Farm groups still concerned about foreign ownership

Australia Broadcasting Corporation | Monday, 12/09/2011

Farm groups still concerned about foreign ownership

By Sarina Locke, Nikolai Beilharz and Neroli Roocke

The National Farmers Federation says the figures that show Australian farm land to be about 90 per cent locally owned is a small part of the picture.

The Bureau of Statistics has, for the first time, calculated the area of land with foreign investment and found only 11 per cent of our agricultural land has foreign interest, with the greatest proportion in the Northern Territory, and Western Australia.

In Victoria, only 1 per cent of land has any foreign ownersip.

But NFF president Jock Laurie says it's just one of three studies, with the others looking into the value of farm production.

"The important part is what happens to that agricultural production, because Australia lives very much by competition, and we want to make sure that anything produced in Australia goes on to the competitive market and you have as many people bidding for it as possible," he said.

"So we need to have an understanding about how that produce is being sold, off that country that is foreign-owned."

The Victorian Farmers Federation wants tighter controls on how foreigners can buy up farm land.

Despite the low level of foreign ownership of Victorian farms, VFF president Andrew Broad says the current value cap, at which foreign purchases must be reviewed, should be lowered to just $20 million.

"The Foreign Investment Review Board, it comes into the perimeter of about $231 million, I think, and that's just a threshold," he said.

"That's just way too high to ever be considered for agricultural land. What we're simply saying is let's lower that."

The president of Queensland farm lobby group AgForce has admitted he and many other farmers have been surprised to learn that only 1 per cent of Australia's agricultural businesses are in foreign hands.

Brent Finlay says he thought the figure might have been higher.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that, while 89 per cent of the 353 million hectares of agircucltural land were entirely Australian owned, 99 per cent of Australia's 133,600 agricultural businesses were in local hands.

Mr Finlay says most foreign interest is in cattle, grain and sheep production.

"Australia has a long history of foreign investment, but nowdays as I travel around the state and the country, we're hearing a little bit more about concerns around sovereign investment," he said.

"We need data to actually have a good debate on and also to create policy from."

Sovereign investment is when a foreign government holds property or business interests.