests of Australian farmers.…
Farmers face serious, inescapable and fundamental disadvantages which no other sellers are asked to contend with in quite the same way, argues veteran international trade negotiator Colin Teese. In a speech he delivered earlier this year before 500 delegates to an Australian beef industry conference, he defended government subsidies to farmers, and warned of the disadvantages…
Federal Government tax concessions for the wealthy are spawning huge corporate farms at the expense of family farms, writes Pat Byrne. Managed investment schemes (MIS) are distorting rural investment, agricultural markets and water allocations. MIS involve wealthy people seeking to minimise their tax by investing in managed rural investment schemes that are creating very large…
Australia can learn much from a recent Canadian study of the impact of market deregulation on farmers, writes Ken Francis. In 2003, Canadian farmers reported a catastrophic collapse in the profitability of their farm businesses when they recorded a realised net farm income of a negative $13 billion. This result was the lowest ever recorded,…
South Australia’s egg industry is in jeopardy, writes Damian Wyld. South Australian egg producers have been forced to slaughter hens by the thousand since December, thanks to a national egg glut, collapsing prices and suspected dumping practices. Now at breaking point, exasperated producers left several dozen eggs outside SA Premier Mike Rann’s office to raise…
Recent economic studies have warned that abolishing the single selling-desk marketing system for wheat will greatly disadvantage wheat-growers, reports Ken Francis. The Australian wheat crop currently benefits from a single-desk marketing system, which has provided growers with a premium price greater than one available from a deregulated marketing system. The single-desk for wheat was analysed…
Policy-makers in Australia would do well to consider introducing the factors which have brought Brazil and Argentina to their strong position in the world tables as agricultural food and fibre producers and exporters, writes Ken Francis. Australian exporters of farm commodities are facing major new competition from producers in Brazil and Argentina, which are emerging…
Sir, Why do so many rural industry bodies, like the Beef Council, consistently act against the interests of their members and Australia? Were it not for the vigilance of the University of Sydney’s Professor Linda Weiss, the Government and these industry bodies would lower our quarantine and trade standards without a murmur. With bird ‘flu…
Helping poor nations to develop their economies is greatly impeded by the unfettered penetration of developing economies’ food markets by agricultural products from Western nations, warns Dr John Hodge, a former UN Food and Agriculture Organization official. A leading authority on livestock production has recently called for a new approach to the world trade in…
Australian pork producers are under attack from the risk of disease-carrying imports and from subsidised imports, writes Pat Byrne. Australian pork producers have challenged pork imports on both quarantine and probable dumping grounds. In both cases, government agencies have been accused of adopting import-risk methodologies that allow imports to continue. A Federal Court judge recently…
United service stations in Victoria have begun selling unleaded petrol with 10 per cent ethanol (E10) blends, supplied by CSR. Unfortunately, writes Pat Byrne, even if the Federal Government were now to mandate ethanol in fuel, it would do nothing for the welfare-dependent sugar industry, since National Competition Policy has denied cane-farmers compulsory arbitration with…
Free market-inspired myths have led to policies that are seriously damaging Australia’s rural industries. Pat Byrne exposes nine of these myths. Free market-inspired myths about agriculture have led to policies that are seriously damaging our rural industries. For over two decades, farmers and the public have been told the following: MYTH #1: The primary market…
Farm leaders are up in arms at the latest proposals for separating farmers’ water rights from property titles, reports Pat Byrne. Anthony Gray is a dairy farmer on the Campaspe Irrigation District at Rochester, northern Victoria. He and other farmers depend on 20,000 megalitres of water rights, which is based on the water rights attached…
Radical environmental activists have recruited youngsters to vandalise properties, destroy bridges and endanger people’s lives in regional Victoria, writes Peter Kelly. Recently, I was invited by a friend to spend a few days with him in beautiful East Gippsland in eastern Victoria. Our destination was to be the “bush”, about 60km north of the timber…
When the Federal Government announced a $444 million package for the sugar industry last year prior to the federal election, it was to include two sustainability payments to “help farmers through a transition phase towards reform”, a re-establishment grant to those wanting to exit the industry, and an intergenerational package to assist transfer of the…
Australian farmers on average receive the lowest farm-gate prices for their products in the developed world. Australian consumers on average benefit from farmers supplying the lowest-priced food to food-processors and retailers in the developed world. Australian farmers supply food and fibre to the biggest sector of Australian manufacturing industry. Australian farmers make up just 4…
For National Party members, no issue is more painful than their commitment to supporting the full sale of Telstra. They proclaim that this will only happen when telecommunications in regional areas are deemed to be up to scratch. Even so, the idea is unpopular with their constituencies. Nevertheless, Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter…
