Australian Grain Growers Warned About Complacency

CANBERRA - Mar 6/02 - STAT -- Australia's grain industry must be careful to avoid becoming complacent in the face of relatively good yields and improved farm incomes this season, ABARE chief commodity analyst, Terry Sheales, warned delegates attending told the Outlook 2002 conference here.

"The Australian grains industry today is significantly different to what it was a decade ago, with major gains having been achieved through productivity improvements on-farm and off-farm, and deregulation of the domestic market," he said. "The Australian grains industry will remain highly dependent on world markets, and the longer term outlook for the Australian grains industry will be strongly influenced by agricultural policies in other major producing countries.

"The potential benefits from grain trade liberalization have not been realized and Australia must ensure that the current WTO negotiations achieve fundamental reform in world grain markets," he said.

National Agricultural Commodities Marketing Associated Limited Chief Executive Officer, David Moore, said product integrity and identity preservation presented a major challenge for the grains industry. "It would be shortsighted in the extreme if Australia lost its competitive edge internationally through an unwillingness to meet marketplace demands for traceability," he said.

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