3. Recent land Use Changes (1983-1997)
Summary
Land use has changed during the 1982-83 to 1996-97 timeframe to different extents
across the area of intensive agricultural land uses. Least change was noted in areas
furthest inland where total rainfall and its reliability were lowest. Greatest change was
noted in areas that had access to significant irrigation or close to major centres of
population.
A large number of factors have likely influenced those changes. Some of note include
deregulation of the financial system and of commodity marketing boards, two widespread
droughts, major shifts in international markets, shifts in public perceptions and attitudes,
and technology innovations to productivity. Shifts in the price of products and continuing
declines in terms of trade have often been the most immediate evidence of the influence of
these factors.
Continuing trends included slight declines in the total area of agricultural land, with farm
sizes increasing on average, with a decrease particularly noticed in the smallest farms
(less than 100 hectares). The area irrigated has increased, particularly in New South Wales
and Queensland.
Diversity, of agricultural plant species and farm activities, was highest in the grain
cropping belt with individual farm diversity generally reflected at the shire level. Most of
the southern cropping belt increased diversity by at least 5 percent by increasing
proportion of non-cereal grain crops.
The high proportion of the total area of agricultural holdings that is not designated in the
Agricultural Census - the 'residual' - means that many natural resource ecosystems have
very sparse information about land use for agriculture. This residual area needs to be
given more attention to determine actual land use and potential for diversification more
accurately.
Although there has been considerable changes in land use in some parts of Australia, there
is little to indicate the effect of land degradation issues.
The previous section described the major challenges and responses in agricultural history.
What have been the important changes during the last 20 years? Has the pioneering
development phase finished?
The best sources of information to provide a profile of change over the last 20 years was
the annual Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Agricultural Census (AgStats) and the
Australian Agricultural and Grazing Industry Survey (AAGIS) undertaken by the Australian
Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).
The AgStats data was available in electronic form from 1982-83 until 1996-97. It provides
details on area and production collected from individual agricultural holdings but
aggregated to Statistical Local Areas (SLA - usually the same as local government areas
such as shires) and larger groups such as Statistical Division, States and national. Here we
use the convention of the ABS to use the year of recording as nominated year, ie 1982-83
year was recorded at March 31 1983 and is referred to as 1983. As the Audit commenced
in 1997 the last census year (1996-97) is used as the base year. (Since 1997 ABS have
conducted surveys rather than census and only report results at Statistical Division Level.)
During the time frame of the AgStats available there have been changes to the questions
asked, in the value of goods due to inflation and in the boundaries of Statistical Local
Areas (SLAs). In response to these changes a minimum data set of 475 items that was
common to the majority of years was selected, adjusted to 1996-97 dollar values with an
cutoff for inclusion of farm Estimated Value of Agricultural Operation (EVAO) of $22,500.
This data set was further concorded to account for changes in boundaries of the SLAs.
Further details are given in the Methods in Appendix 2.
A limitation in using the SLA unit for showing land use change is that their boundaries tend
to follow convenient features such as rivers and roads rather than catchments and
landscapes. However, considered as part of a mosaic with adjoining SLAs, they provide a
broad contextual picture. Furthermore they cover an important jurisdiction influencing land
use, namely local government.
The seasonal weather varied greatly during the 15 years under study. As an example,
Figure 1 in Appendix 1 shows the total rainfall experienced across Australia for a major
growing season (June to October inclusive) for each of the years as a percentile of that
recorded from 1900. The severe droughts of 1982 (ABS year 1982-83) and 1994 (ABS
year 1994-95) over most of the areas of intensive agriculture show out strongly. In 1996
(ABS year 1996-97 - the base year for the Audit) rainfall appears to be mostly above
average. By contrast the remaining years were quite variable, with some regions
experiencing above average whilst at the same time others experienced very dry
conditions. Other combinations of historical rainfall in comparison to the long term record
can be viewed from the web-sites of the Bureau of Meteorology (www.bom.gov.au) or the
Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines
(www.nrm.qld.gov.au/longpdk/index.html).
