THE mining boom made him rich, but billionaire Andrew Forrest is almost breathless in his enthusiasm for the future of agricultural prosperity in Australia.
The Fortescue Metals chairman, whose expanding beef business includes a 50,000 head Angus-Droughtmaster herd and Harvey Beef meatworks, said he would be investing further in agriculture.
He also hopes to see regional communities make the most of big opportunities he foresees in a “strong multi-generational future” for the farm sector.
However Mr Forrest is also worried about Australia’s relatively expensive farm exports, particularly livestock products, losing market ground to less ethical, low-cost producers and processors – many of whom are now our customers.
“I have enormous faith in our agriculture sector,” he told farmers, agribusiness leaders and tertiary students in Melbourne last week.
“Generation after generation of Australian farmers, including family farmers, will have a strong future, particularly if we can come together and sell our agricultural production under a recognisable Australian label to overseas customers,” he said.
Corporate investors, too, were playing invaluable roles, testing and introducing technology to cut costs and make productivity gains unimaginable a generation ago.
Agriculture needed those breakthroughs and the skills and work ethic of agricultural graduates and others in the rural sector to maintain the industry’s newfound export momentum and earnings growth.
Demand for Australian food exports in the next 15 years would be far beyond our ability to deliver.
However Mr Forrest warned Australia could waste its valuable agricultural resources and high production standards by becoming little more than a saleyard or grain store for buyers with foreign processing and profit agendas.
He told a Marcus Oldham College Foundation fundraising event, that Australia’s comparatively small, but highly credible, farm productivity effort and expertise was threatened by fast-emerging rival food producers and processors who lacked the same sort of ethical credentials or priorities.
Mr Forrest cautioned against the beef industry being “very much in a hurry to export live cattle overseas”.
Australia risked giving other countries with less credible standards and employment regimes the chance to convert our livestock into high value meat products, effectively undermining our own higher cost processes with their own low-cost, low-care operations.
“You can be assured their competitiveness against Australian value-added exports is being achieved through their lack of attention to human rights and a non-existent care for animals,” he said.
Australia’s credibility as an ethical producer of livestock or cropping products came at a cost which some foreigners don’t like.
