Rohan Nelson

Australian Government | ABARES · Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

This paper explains why policy coherence in Australia's food system is important. Many portfolios across Australia’s commonwealth and state governments play a role in food policy. Coordination mechanisms do exist, but they are patchy across the food system. Policy coherence is more than coordination. Policy coherence can support deeper coordination...

This paper explains why we need to think more broadly about innovation policy in Australia's agriculture and food sectors. There is a growing sense across industry, government and communities that a forward-looking discussion is needed on how agricultural innovation policy should be adapted to meet accumulating environmental, social sustainability...

This report provides evidence from Australia’s food system leaders that more holistic analysis and reporting is needed across Australia’s food system. Current systems for collecting, analysing and reporting on Australia’s food system have been designed to meet sector-specific economic goals. Reporting to meet economic goals remains vital, but now n...

A renewed global focus on monitoring and managing sustainability is creating pressure for Australia to join international efforts to report on the true cost of food. Australia has a window of opportunity to join and lead global efforts to estimate and manage the hidden costs of food. The hidden costs of food vary from country to country, but are si...

Taking a systems perspective of Australia's food system helps us understand and manage the sustainability and social challenges affecting the systems we use to produce and distribute food. Taking a systems perspective means understanding interactions between components of the food system from natural resources and agriculture, to food processing an...

This presentation explores the growing pressures to better integrate Australia's agricultural innovation system into the food and national innovation systems. Along the way it explains what innovation policy is, and why Australia's system of rural development corporations is world class. It also tackles the economics of innovation, and the case for...

This report reviews valuation methods with potential to include the non-market values associated with alien invasive species in benefit-cost analysis. It illustrates non-market impacts using the examples of the feral cat (Felix catus) and buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris). It then summarises the results of a survey of environmental managers that pro...

This paper describes the approach that has been used by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) to produce quarterly forecasts since 1948 for Australia’s most important agricultural commodity markets. The Australian Agricultural Forecasting System (AAFS) is comprised of a database, a group of loosely-coupl...

This paper describes the development of an online database which allows users to assess the accuracy of ABARES agricultural market forecasts for around 100 variables over nearly two decades. Accuracy underpins the broader quality dimensions of ABARES forecasts such as institutional alignment and value-in-use to end users. The accuracy of ABARES for...

A country’s agricultural sector confers a range of important benefits – including food supply, rural incomes and employment, and the ingredients for broader development of the economy. Agriculture also has a key role in influencing environmental outcomes. To promote these benefits and outcomes, many governments provide some form of support through...

The Australian Agricultural Forecasting System (AAFS) is the system that ABARES uses to produce forecasts for Australia’s agricultural markets. Although AAFS has been in development and use since 1945, this is the first time that it has been documented. Documentation supports peer review and provides end–users with confidence that ABARES forecasts...

Recovering demand driving world oilseed prices Oilseed prices are forecast to remain strong in 2021–22 due to global demand outstripping supply. Chinese feed demand is expected to continue recovering into 2021–22 as China's pig industry rebuilds following outbreaks of African swine fever (ASF). Feed demand is likely to be the main driver within th...

Climate, agronomy and world prices Prices for many of Australia's most important agricultural commodities are set in world markets. Accurately forecasting price requires an understanding of interactions between demand and supply in world markets. The climate and agronomic conditions faced by producers in importing countries influence the demand fo...

Record value of production for 2020–21, but exports falling The gross value of agricultural production is forecast to reach a record $66 billion in 2020–21, boosted by Australia's second-biggest winter crop on record. Significantly larger harvests in every Australian state are forecast to result in a 59% increase in the gross value of grains, oils...

Live sheep exports are an important part of the strategies that Western Australian sheep farms use to manage the risks associated with a short growing season in spring. This report explores the likely economic impacts of regulations designed to improve animal welfare and make the trade in live sheep more sustainable.

