Barnaby Joyce has warned that being Asia's food basket won't be handed to Australia on a plate. Source: AAP
AGRICULTURE Minister Barnaby Joyce has warned Australia must produce quality products and should not assume it will be the food basket of Asia just because it's located in the region.
He cited Australia's standing as a big wheat producer, but still trailing India, China, the US and France.
"It's not right that we think because we are here we are going to prevail," Mr Joyce told the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) conference in Canberra on Tuesday.
"We have to be here with the best product, the right prices, it has got to be quality or it won't sell."
Making a fair return at the farm gate would be a key driver of an agricultural white paper, the minister said, adding it must be a document with a long time frame. "It can't just change with every government, there has to be a consistency."
Mr Joyce likened the timing of ABARES' premier annual event, coinciding with the crisis in Ukraine and the debate about Qantas, to the performance of The Grateful Dead at Woodstock .
"We are going to be the most unwatched thing ... coming between The Who and Jimi Hendrix."
ABARES executive director Karen Schneider told the conference Asia provides a "powerful opportunity" for Australian agriculture, but agreed with Mr Joyce that it comes with serious global competition.
Modelling by the federal government's commodity forecaster anticipates a 75 per cent increase in global food demand by 2050.
Almost three-quarters will come from Asia and just under half from China alone.
But faced with intense competition from other countries for both grains and beef, she said Australia must increase productivity growth.
"That will define the future success of Australian agriculture," she said.
In the five decades to 2000, productivity growth in Australian agriculture averaged 2.5 per cent a year but in the most recent decade it declined to average around 0.8 per cent a year.
Ms Schneider said future productivity growth must come from a reduced regulatory burden across the sector, while investing in infrastructure to support production and exports, and targeting R&D investment to improve innovation "behind the farm gate".
"We need to think carefully about the costs and benefits of regulation and how we might do it better."
Mr Joyce said making a fair return at the farm gate would be a key driver of an agricultural white paper, adding it must be a document with a long life.
"It can't just change with every government, there has to be a consistency."
ABARES expects farm exports to fall by 2.9 per cent in 2014/15 to around $38.5 billion after a forecast rise of 3.7 per cent to $39.4 billion in 2013/14.
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