Liberal MP backs calls from farming groups nationwide to tighten government regulations that scrutinise potential sales of Australian farmland and water assets to foreign investors and increase transparency.
Senator believes a revision of foreign investment rules must adequately consider the changing nature of national sovereignty, in the face of a mounting global food security task.
Family that sold Australia's biggest water licence in history has been selling its NSW farming operations and is setting up a new agricultural empire in the Blue Nile state in Sudan
CP Group has opened an office in Melbourne to start buying red meat and grains and set up a salmon farm in Australia.
Macquarie Group's new farmland fund, which is targeting farms in Australia and Brazil, has purchased its first two properties in Australia worth a total of almost $40 million.
With foreign investment in agriculture already occurring in Australia, many within the agricultural industry believe we need to be wary.
Almost half of Australian executives surveyed by an international law firm favor higher trade barriers to protect the nation’s food supply and see foreign investment in agriculture and farmland as a threat.
Corporate control of Australia’s farmland is beginning to ruffle feathers among some of the country’s primary producers.
Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co, China's biggest beverage producer, hopes to invest about $220 million in dairy farms in Western Australia in order to expand its import channels for milk.
Australian Liberal senator Bill Heffernan has described as "bullshit" his party's proposed policy for more scrutiny of overseas companies buying into Australian agriculture because it ignored the real threat posed by foreign government-owned funds buying up farmland.
The Australian Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce is pushing for even tougher restrictions on foreign ownership of farmland and agribusinesses than those advocated by his party, fuelling Liberal anger at Tony Abbott's failure to rein in National Party ''freelancing'' on sensitive economic issues.
Australian farmers have demanded an overhaul of foreign investment rules ahead of any attempt to harness Asian capital to boost the nation's food production.