Australia’s pork industry faces being reduced to the level of a cottage industry after three reports recommending action to save the industry have been ignored by the Federal Government. The Australian pig industry has about 2,300 active producers, employing 6,000 full-time “on farm” workers, another 6,700 “off farm”, and indirectly a further 16,800. The industry…
Sound policy is urgently needed to address the crisis of declining farm income and the potential for a rapid deterioration in agriculture and in Australia’s trade position, with further consequences for down-stream processing. Dr Mark McGovern, senior lecturer in the School of International Business, Queensland University of Technology, outlines some key issues. There are successes…
Disaffection with Federal policies arising from a decade of deregulation and free market policies is spilling over simultaneously in a range of rural industries including beef, pork, dairy, apples and pears, fishing, sugar, tobacco, and fruit and vegetables. At the end of June in Roma, western Queensland, 1,500 beef producers sent a strong message to…
In the face of rising farm subsidies across Western nations, only Australia and New Zealand have cut assistance to farmers. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 15th report, OECD: Agricultural Policies 2004 at a Glance, on Western farm subsidies, found that in 2003 Western farmers derived 32% of their net revenue from government subsidies…
As dairy farmers are being warned to expect further falls in the farm gate prices for their milk next season, desperate farmers are taking to the streets and highways. Recently, 200 younger farmers blocked part of highways with 120 vehicles near Colac in Victoria. In Gippsland 150 farmers and 90 vehicles blocked the highway. In…
Prime Minister John Howard has handed out a $444 million package to the sugar industry, focused on one year’s relief and aimed at tiding the government over the Federal election. While the media focused on the PM’s package, Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, was quietly pushing further deregulation of the sugar industry through State Parliament. On…
Government policies over 20 years have hit the rural sector hard. Farmers are now nakedly exposed to: larger, fewer and more powerful corporate processors; two supermarkets who have about 76% of the packaged and fresh food market; corrupt international markets where the subsidised, dumped excesses of the EU and US are sold at very low…
Last year protests and lobbying by farmers and communities in the Murray-Darling basin saw the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) back away from The Living Murray proposals to take up to 1,500 gigalitres of farmers’ water for environmental flows. Farmers, communities and scientists were deeply sceptical of the quality of the science behind this proposal.…
In 1999, with brutal frankness, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee into the Australian Dairy Industry declared “that deregulation of the Australian Dairy Industry is inevitable because there is no political will to prevent it [being deregulated]”. A tumultuous five years ended in the dairy industry being totally deregulated, leaving it…
Regional communities should be congratulated for persuading the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council to change their focus from taking water off farmers, to creating six pristine, icon sites on the Murray River. This is a first step towards a practical water policy for the Murray Darling Basin. Pat Byrne reports. Protests by farmers and regional…
As a sign of the serious crisis in the sugar industry, soon locally manufactured cane harvesters and components may no longer exist in Australia. In the 1980s, the sugar cane industry used to buy about 300 new harvesters annually. In the 1990s, that dropped to about 160 sales per annum. Over the past six years,…
Unless urgent steps are taken by the Federal Government to mandate ethanol, and convert from sugar production into higher value added ethanol, then the sugar cane industry faces collapse. The prolonged drought, low world prices as Brazil expands production by one-Australian sugar industry per year, and the rising Australian dollar are adding to seven bad…
Trading of irrigation water is being proposed as a means to shift water from low value farming to high value farming. The reasoning behind this proposal is fundamentally flawed, as Pat Byrne explains. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) – encompassing the Federal and State governments – announced in August its intention to examine the…
A prolonged campaign by cane farmers strongly opposing sugar deregulation has resulted in the Queensland government laying its sugar deregulation bill on the table, at least until some later time. Farmer protests have seen both Federal and State governments back away from the Memorandum of Understanding they signed in September 2002. The MOU agreed to…
“Twenty years ago, if a local dairy farmer was in trouble, we would all chip in and help him out. Today the attitude is, let’s sit back and let him go under; one of us will get his farm, another his cattle and another his dairy. As a result, the once remarkable community life of…
A petition has been launched aimed at protecting farmers’ water rights and at stopping water barons from exploiting water trading. The petition, launched by the Water Rights Committee in rural Victoria, is aimed at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), and all the Federal and State Murray Darling Basin decision making bodies. The petition is…