Outlook for 2020–21 improves with higher production In 2020–21 the gross value of agricultural production is forecast to rise by 7% to $65 billion, an upward revision from the September forecast. The main driver has been an upward revision of broadacre crop production due to continuation of favourable growing conditions over spring (see Australian...

The world soybean price is forecast to average US$346 per tonne in 2020–21, 6% below the 5-year average to 2019–20. World supply continues to increase, but demand is expected to be constrained well into 2021 by COVID-19 and the ongoing effects of African swine fever. The Australian canola price is forecast to fall by around 8% to $563 per tonne in...

While the COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to present challenges for Australia's agricultural sector, the recovery from drought dominates the outlook for 2020–21. Farm production is forecast to rebound in 2020–21, after one of the worst droughts in over 100 years (in terms of rainfall). This follows 3 consecutive years of contraction in outp...

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken Australia and the world by surprise. Coming after severe drought conditions in eastern Australia, concerns have been raised about Australian food security. These concerns are understandable, but misplaced. Despite temporary shortages of some food items in supermarkets caused by an unexpected surge in demand, Australi...

A challenge for ABARES medium-term forecasts of agricultural markets is that no reliable seasonal climate forecasts exist beyond the current growing season in southern Australia. To date, ABARES has addressed this problem by assuming a return to average seasonal conditions. This assumption poorly reflects the seasonal conditions actually faced by A...

This paper provides a synthesis of ABARES March 2020 medium term forecasts for Australia's agricultural commodities. Australia's agricultural sector has been remarkably resilient in 2019–20 despite prolonged drought and widespread bushfires. The value of farm production is expected to be $59 billion—helped by high commodity prices. This has been ac...

This paper reports on a project conducted by ABARES from May to July 2019 to explore the role that public sector forecasts of grain stocks can play in reducing market uncertainty in years of low production – usually caused by drought. The project extended the methodology used to produce the Australian Crop Report to validate ABARES forecasts of con...

Australian Governments have provided forecasting services for agricultural markets since 1945. Economic and policy arguments for providing these services have emphasised two related types of social good generated by public sector forecasting services. Economists have tended to emphasise the social good that forecasts provide through the efficient o...

Australian governments since 1945 have provided commodity market forecasts for Australia’s agricultural sector. Since then the operating and policy context of Australian agriculture has changed dramatically. Public investment fell from the 1990s onwards as technology made forecasting more efficient and as agriculture’s falling share of the economy...

High climate variability is one of the largest risk factors in agricultural production. In the semi-arid tropics and sub-tropics, this has been recognised for many decades. Yet, as the European summer of 2018 clearly demonstrates, the issue is now global and no longer restricted to certain climatic zones. Beyond Europe, other parts of the world are...

This report identifies opportunities and risks to the international competitiveness of the Australian wool industry. Opportunities to expand Australia's wool exports over the medium to long term will rely on maintaining our comparative advantage relative to competitors, such as New Zealand and South African wool exporters, and domestic producers in...

Australian fresh produce exports have increased significantly since 2010–11, reflecting strong global demand for high-quality fresh produce (fruit, nuts and vegetables) and Australia’s increasing competitiveness in global markets. This has improved awareness in the Australian horticultural industry of opportunities in international markets. Industr...

Price premiums are often used to justify the continuance of statutory marketing for rice in Australia - the last example of this kind of market regulation. This paper provides an analysis of price premiums for rice exported from Australia. It updates and extends previous analysis by Deloitte Access Economics (2012), which compared the unit value o...

The impacts of climate change are felt along the whole chain of actors that produce, handle, process and market agri-food products. This project aims to help agri-food companies to systematically identify, assess, prioritise and act against risks and to seize opportunities that extreme weather and a changing climate might offer to their chains usin...

Over recent decades significant areas of Australia’s publicly-owned natural forest have been reallocated from production forest to conservation forest. During the same period, a range of policies have supported the development of plantation forests. This case study analyses whether the intended conservation outcomes of Australian forest policy have...

