Farmers to draw up agriculture blueprint

Australia's city-dominated population and policy makers are out of touch with the land, putting at risk the food supply and a $40 billion export industry.

So says the National Farmers Federation (NFF), which is taking matters into its own hands to develop a blueprint for agriculture that will consider all issues affecting Australian farmers.

NFF president Jock Laurie says one of the concerns of farmers is that urban Australia appears to be losingits connection to the agriculture and that consumers are becoming `agriculturally illiterate'.

"A problem is this very clear division between agriculture and the big cities," Mr Laurie said.

"(Urban) people don't understand where food comes from, don't understand how agriculture works, or what we (farmers) do and don't do."

Mr Laurie said people in the big cities drove policy because politicians were swayed by the numbers.

This resulted in views being imposed upon the agricultural sector without any consideration of whether or not those views were practical.

Policies favouring mining over agriculture in land and water allocation could cause the food supply to tighten in the next 15 years.

Additionally, the uncertainty created by current policies is scaring off the young people who are potential new farmers.

That is putting at risk an industry that makes up 15 per cent of Australia's export earnings, equivalent to $36 billion to $40 billion per year, according to Mick Keogh, executive director of independent farm policy researcher Australian Farm Institute.

Mr Keogh said the move to develop an agriculture blueprint was a good idea, especially as governments and policy makers appeared to be so enamoured with mining at the moment.

"They see that as the sole future of the economy," Mr Keogh told AAP.

Mr Keogh said a recent speech by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the opportunities presented by Asia did not make a single mention of agriculture, despite the fact that the sector had been engaging with Asia for at least the past 40 years.

Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said the federal government was committed to ensuring a long-term sustainable future for agriculture.

"Our ability to produce high-quality food in large quantities is the envy of many countries," Senator Ludwig said.

"Our geographic location has us ideally placed to access Asian markets."

Senator Ludwig also acknowledged that there were challenges, such as attracting young people into the sector.

Mr Keogh said that agricultural exports to Asia were growing more quickly than any other sector of the economy, but that was being overlooked.

"The blueprint will enable the agriculture sector to present more of a coherent picture to the government and others of what it's capable of and what the needs are," Mr Keogh said.

The blueprint, announced last week, will address the challenge of growing more food more sustainably to provide for food security for Australia and to help meet rising global demand for food.

The NFF is developing the blueprint as the federal government takes submissions on the development of a national food plan.

Issues to be addressed in the blueprint include water reform, the impact of developing Australia's best agricultural land, conflict with the mining sector, transportation, infrastructure, productivity and the need for more research and development.

The NFF's Mr Laurie said the blueprint could take about 12 months to develop.

Mr Laurie said there was some concern that the blueprint could be ignored given that that happened to past attempts at developing a national approach to food and agriculture.

"(But) if the industry doesn't set a blueprint, then nobody else will do it," Mr Laurie said.

Mr Laurie's comments come as surveys suggest farmers are worried about the future.

The latest quarterly rural confidence survey by Rabobank, which was released in September, showed that farmers were the most pessimistic in over two years because of government policies and global economic uncertainty.

Rabobank's Rural Australia general manager, Peter Knoblanche, said the temporary ban on live exports of cattle to Indonesia, the carbon tax debate, and concerns over the coal seam gas industry encroaching upon agricultural land all added to the uncertainty.

Farmers did not know if government policies were going to drive up their costs, cause them to change their operations, or affect the value of their properties.

"It's hard enough just trying to decide what commodity prices are going to be like, and what their season is going to be like," Mr Knoblanche told AAP.

That uncertainty was, in turn, scaring off younger people from farming.

"The last thing they (potential farmers) want to do is be in a position where they can't see any long-term future for what they're doing," Mr Laurie said.

"If what you do is going to be completely undervalued, you can go and do another job."

Mr Laurie said there needed to be discussion about how agriculture could prosper.

If the expansion of mining continued unabated at the expense of agricultural production and less water from the Murray-Darling basin were made available to farmers, one might find that in 15 years, food supply could be really tight, he said.

Senator Ludwig said that competition for land use was inevitable, and mining and farming communities would have to learn to co-exist.

Australian Farm Institute's Mr Keogh said that, despite the issues confronting the agriculture, now was a good time to be a farmer.

The trend in farm commodity prices was now stronger than it had been between 1960 and 2000, when prices went downward.

Weather in the past two years had generally been good for farmers, although there were still some areas that were drought-affected or still recovering from floods.

A rise in farm incomes was starting to emerge, evidenced by more farmers putting money aside in farm management deposits.

Mr Keogh also said that didn't excuse the complacency apparent among Australian consumers.

"In some respects Australian consumers have had food so cheap and so plentiful for so long that it's basically an issue of absolute complacency," he said.

"There is no experience in Australia of products being in short supply or in fact not available on a seasonal basis."

That meant even a price rise in bananas was a major issue.

"Consumers need to understand that agriculture is not a factory that just churns out stuff.

"It's much more complicated than that."

Associate Professor Bill Malcolm, an agricultural economist with the Department of Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Melbourne, said the agriculture, generally, was headed in a positive direction, with good seasons and the prices of commodities holding up.

"For agriculture to continue to have a positive outlook, it's investment in research and development that's needed," he said.

"It gets more than 20 per cent return on capital. It's one of the best investments in the economy."

Prof Malcolm said good young scientists were needed to engage in agricultural research, but it was hard to attract young people to study agricultural science or to get them to enter agriculture in other forms.

"They figure if they do agriculture, they have to live in the bush and they don't want to," Prof Malcolm said.

Senator Ludwig said the government was supporting agriculture through research and development funding to ensure it remained one of the most productive in the world.

• Find a personal loan
• Find a credit card
• Find a home loan
• Find a savings account