17 November 1992 Complementary Marketing Urged By Australian Farming Chief

As New Zealand and Australian farmers and food producers face the tigers of Asia, the eagles of North America and the gnomes of Europe, there is a need for our two countries to think about the co-ordination of overseas marketing efforts, says the President of Australia's National Farmers Federation, Graham Blight.

Speaking at Lincoln University while on a visit to New Zealand Mr Blight said that recession and poverty had brought our countries together.

"We're both too small to take on the world individually, so it makes sense to look at pooling our efforts and coming up with some form of complementary marketing.

It was foolish to see New Zealand and Australia separately engaged in big marketing pushes for lamb in the United States one after the other, as had occurred in recent times, he said.

Mr Blight said that agriculture in Australia was hurting and in a fragile position.

"Cost increases in the last part of the 1980s, droughts, wool farmers facing collapse ... we have real problems. But there are also heaps of good things happening. There's a big future for developments like feedlotting and aquaculture and there's an emerging acceptance in business that we've got to develop an 'export culture'

"Exporting is the key to the future and I always urge people to put the servicing of their export markets first. If they do that then the domestic market will look after itself."

Mr Blight said he was impressed with the "we-can-make-it" feeling now evident in New Zealand. Australia needed to follow suit and get its own labour and taxation reforms on track, but "unfortunately we're moving at a snail's pace".

Agriculture contributes almost 30 percent of Australia's export income. The National Farmers Federation represents all major pastoral and cropping industries and has its headquarters in Canberra. Mr Blight, the federation's president since May 1991, is a New South Wales rice grower.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.