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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-22 Daily Xml
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AGRICULTURE AND DAIRY INDUSTRIES

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:44): I rise to talk about a website recently launched by the Minister for Agriculture regarding a window into South Australia's agricultural past. This is an online tool that showcases the development and progress of agriculture during South Australia's 175-year history.

I particularly want to pay tribute to Dr John Radcliffe, someone whom I have admired and respected for a great period of time for his dedication to agriculture in South Australia. He was Chair of the History of Agriculture Steering Committee. I also support all of the other volunteers and congratulate them on what was clearly a dedicated commitment from them. Most of them were actually retired departmental staff. Just on that point, those staff were very dedicated to agriculture, research and development, and extension services. Whilst this is a great online showcase of South Australia's agricultural past, unfortunately, it concerns me immensely when I see the brain drain and the loss of expertise in the current equivalent of the old department of agriculture, that is, PIRSA, Primary Industries Resources SA.

I also note some of the other people involved in putting this together. I particularly pay tribute to Steve Rice and Tony Morbey, who did quite a lot of work with respect to the South Australian dairy industry—my own family's industry. It is great to see them highlighting a lot of the history of the dairy industry within the overall picture of the 175-year history of South Australia's agriculture.

It is worth noting that, back in 1950, they did not actually have registered dairy farm numbers but, by 1975, they did, and there were 3,064 dairy farms in South Australia. Today, there are fewer than 300. There were 175,000 cows in South Australia in 1950 and, today, there are probably about 100,000. However, interestingly enough, over that period, milk production has gone from 406 million litres in 1950 to 631 million litres in 2009.

It is worth noting also that, in 1950, the average milk production per cow was 2,290 litres. Today, we are looking at 6,361. A lot of that work—and I highlight this as an example in my own industry—is as a result of the great efforts put in by those dedicated public servants that were working for the department of agriculture during those times, and it shows just what research and development and committed agricultural scientists and extension officers can do for food production.

On a negative, what we are seeing here now is what I would describe as a complete massacre of the budget of Primary Industries SA and a focus more on restructure than on growth and opportunity for agriculture on South Australia. I respect the minister, the Hon. Michael O'Brien, but I would call on his cabinet colleagues to actually take more notice of the portfolio for which the minister is responsible because, whilst all the focus seems to be on mining, it is agriculture that is currently assisting the state's growth, and it will be very much assisting that growth into the future.

In contrast to the 175-year agricultural history I have just talked about, congratulating those volunteers on putting the online program together, we now see a dairy plan that ceased last year and has not been started again. We see the closure of the Flaxley dairy research centre and we see a lack of focus on food and agricultural production. I hope that this 175-year history will be looked at by a lot of South Australians and that the government will be encouraged to focus again on this, the most important of food growth opportunities for South Australia in the future, namely agriculture.

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