The individuals, communities and organisations who manage our natural resources all have an innate capacity to adapt to change. Changes in climate, markets and technology have shaped the way we adapt the management of natural resources in urban, rural and coastal landscapes. Some of these changes are predictable and easy to manage. Others are expec...

The objective of this research was to improve our understanding of perceptions and use of plant growth regulators (PGRs) in cereal production in Australia and to develop relevant research priorities. PGRs applied at the appropriate rate reduce plant height when applied at early stem elongation in cereals. Information was collated from a telephone s...

Policy pathways for food security in West Africa (PPFS) was a project funded by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The project was funded through DFAT’s Africa Food Security Initiative (AFSI), led by CSIRO and managed in Africa by the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (...

This document presents the preliminary design of an integrated, multidisciplinary RD&E program that aims to provide the knowledge and innovation necessary to realise the benefits of Tasmania's expanding irrigation infrastructure.-This document reports the results of a workshop that brought together experts in irrigation and related fields from arou...

Irrigation is an ancient, proven and powerful climate adaptation, supporting productive agriculture in inhospitable and variable climates. In the past decade, while attention has focused on water reforms in the Murray Darling and expanding Australia's northern " irrigation frontiers " , an estimated billion dollars has been invested in expanding ir...

Adapting to climate change has become a pressing and urgent issue given the alarming rapidity with which climate changes is taking place. Agriculture is strongly conditioned by climatic factors, but subsistence agriculture is particularly vulnerable because smallholders do not have adequate financial resources to adapt to climate change. Agrobiodiv...

This paper explores heuristic methods with potential to place the analytical power of real options analysis into the hands of natural resource managers. The complexity of real options analysis has led to patchy or ephemeral adoption even by corporate managers familiar with the financial-market origins of valuation methods. Intuitively accessible me...

This paper explores why adaptation and mitigation have tended to be considered separately in agriculture-related R&D in Australia and around the world. It explores whether there are points of convergence indicating that the two issues can and should now be researched in a more integrated way. The paper does this by reviewing the institutional histo...

Effective adaptation of food systems to climate change is likely to become more important over time, requiring progress in both science and in adaptation (actual implementation) by decision-makers along the value chain. This chapter presents an exploratory analysis of the frontiers of science and of adaptation and by so doing it describes how scien...

The capacity of private landholders to manage natural resources is constrained and enabled by diverse, interconnected, and changing factors, which vary substantially across time and space. This context dependence of capacity makes it both a useful construct and a difficult one to evaluate, which makes targeting investment in capacity building acros...

This National Climate Change Adaptation Research Plan (NARP) identifies the research that is needed to enhance understanding of the social, economic and institutional dimensions of climate change adaptation in Australia. It outlines priority areas for research that can better inform decisions about adaptation to ensure effective, efficient and equi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussion across ASCD on: • the goals of adaptation policy; • the framing of adaptation policy as a public policy agenda; and • what this means for the role of government and DCCEE. Key propositions A re-examination of adaptation as a public policy agenda has led to the following series of propos...

Agriculture in Australia is highly vulnerable to climate change. Understanding the sector’s vulnerability is critical to developing immediate policy for the future of the agricultural industries and their communities. This review aims to identify research priorities (frameworks and models) for assessing vulnerability of the Australian agriculture s...

We describe the development of a low cost, repeatable self-assessment process enabling community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) groups to set priorities for building their capacity to adopt sustainable farming practices and adapt to global change. Regional measures of adaptive capacity derived from rural livelihoods analysis were populat...

In the first paper in this series [Nelson, R., Kokic, P., Crimp, S., Martin, P., Meinke, H., Howden, S.M. (2010, this issue)], we concluded that hazard/impact modelling needs to be integrated with holistic measures of adaptive capacity in order to provide policy-relevant insights into the multiple and emergent dimensions of vulnerability. In this p...

