The challenge to frontier pioneers in the TV programs of my youth was: “Head west!” resulting in thousands of hopefuls trekking westwards in search of fortune. Australia’s west in recent years has certainly offered up its grain treasures, with consecutive bumper harvests in 2021 and 2022. This has fuelled farmland prices to remarkable heights (see Rural Bank 2022); despite the background challenge of a drying, warming climate (Figure 1).
Nightly portrayed on television screens across Australia is the destructive damage inflicted by Russian aggression in Ukraine. Russia specifically targets essential infrastructure and housing to create fear and weaken resolve among Ukrainians. As at February 2023 analysts in the Kyiv School of Economics estimate conservatively that the cost of replacing the damaged infrastructure in Ukraine is currently USD144 billion. Half of Ukraine’s energy system is destroyed and 7 million hectares (or 22%) of Ukraine’s arable land is under Russian occupation.
Australia’s rural media often mentions the climatic phase that Australian agriculture is experiencing. In recent years that phase was persistent La Niña conditions. However, the Bureau of Meteorology, as at early May 2022, points to an emerging change in those seasonal conditions.
Young Tasmanian baker Bjarke Svendsgaard has claimed the 2023 LA Judge Award for Baking Apprentice of the Year. The LA Judge Award has been running for well over 50 years to advance the skills of young bakers and identify future baking industry trailblazers. Bjarke, from Olivers Latrobe Cafe Bakery in Latrobe, was officially announced the winner at a gala event in Sydney on Thursday, 11 May 2023, presented by AEGIC and Woolworths.
The following was originally a media release from GRDC. The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has announced the...
The Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC) and Grains Australia are joining forces to build a stronger and more united national grain alliance. Together, both organisations will focus on delivering better outcomes and efficiencies for Australian grain growers and the Australian grains industry.
The LA Judge Award, Australasia's most prestigious baking competition, returns May 9-11, 2023. Since 1967, the LA Judge Award has...
In late January 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics officially reported that China’s population declined in 2022 by 850,000 to 1.41 billion. There were 10.41 million deaths in 2022 but only 9.56 million births. The birth rate in China has been steadily falling over several decades (Chart 1), even despite the scrapping of its one-child policy.
Our export grain industries are exposed to concentration risk, where a single policy decision could affect the whole trade. In 2017, India purchased about 1.1 million tonnes of Australian chickpea, or 62% of Australia’s chickpea exports in that year. Only a few years later in 2022, India purchased just 0.2% (or 932 tonnes) of Australia’s chickpea exports. The huge reduction was due to India imposing in 2018 a tariff of 66% that effectively closed the market to Australian and other exporters (Figure 1). The policy change by India’s government had an immediate effect on the global chickpea trade which had left itself open to concentration risk.