Publication Date

11-2009

Publisher

Western Australian Agriculture Authority

City

Perth

Abstract

Maintaining and growing our food industries are priorities of the Western Australian Government and its Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia (DAFWA). Understanding our current food consumption levels, imports, exports and production limitations is critical to the formulation of effective agricultural and food polices.

The WA food industries are affected by several factors that include previous domestic policies and market instruments; general lack of scale; geographical isolation; access to suitable land and water; the availability and use of new technology, communication, processing and transport infrastructure that facilitate efficient marketing; sales and administration; social factors; international tariffs and other trade barriers.

Although the focus of the current study is predominantly Western Australian, increasing food demand will not be confined to this state alone. For example, the increased local food demand as a result of population growth is expected to be 25 per cent higher in Melbourne than the estimates provided for WA. Reduced food output from the Murray-Darling Basin has already increased interstate demand for WA produce. It remains to be seen whether the reduced output from Victoria's Goulburn and Murray irrigation areas is the result of a prolonged (but short-term) drought or a longer term climate shift. The stresses of the past few years have seen a large-scale reallocation of water away from irrigation and into urban water use and environmental stream flows. The pressure will continue to increase as Melbourne grows. It is unlikely that food production in the irrigation areas of northern Victoria and South Australia's Riverland will readily return to pre-2001 levels (Buxton et al. 2006) without major technological change.

Demand for fresh food across Asia is also expected to grow rapidly by 2020 as population and incomes increase. The demand for beef is projected to grow to 1.9 million tonnes (860 per cent of total Australian production), for pork to 1.2 million tonnes (260 per cent), for chicken meat to 1 million tonnes (140 per cent) and for dairy products to 5.2 million tonnes (50 per cent), according to DAFWA's chief economist (R Kingwell, pers. comm).

Growing domestic and export demand is likely to increase food prices over the medium term. Increasing transport costs (associated with higher oil prices and the cost of greenhouse gas emission mitigation) will further increase the cost of food purchased from overseas or interstate relative to that grown locally.

Number of Pages

80

Keywords

Food production, Farming, Western Australia, Food demand

Disciplines

Agribusiness | Agricultural and Resource Economics | Agricultural Economics | Agricultural Science | Food Science | Food Security | Marketing

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