Chinese investment in Australian agriculture is set to boom, with the Chinese-government owned Beijing Agricultural Investment Fund yesterday committing to spend $3 billion on Australian dairy, beef, lamb and aquaculture assets.
The announcement, witnessed by federal Trade Minister Andrew Robb in Melbourne, establishes the Beijing Australia Agricultural Resource Co-operative Development Fund in a joint venture with Yuhu Agriculture Investment.
Mr Robb told the inaugural Dairy Australia Investment forum that the fund was particularly keen to invest in local dairy farms and dairy processing, with a focus on producing and exporting powdered infant milk formula to China.
In a separate move, it was also revealed that a private Chinese company had bought the vast Elizabeth Downs cattle station in the Northern Territory from National Gallery of Australia president and leading barrister Allan Myers QC.
With the Chinese bidder paying about $12 million for the 205,000ha of land, the deal will not require sign off by the Foreign Investment Review Board, as it falls below the $15m mandatory approval threshold.
The Chinese company also bought the 9000 head of cattle on Elizabeth Downs, located two hours’ drive southwest of Darwin, for an estimated $7m.
It is believed to be the first investment by a Chinese buyer in the northern Australian cattle industry, with Asian demand for beef expected to jump in the near future with the opening this month of a $91m abattoir near Darwin.
However, it is understood the buyer of Elizabeth Downs, who owns golf courses and hotels in Australia, hopes to maximise the property’s investment potential by developing irrigated cropping and tourist facilities alongside the cattle operation.
The moves came as Barnaby Joyce told Chinese producers that Australia’s farmers would pose no threat to their livelihoods if the two countries were, as expected, to sign a free-trade agreement by the end of this year.
Mr Joyce, on his first tour of China as Agriculture Minister, is leading a delegation of almost 40 industry figures who stand to benefit if an agreement is signed.
In Harbin, in China’s northeast, yesterday for the start of his tour, Mr Joyce said Australia could never become “Asia’s food bowl” simply because of the size of each nation’s population.
“We are not a threat to China; we will produce premium products to the people of China and they can be reliant on the fact that Australia does not have a hope in Hades of feeding the Chinese population, not even a portion of it,” he said. “If we were to use all of our production, we could not feed just Australia and this province alone, we would run out of food.
“The reality is that Australia feeds about 60 million people at the moment (including exports). Even if we double that to 120 million people, we would not feed even half of the population of our nearest neighbour, Indonesia.
Source: The Australian