3.1 Pattern of Land Use in Australia (1996-97)
The use of agricultural land as presented in ABS AgStats is summarised in Table 3-1. The
largest land area for agricultural use is in Queensland followed by Western Australia.
Agroforestry, which consists of seedlings and seeds sown on agricultural holdings, was
very small in comparison to other land uses. Sown pastures are usually composed of
fertilised, introduced pasture species for the intent of more intensively grazing dairy cattle,
beef cattle and sheep and appears most prominently in New South Wales and Western
Australia. Native or naturalised pastures are not sown, although likely to be modified in
composition by sustained grazing, rarely fertilised, and are extensively grazed. Crop areas
are highly modified to either annual or perennial species, usually fertilised and more
intensively managed for productivity. The residual area - that is the area not identified as
having a use in the Census - is likely to be low productivity woodlands or tussock
grasslands and to be used for extensive grazing. It represents by far the largest proportion
of agricultural land in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western
Australia; only in Victoria and Tasmania does other uses such as sown pastures approach
the same level as the residual. Included in uses for sown pastures and crops is irrigation,
however, in aggregate this amounts to a small fraction of the total area of each State.
Table 3-1. Area (million hectares) of agricultural land and its major uses for each
State in 1996-97. Source ABS AgStats
New
South Victoria Queensland
Wales
South
Australia
Western
Tasmania
Australia
Total
agricultural
area
60.901
12.745
149.560
56.219
112.482
1.920
Agroforestry
0.022
0.018
0.005
0.011
0.040
0.001
Sown pastures
4.436
3.945
3.219
2.214
4.542
0.639
Native or
naturalised
pasture
10.314
0.158
28.770
7.996
12.778
0.379
Crops
5.589
2.552
2.685
3.278
6.950
0.073
Residual area
40.540
4.654
114.882
42.720
88.171
0.834
Irrigation
0.907
0.546
0.404
0.115
0.030
0.051
A comprehensive map of land use, derived from the AgStats 1996-97, was produced by
another Audit project. This map is summarised in Figure 3-1 to illustrate some of the main
features of the more detailed full map available at http://environment.gov.au/atlas. The
land uses in constructing this map from ABS AgStats 1996-97 are based on the Australian
Land Use and Management Classification (available at
http://www.daff.gov.au/content/output.cfm?ObjectID=D2C48F86-BA1A-11A1A2200060B0A05976. The products from this present project are designed to complement
and to elaborate on that work. For instance, the map was used to concord previous
AgStats census years to the common 1996 SLA boundaries.
Within the crop category a wide variety of crop types are grown around Australia (Table 32). The most widely grown are the broadacre crops particularly cereals of which the largest
single crop is wheat. Oilseeds, such as canola, and pulses, such as lupins and field peas,
have been increasing in popularity and adding diversity to cropping systems.
Table 3-2 Area (thousands of hectares) of major crops types grown in Australia
during 1996-97. Source ABS AgStats.
New
South Victoria Queensland
Wales
Broadacre
crops
South
Australia
Western
Tasmania
Australia
5079
2453
2097
320
6921
41
Hay
271
490
62
202
202
54
Cereals for
grain
4676
1826
1676
2781
5519
27
Wheat
3192
962
980
1535
4264
2
Oilseeds
247
115
112
42
107
Pulses
138
429
61
257
1172
424
12
5059
9
4
Rice
151
0.8
Sugar cane
18
371
Cotton
249
129
Potatoes
6
11
47
9
3
7
85
86
83
73
24
24
Vegetables
21
30
35
13
11
19
Fruit
60
50
44
57
11
4
Grapes
20
25
1
38
4
Plantation
fruit
4
0.8
13
0.1
0.6
Orchard trees
35
24
29
18
6
Semiintensive
crops
Horticultural
crops
7
1
Figure 3-1 Summary map of land use patterns in Australia during 1996-97.
(source National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2001 - Land Use Map of
3
Australia, version 2 1:1 million scale)
3.2 Farm size
The total number of agricultural holdings decreased from 178,025 in 1982 to 145,086 in
1997. This appears to have come about by a reduction in the number of smaller area
farms (particularly those less than 1,000 hectares) as shown in Figure 3-2. In relative
terms the greatest reduction occurred in those farms less than 100 hectares in area.
