The Guardian | 11 February 2015

How much of Australia’s farmland is owned by foreign companies?

by Nick Evershed

The government has announced it will increase oversight of foreign investment in farmland, but how much of Australia’s farmland is foreign-owned, and what is the scale of foreign investment in the agriculture industry?

Currently, the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has to scrutinise purchases of “rural land” by foreign entities if it is worth more than $252m. On Wednesday the prime minister, Tony Abbott, announced the threshold would be dropped to $15m, and become cumulative.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the breakdown of investment by industry type:



Agriculture, forestry and fishing has by far the smallest amount of foreign investment, though it’s worth noting that the amount of investment doubled from 2011 to 2012, and is now $1.3bn. As in industry though, it’s dwarfed by the mining sector which had an estimated $230bn in foreign investment as at the end of 2013.

The FIRB, which is responsible for scrutinising foreign investments, publishes figures on the number of foreign investment approvals and the value of proposed investments in 2012-13:



Again, agriculture forestry and fishing is relatively small in comparison to other industries, particularly real estate which accounted for $51.9bn.

However the agriculture category refers to investment in the agriculture industry, whereas the purchase of farmland would be categorised within real estate. While the FIRB requires notification for intention to purchase “rural land”, they don’t provide a breakdown of investment in this area.

The FIRB can also tell us which countries are investing in the agriculture industry in Australia:



The US and Canada top the list, followed by Singapore and China.

Another survey conducted by the Bureau looks directly at ownership of agricultural land and water.

On the national level, 87.5% of farmland is wholly Australian-owned as of mid-2013. According to the bureau, the area of agricultural land in Australia owned by businesses with some level of foreign ownership increased from 44.9m hectares at December 2010 to 49.6m hectares at June 2013, an increase of 4.7m hectares.

The actual proportion varies among the states and territories, with the Northern Territory having the lowest proportion of totally Australian-owned farmland, at 68.3%, while Victoria and NSW both have a high proportion with 97.4% and 97.2% respectively:



The most significant increase in foreign ownership has occurred in the Northern Territory, with the proportion of wholly Australian-owned farmland decreasing from 76.2% in 2010 to 68.3% in 2013.

And here’s the full breakdown of foreign ownership by different brackets:

Proportion of foreign ownership of farmland, 2013