The Living Murray has been hijacked by an ill-informed media and is based on flawed science, argues Daryl McDonald, a fourth generation Murray Valley farmer from Murrabit. Public perception is everything in the debate on delivering up to 1.5 million megalitres of environmental water to the Murray River. To date we have seen a whole…
Last week the Industry Guidance Group (IGG) appointed by the Federal Government to recommend reform plans for the sugar industry was due to sign off on an agreed strategy. However, it is widely believed that a sizable number of the IGG have not signed off on the plan, as they believe it will be detrimental…
Plans for a national water entitlement and trading scheme are being questioned by farm and political leaders. Pat Byrne reports. The Federal Government has placed water issues high on its list of priorities in the run up to the next election. Part of this is to include a national water entitlement and trading framework to…
Queensland Premier Beattie has a Bill before state parliament to deregulate the sugar industry. It follows the signing last year of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Federal and Queensland governments to deregulate the industry. However, in contradiction to the intent of the MoU, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson has said that he would…
A CSIRO report has revealed that farmers in the Murray Darling Basin could lose as much as 30% of their water entitlements over 20 years, twice what the Murray Darling Basin Commission has suggested in The Living Murray discussion paper. Conservatively, the cost to governments of buying water to make up the volumes proposed would…
Emeritus Professor Ted Kolsen, former head of the University of Queensland’s Economics Department, recently presented a paper to “The Sugar Summit”, organised by the Australian Cane Farmers Association. He was critical of some recent reports recommending deregulation of the industry. Pat Byrne reports. Three recent reports have examined the sugar industry, the Centre for International…
As News Weekly goes to press, a major sugar summit is underway in Brisbane, organised by the Australian Cane Farmers Association. Bill Micola, sales manager of Cameco Cane Harvesters describes how with the threat of deregulation, investment in the sugar industry has collapsed. Over the past year, three reports written by free market ideologues have recommended…
Over 3,500 sugar cane farmers and supporters recently marched through the streets of Townsville in protests at the plan of the Federal and Queensland governments to deregulate the industry. The two governments are also putting up a $150 million adjustment package over four years, for an industry that is losing $400-$600 million a year since…
The proposed US-Australia free trade agreement is likely to be of little benefit to the Australian sugar industry, the fate of which is likely to be settled long before the signing of any such agreement. US Trade Representative, Bob Zoellick, and Prime Minister, John Howard, have announced the intention of their two countries to sign…
North Queensland could lose 10-12 per cent of its economy and 15,000 jobs if the industry is allowed to collapse with deregulation in the face of subsidised competition, according to a report by Cummings Economics, for the Advance Cairns development group. The Cummings report examined the position of the sugar industry and the consequences for…
In record numbers at cane farmer meetings, growers have rejected the Queensland and Federal governments’ proposed deregulation plan and finance package for the industry. Instead, they have overwhelmingly supported an alternate eight point plan to return the once vibrant industry to profitability. Meetings headed by leading identities in the industry and by Federal independent MP,…
At meetings of cane farmers down the coast in the sugar seats, there is strong and growing opposition to the industry package being promoted by the Federal and Queensland governments. The issues behind the continuing crisis are examined by Colin Teese. Reports in last week’s newspapers that the Australian government has joined with Brazil to…
The Salesians have been in East Timor since 1946. They run schools (primary, secondary, technical and agricultural), community health centres, orphanages, parishes and youth centres in Baucau, Dili, Fatumaca, Fuiloro, Laga, Lospalos and Venilale. Br Marcal Lopes is headmaster of Don Bosco Technical High School in Fatumaca. He recently visited Australia and spoke at the…
The recently announced Federal Government’s proposal for the sugar industry is likely to achieve something rare in agri-politics – united opposition to the key proposals by farmer organisations. At stake for the government,with this heavily depressed industry, are four sugar electorates held by the Coalition. The fifth is held by independent Bob Katter. The package…
The Hilderbrand Report on the sugar industry has some worthwhile suggestions, but remains fundamentally flawed in its response to the serious problems threatening the industry following deregulation, the slashing of tariffs, the loss of a guaranteed price into the domestic market, and the flooding of the world sugar market by Brazil. World subsidies are so…
The feeling among many farmers is that, within the latitude the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) and Biosecurity Australia have to determine what animal and plant materials enter Australia, these organisations interpret the rules in the direction of the free trade ideology rather than in the direction of protecting the nation’s agricultural and environmental interests.…
