Trade

A two-part ABARES Insights series on Australian agriculture draws attention to how changes in the sector over past decades have led to its current success and what will shape its future performance. ABARES Executive Director Dr Jared Greenville said farmers have made the most of exceptional growing seasons and high global prices to achieve unprecedented industry production and export values over the last three years.

Australia is set to pioneer a new era of sustainable sugar exports when the first-ever shipment of fully traceable, sustainably produced raw sugar is loaded for export at the Port of Townsville this week. In a world first, the sugar, produced from cane grown by Smartcane BMP accredited growers, will be traceable through the supply chain to the end user in South Korea.

Australian engineers from global company RingIR will visit the US Department of Agriculture in Boston next month, to test whether their revolutionary technology can be used to ‘sniff out’ pests that attach themselves to containers or other cargo (known as hitchhiker pests).

Australia is on track to harvest a near-record winter grain crop of 61.9 million tonnes, according to Rabobank’s 2022/23 Australian Winter Crop Forecast. But what will be a record for some farmers will be heartbreak for others, due to the impacts of excessive rainfall on grain volume, yield and quality in parts of the country.

A teenager was ensuring the blacksmithing trade was front and centre for the millennial generation at the Good Old Days Festival in southern NSW. Joe Reedy, of Wallabadah in northern NSW, donned his leather apron and was kept busy working the hot forge and hammering out draught horseshoes and fire pokers for an appreciative audience at the festival at Barellan on October 1-2.

Burnie’s Hellyers Road Distillery has been named 2022 Tasmanian Exporter of the Year at a gala event in Hobart ... Hellyers Road took out the title after being named the Small Business Award category winner earlier in the evening.

Global dairy market fundamentals have shifted course in Q3 2022, from extreme tightness to visible but modest loosening. A  potential collision between supply growth and demand is  approaching, with Q4 year-on-year milk supply growth, weak Chinese import demand, and broader demand rationing in developing countries weighing on forecasts, according to the latest international dairy market report from Rabobank.

Exceptional growing conditions and high global prices are continuing to benefit Australian agricultural production and exports. The ABARES September quarter Agricultural Commodities Report is forecasting agricultural export earnings to climb to a record $70.3 billion for 2022-23 – almost 50% more than what it was 10 years ago after accounting for inflation.

Global demand for cheaper cuts of beef is expected to increase in the year ahead as rampant inflation and slowing economic growth see consumers trade down, Rabobank says in a newly-released report. And Australia - as one of the largest exporters of beef "trimmings" (the cheaper meat cuts which remain after prime cuts are removed) - is expected to be among the best-positioned countries to benefit from this increased international demand, particularly from the US, the agribusiness bank says in its Q3 Global Beef Quarterly.

Samuel Davis. Cape York and Torres Strait residents will fork out more for essential services after northern Australia’s largest shipping company announced it was increasing the cost to ship freight to remote communities. Sea Swift has announced a 14.5 per cent hike for cargo shipments, starting next month.

Australia's beef and sheepmeat sectors can expect continuing demand from China despite its slowing economy and continued lockdowns impacting how the country consumes animal proteins. Speaking on a newly-released podcast, Is the Chinese meat market still firing?, Rabobank's Hong Kong-based senior animal protein analyst Chenjun Pan said China's lockdown policies have affected the population's protein consumption habits, with the major short-term change being where people are consuming food.

The Port of Mackay has broken a decade-long record to post its greatest trade year by volume. Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment Cameron Dick said the 3.6 million tonne throughput for 2021-22 beat the previous record for 2012-13.

Escrow.com, the leading provider of secure online payments and a wholly owned subsidiary of Freelancer Limited (ASX: FLN, OTCQX: FLNCF), has announced a partnership with ONFARM, a world-first agricultural meeting and marketplace founded in Australia and available worldwide. The partnership will help secure farmer-to-farmer transactions for livestock, hay, grains, machinery, farming equipment and more.

Victorian irrigation innovator Rubicon Water is maximising water use on farms from the Murray Darling to India and beyond, driving jobs growth at its key Shepparton base ... In Karnataka, the Rubicon Water system manages the water supply to more than 400,000 hectares of farmland through 1,250 kilometres of canals.

Many Australian farmers are still battling to get grain crops planted due to wet conditions, while the global wheat outlook price remains elevated and buyers will be hoping prices will ease as the northern hemisphere supply comes to market.

Australia will need to both consume and export more avocados as the nation’s growers navigate a period of soaring production growth over the coming five years, specialist agribusiness bank Rabobank says in a new report. This year alone, ‘per capita (person) supply’ of avocados is estimated to be up 26 per cent on the previous 12 months to 4.8 kilogram – equating to 22 avocados per Australian.

The Australian livestock industry will work with Indonesian feedlots to help protect their facilities from disease incursions and subsequent trade disruption via a biosecurity support project jointly funded by the Australian Government and Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) ... MLA responded to a question from ARR.News about border closures.

Trade policy and reducing agricultural support have a strong role to play in guaranteeing international food security, according to the latest Insights report from ABARES ... “Trade plays an important role in helping improve the distribution of food and its affordability. Open trade helps move food to where it’s needed and can promote higher incomes, creating better access to food" : Executive Director of ABARES Dr Jared Greenville.

Australia’s agricultural sector can expect to contend with elevated ocean container shipping costs and ongoing supply disruptions for at least another year before a ‘normalisation’ of the global ocean freight system, according to new research from Rabobank.

NSW Farmers President James Jackson has slammed government officials for being wishy-washy on biosecurity controls such as foot baths ... “The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry says they can’t have antiseptic foot baths at airports because a child might fall in them,” Mr Jackson said.

The risk of an FMD outbreak in Australia has been given a probability of 9% (1%/19%). The advent of FMD in Indonesia increases the likelihood of an incursion into Australia. We should not have waited until FMD or any disease was close to bring attention to the risk of exotic diseases ... In the event of an outbreak of FMD, we would immediately lose a large number of our premium livestock markets. The longer an outbreak takes to be controlled, the longer we are shut out of premium markets.

Moves by governments to restrict exports only exacerbate price rises and increase food insecurity, according to the latest Insights report from ABARES. Executive Director of ABARES Dr Jared Greenville said there were lessons to be learnt from the 2007-08 food crisis.