Once prosperous – now a museum of still life? Former agriculture bank of WA, former office of Department of agriculture, currently art gallery. this building is on the Register of Heritage places for Western Australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Australian Agriculture is operating on an unsustainable basis. Current debt stresses are the logical outcome of decades of unbalanced markets, inappropriate finance, untoward practices and inept policies. We all need new ways forward.
Major problems are evident. From the Wheat fields of Western Australia and Dairy farms of Southern Australia across many Agricultural lands between to the Beef properties of Northern Australia the rural condition is needlessly poor.
Such things are a logical outcome of current policies – public, commercial and private. It is not just a drought or flood here, a retailer there or foolish public policy over there. Rural Australia faces a systemic failure. The foundations of its prosperity and national contribution have been whiteanted by ill-conceived thinking, imprudent investments and cavalier organisations.
A new agenda is needed, one built upon sustainable profitability broadly applied. As argued, this will be critical in repositioning rural Australia so that it has a decent future and makes a renewed contribution to national prosperity.
The flawed thinking underlying imprudent investments now evident as individual, sectoral and systemic failures needs to be accepted. Ill-informed, we all made mistakes. We need to accept this and to develop mutually acceptable ways forward.
Problems are unevenly spread but the threat of contagion means that sensible industry and regional stabilisation is a priority. With due care and insight pending crises can be defused with effective repositioning efficiently achieved.
Australia stands exposed to deteriorating global conditions so action is needed now, while the window of opportunity remains open for Agriculture and the Nation.
FULL PAPER LINKS – BELOW or under “PAPERS” at top of page
A new page to present issues relevant to the future prosperity of rural Australia
ruraloz 
Great input to those meetings Mark . Now need to get Checkpoint ABC, consumers and conservationists who will follow through, to get the idea in your paper Love the last graph . We switch OFF Alan Koeller (ABCnews ) when he comes on – the smug financial people who know the price of the dollar, but not its value ?
Great last sketch on your paper. Now we just need to get Checkpoint ABC , consumers and conservationists to see the point about how we have been missing the point . http://misplacedconcreteness,blogspot.com
[…] parts of Australian agriculture are economically and financially unsustainable. Returns are inadequate and unbalanced; assets are depleted; risks are needlessly high. To date, […]
The problem is not complicated. It is nearly thirty years old, and it has a name. Unilateral Trade Reform.
In the mid 1980s the NFF took us on this jaunt with the promise that if we took the moral high ground in economics within a couple of years the rest of the world would follow our example.
It took no more than two years to show that the rest of the world, far from following our “good” example, was ever ready to take advantage of our foolishness. Nevertheless, the NFF and all political parties have maintained that policy in the face of failure to the present day.
Unilateral Trade reform is suicidal lunacy! Yet it is still NFF policy.