Vulnerability is a term frequently used to describe the potential threat to rural communities posed by climate variability and change. Despite growing use of the term, analytical measures of vulnerability that are useful for prioritising and evaluating policy responses are yet to evolve. Demand for research capable of prioritising adaptation respon...

The urgency for adaptation actions in response to climate risks is rapidly growing and climate change mitigation efforts alone are insufficient to avoid further, and often negative, impacts. Although most agricultural producers respond rapidly to changes in their external environment, science needs to play an important, partial role in instigating...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Natural resource management (NRM) is a human activity. Accordingly, to improve NRM practices and outcomes, it is necessary to have information which monitors the human impacts of these activities. This report outlines a consultative process used to undertake socio-economic monitoring, evaluating and reporting (MER) at the catchment level. It conc...

In this paper we show how ideas from a longstanding but little recognised literature on adaptive governance can be used to rethink the way science supports Australian drought policy. We compare and contrast alternative ways of using science to support policy in order to critique traditional commentary on Australian drought policy. We find that crit...

Adaptive capacity is increasingly recognised as a useful tool for policy advisors. By identifying the ability of rural communities to cope and adapt when faced with external pressures, agricultural and natural resource management policy can be developed to better target specific weaknesses or particularly vulnerable regions. This report examines t...

» While there is consensus in the global scientific community that some degree of climate change is inevitable, there remain large uncertainties surrounding the likely effects of climate change on the agriculture sector, especially at the regional level. Some models predict an increase in agricultural productivity in Australia, whereas other modell...

» Severe drought across southern and central Australia is projected to reduce farm incomes in 2006-07 to their lowest level in over thirty years. » Farm cash incomes for grain forms in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria are estimated to have fallen the most, and the dairy industry has also been particularly affected. » Most Australian fo...

Adaptive governance is a concept from institutional theory that deals with the evolution of institutions for the management of shared assets, particularly common pool resources and other forms of natural capital. This paper is the first of a set of four papers on adaptive governance, providing a brief overview of the history of the concept, the dis...

Australian drought policy is focussed on providing relief from the immediate effects of drought on farm incomes, while enhancing the longer term resilience of rural livelihoods. Despite the socioeconomic nature of these objectives, the information systems created to support the policy have focussed almost exclusively on biophysical measures of clim...

In this paper we report the development of a bioeconomic modelling system, AgFIRM, designed to help close a relevance gap between climate science and policy in Australia. We do this by making a simple econometric farm income model responsive to seasonal forecasts of crop and pasture growth for the coming season. The key quantitative innovation was...

Resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity are terms increasingly used in rural policy, but rarely defined or converted into practical measures that support policy design and implementation. Adaptive capacity measures based on rural livelihoods analysis have been developed and trialled using ABARE data for broadacre industries. This paper prov...

In this paper we report the development of a bioeconomic modelling system, AgFIRM, designed to help close a relevance gap between climate science and policy in Australia. We do this by making a simple econometric farm income model responsive to seasonal forecasts of crop and pasture growth for the coming season. The key quantitative innovation was...

Australian drought policy is focussed on providing relief from the immediate effects of drought on farm incomes, while enhancing the longer term resilience of rural livelihoods. Despite the socioeconomic nature of these objectives, the information systems created to support the policy have focussed almost exclusively on biophysical measures of clim...

The traditional reductionist approach to science has a tendency to create `islands of knowledge in a sea of ignorance¿, with a much stronger focus on analysis of scientific inputs rather than synthesis of socially relevant outcomes. This might be the principal reason why intended end users of climate information generally fail to embrace what the c...

This paper presents the summary findings of an international review of the Managing Climate (MCV) research and development program MCV’s conducted at the Climate Connect 2006 forum held in Adelaide on 29-30 March 2006. The first day of this national forum showcased the goals, activities and achievements of MCV for current and potential future partn...