Figure 3-2 The distribution of number of farms by farm size in 1982 and 1997.
(source ABS)
Figure 3-3 Changes in the distribution of farm sizes in different land uses
between 1982 and 1997. (source ABS)
The reduced number of farms appears to have occurred in all of the major groups of land
use with area of operations less than 100 hectares (Figure 3-3). Sheep and beef cattle
producing farms with area between 100 and 5,000 hectares have increased in the time.
Grain cropping was another group that showed a substantial increase in numbers, in this
case in the categories between 2,500 hectares and 25,000 hectares.
3.3 Changes in land use between 1982-83 and 1996-97.
Data from the annual Agricultural Census (AgStats) provides information on many different
agricultural products. To provide some meaningful indications of land use over the 20
years and across the areas of intensive agriculture it was necessary to aggregate the data
in different ways. The Audit has identified 21 such groups that represent intensifications of
land use similar to that used by Australian Land Use and Management Classification.
For easier discussion this project has further reduced that to 5 larger categories that have
similar levels of intensity, natural resource management issues and sometimes location.
They are: extensive grazing; sown pastures; broadacre crops; semi-intensive crops; and
horticulture.
The changes, shown at the State level over the timeframe, are aggregates of many
individual changes that occur at local levels. To be concise, we present maps that show
changes as the difference between the beginning and the end of the period. For the
beginning we used averages of the 3 years 1983,1984 and 1985 and for the end 1994,
1996 and 1997. The year 1995 was omitted because of an incomplete number of
categories collected that year, which was unfortunate because drought effects would have
occurred in both sets ie 1982-83 and 1994-95. The maps show the percentage changes in
the proportion of the total agricultural land reported for each year.
More detailed changes will be illustrated through the case studies, which are presented in
Chapter 5. Within the SLAs there are regions with different rates and direction of change,
that reflect different resource conditions, soil, aspect and access to water.
Extensive grazing land use
The area of extensive grazing land was estimated by the sum of native (and naturalised)
pasture and the ‘residual’ (total agricultural area less all nominated land use areas) as
discussed in section 3.1 above. The areas of this category show up in the Land Use Map
(figure 3-1) as category 2.1 ‘livestock grazing’. The changes in the area that can be
designated as extensive grazing in the areas of intensive agriculture of the states are
shown in Figure 3-4. This indicates gradual declines in this extensive grazing area of the
areas of intensive agriculture in South Australia and Victoria, possibly in Queensland and
considerable variation within New South Wales over this time. However, the method of
defining this land use suggests a cautious interpretation of this figure. Some of the
variations in the chart are due to changes in the categories collected in the different
census years. For instance reduced categories of land uses collected for most states in
1995, for Victoria in 1991 and for Western Australia in 1992.
Figure 3-4 Changes in the area of extensive grazing lands (native pasture plus
residual) for the areas of intensive land use of each State during 1983 to 1997.
(Source ABS.)
The map of changes in Figure 3-5 indicates that in much of the areas of intensive
agriculture there have been only small changes (of 5% or less). Larger increases have
occurred in the Great Southern and Swan Coastal Plain of Western Australia, in eastern
parts of the Eyre peninsular, the Lower Southeast and the Murray-Mallee of South
Australia, the Western Districts of Victoria and the western Darling Downs of Queensland.
Larger decreases have occurred in the Mallee of Victoria, the Riverina, Southern
Tablelands, Northern Tablelands and South Coast of New South Wales and the Burnett of
Queensland.
Figure 3-5 Changes in the area of extensive grazing within the areas of intensive
land use in Australia, comparing the 3 years 1983-85 with the 3 years 1994, 1996
and 1997. (source ABS)
Table of Contents for the Landuse Change, Productivity & Diversification report
Next Section
Previous Section
Contact the Audit Offi Copyright and Disclaimer Noti Contact our Webmast
ce
ce
er
© 2001 Commonwealth of Australia
Australian Natural Resources Atlas
V2.0