Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Agriculture - Statistics - Australia

Agriculture - Statistics - Australia

Introduction

Australia began to take shape 50 million years ago when it broke away from Gondwanaland and started drifting north. The centre of the continent rose out of a shallow sea and joined with a number of large islands, two of which were the Great Western Plateau and the Great Dividing Range. Today, the plateau is dry and spreads over half of the continent. Lake Eyre, the biggest of the salt lakes is, at 15 metres below sea level, the lowest point on the continent. Australia's only real mountain chain, the Great Dividing Range, runs parallel with the east coast of the continent for more than 3000 km. Mount Kosciusko, at 2228 m is the highest point. The last active volcano, in south-west Victoria, became dormant 6000 years ago. From north to south, Australia is 3100 km, and from east to west the distance is 3900 km. From its most northerly point, Australia is only 1000 km from the equator.

Australian Aborigines have lived on the Australian continent for at least 40,000 years, and it is believed they came to Australia from Indonesia. The indigenous Australians were among the first people in the world to manufacture polished edge-ground stone tools, cremate their dead, and paint replicas of themselves and the animals they hunted. They had their own rich and diverse culture and expressed themselves through art, dance, and ritual.

In the 17th century, Dutchmen touched upon the north coast, occasionally landed on the west coast, and mapped the south coast almost as far east as Spencer Gulf, but on a whole thought the land too inhospitable and poor to do much with.

In 1770 James Cook sailed along the east coast and claimed the land for George III. In 1788, Arthur Phillip and 1000 people, 750 of them convicts, arrived from England to set up a penal colony. Within 50 years most of the south-east and Tasmania had been settled and a colony had been established on the west coast. In the 1850s, with the discovery of gold, people of many nationalities came to make their fortune. This was the beginning of the melting pot of nationalities that now makes up Australia. After World War II, with assisted migration, more than 3 million people from many countries made Australia their new home.

On the 17th of September, 1900, Her Majesty Queen Victoria signed the proclamation declaring that on and after the first day of January 1901, the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia should be united in a federal Commonwealth, under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia. On the 1st of January 1901, the designation of Colonies - except in the case of the Northern Territory, to which the designation Territory applied - was changed to that of States. On the 1st of January 1911, the Northern Territory, which had previously governed by New South Wales and then South Australia was formally transferred to the Commonwealth and became the Northern Territory of Australia.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data has been analysed by the Bureau of Rural Sciences using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available from the Australian Spatial Data Directory

Select one of the following States to view information for that region:

The figures and text are reproduced with permission of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, © Commonwealth of Australia, 2000.

Statistics

Area of region (ha): 768,365,901.90

Area

Total Area of Holdings with Agricultural Activity (Value in 1996/1997 = 465,220,900 )

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Agroforestry

Apples

Berry Fruit

Cattle and Calves

Cereals excluding Rice

Citrus

Cotton

Grapes

Legumes

Non-Cereal Forage Crops

Nuts

Oilseeds

Other Livestock

Other Non-Cereal Crops

Other Vegetables

Pastures

Pears

Pigs

Plantation Fruit

Potatoes

Poultry

Rice

Sales of Livestock

Sheep and Lambs

Stone Fruit

Sugar Cane

Further information

Please Note: Not all the selected data items are available for every year or for every statistical region.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data have been analysed by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia to report them using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available through the Australian Spatial Data Directory.

The subset includes 436 data items for plant production and 40 data items for livestock which were commonly available in the AgStats database over the 15 year period and each year for respondents having an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) above the cut-off of $22,500.

The data have been concorded by bringing data collected using different geographies to a consistent geographic base, being Version 2.6 Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries (ABS, 1996) and using the non-agricultural lands mask from the National Land and Water Resources Audit's National Landuse Map (1996/1997).

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