Key clients for regional or national assessment capabilities are government and industry policymakers, who must deal with constantly changing policy questions. For instance, adaptation to climate change has relatively recently come onto the policy agenda, as has the interaction between adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation. 'Integrated assessmen...

Prioritising the collection of socioeconomic data to enhance natural resource management requires an understanding of its value in supporting policy and program design and implementation. In this project, the NLWRA commissioned economists in ABARE and social scientists in the BRS to work together to identify and synthesise existing conceptual frame...

A meeting of climate risk communication experts was held in Adelaide on 18 March 2005 to identify research and development priorities for better supporting farmers and natural resource managers to manage climate risk. The priorities emerging from the discussions included: • better understanding of the demand for climate risk management, to guide t...

Formal agreement to develop a Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) was reached by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in 1991, building on the awareness that an ocean observing system similar to the world weather watch system was required to monitor and predict climate and changes in sea state and the marine environment. Since that tim...

• Assuming average seasonal conditions will prevail in 2004-05,farm production is forecast to increase by 1 per cent in 2004-05, following an estimated 17 per cent rise in 2003-04. • While total crop production is forecast to increase by 2 per cent in 2004-05, the rebuilding of herd and flocks from the 2002-03 drought is expected to lead to a decli...

• Growers of high quality durum wheat in Australia have received prices over A$60 a tonne higher than for Australian premium white wheat in recent years. However, durum is a riskier crop for growers than milling wheat varieties, being more susceptible to drought and requiring lengthier rotations between crops. • Australian production of durum wheat...

• Australia's total crop area increased in 2003-04, as producers able to take advantage of improved seasonal conditions expanded their crop areas to improve farm income following the drought of 2002-03. • Over the medium term, Australian crop areas are projected to remain slightly below the historical peaks that occurred between 1999-2000 and 2001-...

In Australia, like in many other parts of the world, climate is one of the biggest risk factors impacting on agricultural systems performance and management. Climate variability (CV) and climate change (CC) contribute to the vulnerability of individuals, businesses, communities, regions and nations. Extreme climate events such as severe droughts, f...

This review provides an initial stocktake of socioeconomic indicators currently used to design, monitor and evaluate Australian Government natural resource management programs such as the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, and the Natural Heritage Trust. The principles of diffusion research are used to identify the relevance of di...

Farmers are confronted with risks from a number of sources. These include climate variability, commodity price fluctuations, and financial and other operational risks. The risks to farmers associated with climate variability are often starkly illustrated by the media as was the case during the severe drought that affected eastern Australia in 2002-...

The incomes of Australian crop farmers are highly sensitive to climate variability. Using data provided each year by Australian farmers, ABARE provides analysis and forecasts of farm incomes to support the implementation of drought policy, including exceptional circumstances determinations. Recent modelling advances have allowed ABARE to measure th...

The Australian Government has developed a range of programs to encourage sustainable agriculture and protect Australia’s natural resources. A number of programs, such as the National Landcare Program and those funded under the Natural Heritage Trust, provide support for individuals and community groups to move toward sustainable land management. I...

• The purpose in this paper is to trace the economic value of Australian hardwood chip exports to paper markets in Japan, and to show how the value of woodchips is influenced by the structure of Japanese paper markets. • In addition, medium term projections are provided for demand, supply and price of hardwood chips in the Pacific Rim.

Seasonal climate forecasting offers potential for improving management of crop production risks in the cropping systems of NE Australia. But how is this capability best connected to management practice? Over the past decade, we have pursued participative systems approaches involving simulation-aided discussion with advisers and decision-makers. Thi...

The current WTO agricultural negotiations provide an opportunity to reduce the distortions associated with global agricultural and trade policies. As in the Uruguay Round, it is likely that grains will be a key focus of the negotiations. Despite the achievements of the Uruguay Round, global support for grains remains at extremely high levels by hi...