Dr Geoffrey Hull examines the apparently anachronistic decision by the East Timorese to select Portuguese as their national language. From an historical perspective, he explains, it is quite logical. When the Conselho Nacional da Resistência Timorense (CNRT) announced recently that the official language of independent East Timor will be Portuguese, there was a range of…
Australian Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture (AFFA) has announced its intention to appoint a panel of scientific experts to review the earlier draft Biosecurity Australia Import Risk Analysis (IRA) that recommended allowing New Zealand apples into Australia. The terms of reference and other details have to be made public, and apple industry leaders are adamant that…
The Australian dried fruit industry is facing terminal decline, due to the removal of tariffs on imported dried fruit, together with fierce competition from subsidised producers (like Turkey) which have undercut Australian exports. Australians are among the largest consumers of dried fruits in the world, with average annual consumption around 1.8 kg per person. Until…
The country backlash against the Federal Government is likely to continue, if the recent Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) report on the deregulation of the dairy industry is anything to go on. Of 111 dairy regions examined, ABARE found that in 57 regions the impact of deregulation was moderate to high on…
Strong industry and community protests have resulted in Biosecurity Australia, part of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS), extending until February 28 the period for responses to its report that recommended allowing the importation of apples from fire blight-affected New Zealand. Its controversial report has also prompted an inquiry by the Senate Rural and…
The Queensland University of Technology School of Business is not in the habit of surrounding itself in controversy. But the opinions of its Mark McGovern – probably without meaning to – have changed all that in a paper entitled On The Unimportance of Exports to Australian Agriculture. Ministers, both State and Federal, along with other…
World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules have not required Australia to radically deregulate agriculture, as politicians and bureaucrats claim. American, European and Japanese farmers sell 80 percent plus of their products into highly protected domestic markets. The remaindered of their subsidised products is emptied onto the world markets and has a destabilising effect on the world…
Has the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) managed to pull the wool over the eyes of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries Minister, Warren Truss, and Cabinet in recommending that apples from fire blight affected New Zealand be allowed into Australia? The AQIS Import Risk Analysis (IRA) report came to the conclusion that, if New Zealand apples…
The destruction of the dairy industry — forecast in these columns in the run-up to the vote on deregulation last year — has commenced with a huge price-cutting war initiated by the Safeway-Woolworths supermarket chain, forced mergers threatened between large milk processors, dairy farmers facing a large price cut for contracted market milk, and “corner…
As the date falls due for deregulation of the dairy industry, there is mounting concern of the effects it will have on farmers, and growing calls for deregulation to be scrapped and replaced with a new regulation formula. Last December, the new Victorian Labor Government gave dairy farmers a vote on whether they wanted deregulation…
A recent “People’s Congress” in Irian Jaya resolved to seek independence from Indonesia which annexed the territory in the early 1960s. Dr Greg Poulgrain explains why the West Papuans are so determined to go and what this means for Jakarta. The Papuan People’s Congress has declared unilaterally that Irian Jaya/West Papua is no longer part…
KW news weekly, National Civic Council, colin teese, wheat industry, farmers, economic rationalism, globalisation, wheat board, economics, deregulation, international trade, trade, Paul Volcker, IMF, Department of Trade Colin Teese, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Trade, looks at means to give stability to grain producers. Farmers are up in arms about the Wheat Board’s…
A report for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation has highlighted the extent to which the withdrawal of health, banking, shopping and other facilities to rural Australia has caused a decline in rural populations, threatening the collapse of rural communities. The report, The Impact of Declining Rural Infrastructure, was compiled from about 400 people,…
Mounting resentment at the failure of the Federal Government to address the problems of primary producers in coastal Queensland threatens to boil over into a loss of seats to independents or the Opposition at the next election. Among the industries most severely affected are sugar cane, mangoes and tobacco grown on the Atherton Tablelands in…
It is now 40 years since the first 24 settlers moved into the desolate landscape of the Heytesbury Settlement – one of the most successful land settlement schemes in the world. The area of land south of Cobden, to the sea and the foothills of the Otway Ranges was unproductive to the earlier generation of…
Figures on rural debt in Queensland depict an industry facing major crisis unless governments are prepared to take major steps to assist a significant proportion of farmers facing potential bankruptcy. The figures were compiled by Hart Larwill chartered accountants in Brisbane, and are based on the Queensland Rural Agricultural Authority 1998 Rural Debt Survey. The…
