Agriculture of Australia

The peculiarities of the agriculture of Australia is that it uses a huge number of land mass per person, and there is also an opportunity for extra-season year-round keeping of cattle for grazing. With its development, feudal vestiges were absent, advanced agricultural machinery and a relatively stable and quite capacious English market were present. Australia's agriculture is a group of world leaders in labor productivity, but the output of agricultural products per unit area is relatively small, since the land is used extensively.

This feature indicates the extent to which Australia's agriculture differs from that of Japan and European countries. However, this feature also attests to the enormous potential of the fifth continent. Even the most modest calculations show that only a simple increase in the cultivated land due to land not yet involved in agricultural production makes it possible to provide food for 60 million people. And all this without damage to the environment.

Agriculture in Australia exports 60% of all manufactured products, including 97% of wool, 80% of sugar, 75% of grain, 30-40% of beef and mutton. Previously, most of the products were exported to the UK, but recently the main exporters are Japan and other countries in East and South-East Asia. The strategy for the development of Australia's agriculture continues to be that its leading industry is sheep. The number of sheep in the country ranks first in the world and reached some 180 million in some years. Then it declined because of the decline in the world market for demand for wool and for many years is about 130 million heads.

Sheep are quite fastidious animals; neither a moderate climate with high humidity nor tropical heat is suitable for them. Most of the sheep (about 45%) graze in areas west of the zone where intensive sheep breeding is conducted. In these zones, from 350 to 500 mm of precipitation falls in a year. Here, on farms other than sheep, wheat is also grown and cattle are bred. The impact of climate on Australia's agriculture has led to the fact that zones of intensive sheep breeding are usually highly specialized, and there are small fattening farms on them. These are areas stretching along a narrow strip along the western slopes of the East Australian Mountains, as well as in the eastern part of the island of Tasmania and in the extreme south-western part of the continent. These areas account for about a third of the total herd of sheep.

Among the crops, Australia's agriculture is represented by grain farming. The main grain crop here is wheat. It accounts for 35-40% of the volume of crop production and 18-19% of the total volume of agricultural production. The average yield of wheat is small and amounts to only 13-14 quintals per hectare. And the climate has a strong impact on yields. However, Australia has for many years been the leader in world wheat exports, second only to the United States and Canada. Sometimes in the struggle for the third place in the world grain market it is ahead of France. The largest importers of grain are Japan and China.

In addition to wheat, important crops for export are barley, oats and sorghum. And barley in Australia is grown in the same areas as wheat. Here the crop rotation scheme is used: wheat-barley-steam. Corn in Australia, in contrast to European countries and the United States is grown little, because for her local soils and climatic conditions are not suitable.