Industry Data

The Agriculture, Fishing and allied industries have changed markedly over the last few decades. Key drivers have been shifts in consumer demand, changes in government policies, technological advances and innovation, emerging environmental issues and an unrelenting decline in the sector's terms of trade.

The relative importance of the sector to the state economy has declined in recent decades. However, in absolute terms, real agricultural has more than doubled and agricultural exports have almost tripled in value over the last four decades.

The industries directly generate about 4 per cent of GDP and employ about 4 per cent of the Australian workforce and about 20% of the regional workforce in SA. They account for around 22 per cent of Australia's total exports.  The processing sector they support forms the largest of SA's manufacturing industry sectors.

Farms are much fewer and larger than twenty years ago. Production is increasingly concentrated on larger farms, with a few large commercial farms accounting for the majority of output and many farms accounting for a small share of output. About 12% of farms produce 50% of the output.

Source: Current trends and the outlook for Agriculture, Michael Carroll,
General Manager Agribusiness, National Australia Bank 2006
(http://www.agrifood.info/connections/spring_2005/Carroll.htm)

 Employment in Agricultural Food Production Sectors 2003 - 2006

Source: AFF Food Statistics Nov 2006 www.daff.gov.au/content/publication

Around two-thirds of production is now exported. Exports have also become more diverse, with less reliance on traditional commodities such as wool and more on processed products such as wine, cheese and seafood.

The workforce has a number of distinctive features, including: a high proportion of self-employed, family and casual workers; long job tenure; and a relatively old workforce with relatively low education levels and employee wages.

The last two decades have seen an increase in the number of employees and a fall in employers and contributing family workers. The educational attainment of workers has also improved.

Off-farm employment has become increasingly important to maintaining family farm incomes. Since 1990, the proportion of farm families deriving income from off-farm wages and salaries increased from 30 to 49per cent.

Agricultural productivity has exhibited strong growth over the last three decades — more than twice the rate achieved in Australia’s market sector as a whole. This productivity counted for the entire increase in agriculture and fishing sector output

However performance within the sectors has been mixed. The cropping industry has recorded the highest productivity gains, and the sheep and sheep–beef industries the lowest.