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Section Twelve
Agriculture
12.1 Description of the sector
The Australian agriculture, forestry and fishing sector contributed
$16.7 billion in 1997–98, about three per cent of GDP. The sector
employed over 430 000 people in 1997–98, or 5.1 per cent of
the workforce. 27
Though e-commerce may not have been taken up with same enthusiasm
as other industry sectors, the characteristics of the sector such as a high
reliance on accurate information (stock prices, weather reports, etc.) and
large distances between producers and customers (both intermediate and
final) makes the sector conducive to the benefits of e-commerce.
Moreover, some commentators believe the take up of e-commerce by
rural industries is essential to the survival of rural communities
themselves. As one commentator stated recently,
Internet technology and e-commerce has the potential to make or break many
regional centres, so we have to ensure that we give regional businesses an
opportunity to become established with the technology.
Professor Paul Swatman, Deakin University, in ‘Warning on e-commerce’,
The Age, Monday 6 December 1999
This Section broadly discusses current initiatives and the potential uses of
e-commerce to reduce costs, improve productivity and open access to
markets for Australia’s agriculture sector.
Expected future usage and opportunities
So far, the limited use of e-commerce in agriculture is likely to be due to
either:
• the high costs of access to telecommunications or poor
telecommunications infrastructure (resulting in time consuming data
extraction or unreliable connections, etc.); or
• an unwillingness or fear to adopt to new technologies which break
with traditional methods of doing business .
Nevertheless, there is evidence that some Australian farmers are taking up
the Internet with a similar speed to businesses in cities. For example,
although these figures are sure to have been surpassed, a recent ABS
survey showed that in 1997–98, 11.6 per cent of farms used the Internet,
compared to 13.5 per cent of total Australian households. 28 Another
survey of farms by the Kondinin Group, a leading independent
agricultural research group and publishing organisation, recorded Internet
usage by some of its members in 1997 at 22 per cent, compared with a
level of only one per cent in 1995. 29
In a report by the Rural Industries Research and Development
Corporation, Buying and Selling Online, the authors apply Australian Tax
Office projections of future Internet usage to estimate that e-commerce by
farmers could reach $280 million in year 2000, and $5 billion in ten
27 ABS, Australian Economic Indicators, ABS 1350.0, June 1999.
28 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Use of Information technology and Telecommunications in Australia,
1998, quoted in Simpson, R., Farmers, Computers and the Internet, Farmwide, available at
www.farmwide.com.au/projects/farmersit.asp.
29 Figures for the Kondinin Study were quoted in Farmers, Computers and the Internet.
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