History of Australian agriculture - by the numbers

For millennia Indigenous Australians sustainably farmed the nation's wildly varying climates and environments, growing crops like yams and tubers, grains and grasses, and building dam and trench systems to source water.

However, since the ideas of industrial agriculture arrived with the First Fleet, and later mechanised agriculture, crops became commodities and farming an industry.

The dirt connects today's farmers to fathers and their father's father, the industry has provided a livelihood for generations of countless families, produces 90 per cent of the fresh food consumed domestically and fuels economic growth.

Australia might have ridden on the sheep's back, but it has also banked as much bread from cattle and cropping and, along with mining, agriculture is the nation's most enduring and significant exporter.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics have released new data that for the first time captures the evolution of key agricultural commodities in Australia from the 1860's to 2022, including national and state data breakdowns and land use covering grains, livestock and wool production.

If you zoom out to satellite view it would be hard to identify how the wide brown land has produced some of the globe's best food and fibre.

The land of drought and flooding rains and fire has few natural advantages, save for a lot of land - although most of it is desert, bush, rainforest and high country - and the soil is often not great and rainfall is mostly variable.

The industry has ostensibly thrived through sheer determination.

It has invested in knowledge and technology, adapted and innovated, somehow made hay in the mayhem and endured through the extremes.

Against all odds it is tracking to become Australia's next $100 billion industry.

ABS statistician David Gruen said the newly-released data had been collected directly from farmers for more than a century, continuing official record-keeping around farming which began in the early 1800's.

"The data offers extraordinary insights into Australia's farming history," he said.

"Ranging from the 1876 invention of the stump-jump plough and its role in dramatically increasing wheat production, to the fortunate timing of Australia's first commercial fleece shipment to England to meet wool demand during the Napoleonic wars in Europe."

WHEAT

The 1789 harvest at the Rosehill settlement on the Parramatta River was reported as consisting of 200 bushels of wheat, or about five tonnes, 60 bushels of barley, about one tonne, and small quantities of oats, corn, and flax.

According to the ABS, Australia's wheat production exploded to 279,000 tonnes in 1861.

Then it really took off courtesy of innovations in farming techniques, like crop rotation and mixed farming, bulk handling systems, the ongoing development of chemicals to combat diseases, pests and weeds and the development of higher yielding disease resistant wheat strains.

However, the yo-yo impacts of drought on wheat yields are readily apparent from the data.

Today, according to GrainGrowers, the grains industry is a significant economic and social force in regional Australia, comprising 22,500 farm businesses covering an estimated 31 million hectares of land and directly employing 34,000 workers each season, with thousands more employed across the supply chain.

In the 2022-23 growing season, Australian grain growers contributed $33 billion gross value of production to the Australian economy.

CROP PRODUCTION

The first official farm in Australia following the arrival of the First Fleet was established in 1788 by Governor Arthur Phillip who claimed a slab of dirt that what would now be eye-watering expensive property from Darling Harbour to Woolloomooloo Bay as his own.

The land was cleared and acres of corn went in where the Royal Botanic Gardens currently sits. The graphic shows the opportune nature of Australian production, early trial and error and the honing of market opportunities that eventually saw barley production surge past oats and maize.

SHEEP & WOOL

In 1797, 26 Spanish Merino sheep were introduced to Australia from South Africa and the breed excelled so well in wool production that the first commercial fleece shipment was sold to English brokers in 1813.

More merino sheep were imported to take advantage of the commercial demand and sheep numbers surged from 120,000 to 16 million between 1820 and 1850, laying the foundations of the "boom and bust" Australian wool industry.

The busts included setbacks during depressions and dry times, particularly the prolonged Federation drought of 1895 to 1902. The most significant rebounds were in the early 1950's when the greasy wool price surged to 144.2 pence per pound - equivalent to $69 per kilogram in 2021-22 - courtesy of American demand during the Korean War.

However, after another bounce and fall and bounce, wool and Merino prices crashed in the early 1990's, leading to producers exiting the industry or moving to mixed operations.

Then the increasing use of synthetic fibres and the Milennium drought saw sheep numbers drop again from 120m in 1997 to 60m in 2010.

After a brief period of better seasonal conditions, another drought between 2017 to 2019 resulted in Australia's wool production dropping to its lowest level since 1923.

In 2019-20 only 290 million kilograms were sold, and the sheep flock dropped to 63.5 million, the smallest flock since 1904.

For a century, the wool industry gave Australia one of the highest living standards in the world.

On a national scale, Meat and Livestock Australia senior market information analyst Erin Lukey said the downward trend in the sheep and lamb flock since the start of the 1990's also coincided with an increase in area farmed for grain, such as wheat, barley and oats.

"Since this time, sheep stocking and area cropped have been moving in differing directions. A drive of this may been the upwards trend of farm cash income from cropping properties, and the increase in mixed farming practices,"

TOTAL CATTLE

Cattle were brought to Australia by the first English settlers in 1788.

Herds grew slowly in the early years of settlement, but cattle numbers expanded rapidly as farmers took advantage of Australia's vast open spaces, moving their herds to grazing areas farther inland, explaining Queensland's long-term dominance.

The MLA said the ABS data from 1924 to 2022 illustrates the burgeoning size of the national herd size, with the longitudinal data providing context to the peaks and troughs of the cattle industry.

"The significance of the industry boom during the 1970's is evident in the chart, as ABS herd figures reached upwards of 33 million head, which was followed by a return to regular trend lines," Ms Lukey said.

"The last 10 years has seen a shift in herd size, which has been the result of several intense drought periods, and possibly a shift to lower density stocking, however MLA projections, which go beyond 2022, estimate a return in herd size to around 2015 levels."

MEAT TO DAIRY CATTLE

From humble beginnings, Australian dairying has grown into the vibrant, innovative and successful national industry that we know today - one that contributes $13 billion to Australia's economy.

Two bulls and seven dairy cows arrived in 1788, after six years they'd become a herd of 61 and in 1891 there were about one million dairy cows in Australia.

Dairy Australia said a major catalyst for the explosion in numbers were old miners who rushed to Australia seeking their fortune looking for a gig after the gold rush collapsed. Many were subsequently offered government pastoral leases on the outskirts of inland towns and dairy farming spread.

By 1900 there was hardly an Australian township, even in the outback, that did not have its own fresh milk.

However, many small family farms have been replaced by commercial farms that feed entire communities in Australia and overseas. While some farms continue to be passed down through the family, business models have changed.

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