How weak competition forces up food prices along the supply chain

By Millie Muroi, Economics Writer

The first most of us see of our groceries is the end product – after all the planting, growing, shipping and packaging has happened. So when we’re hit with a big bill at the checkout, it’s easy to blame supermarkets for the expensive beef, carrot or turnip that ends up on our forks.

We know Coles and Woolies have received raps on their knuckles for their behaviour recently, including alleged false discounts to lure in customers. But it’s not just customers or the competition watchdog dishing out their disdain. And it’s far from just the supermarkets that have pointed questions to answer.

Dr Andrew Leigh, former economics professor and now assistant minister for competition and treasury, has had a deep-dive into the topic. It turns out the list of possible culprits when it comes to the costly lack of competition is longer than just the supermarkets – and it’s our farmers bearing the brunt of it.

Basically, while our household budgets are getting pushed by pricier produce, farmers are getting squeezed. They’re not just facing higher prices when it comes to key ingredients such as fertiliser and machinery, but also higher costs and unfair terms once their produce is ready to be processed, shipped off and sold.

How do we know this? There are a few key signs.

Concentration is one. “Industries with plenty of competitors tend to deliver better prices, more choices and stronger productivity growth,” Leigh said in a speech this week.

The fewer players there are in a market, the less competitive it tends to be. Less competition usually means lower wages, less choice for consumers and less innovation, with dominant businesses able to charge higher prices than they might otherwise be able to, since they don’t have to worry so much about being undercut or fighting to win over customers with bargains.

Analysis by economic research institute e61 last year found all Australian industries were more concentrated than those in the US, especially in mining, finance and utilities, in which the top four firms have more than 60 per cent market share.

Generally, we see a market as “concentrated” if the biggest four firms control one-third or more of it. In 2016, Leigh and his colleague Adam Triggs found more than half of industries in the Australian economy were concentrated markets. Since then, concentration in Australia has become worse.

Farming, though, is surprisingly competitive – at least for most commodities. So why are we still seeing higher prices at the check-out?

Part of it is thanks to supply chain issues, especially during the pandemic, which meant we couldn’t get as many materials and produce from overseas, reducing supply and driving up prices. Then there’s always the temperamental weather, which can dramatically cut harvests.

But it’s a growing domestic issue which is causing headaches for farmers.

Before anything even springs out of the ground or fattens up in a paddock, farmers are dealt a tricky hand. The largest four fertiliser companies, for example, control nearly two-thirds of the market and the top four hardware suppliers control roughly half of the market, according to Leigh’s analysis of data from IBIS World.

From high-tech harvesters to tractors and seeding equipment, machinery is a big cost paid by farmers. That means when there’s a lack of options and farmers aren’t able to shop around as much, their hip-pockets – and ours – are worse off.

If you think that lack of choice is bad, Leigh says it’s even worse when farmers go to repair and service their equipment.

Farming machinery makers have a lot of power – even more than carmakers – thanks to warranties forcing farmers to go to a specific dealer for servicing, and tech restrictions holding farmers back from accessing the parts, manuals and diagnostic software they need to make repairs themselves.

Then there are seeds. From these little things, big costs can grow. One paper from the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service in 2023 found the seed sector had become more concentrated. Between 1990 and 2020, the average seed price soared 270 per cent, and 463 per cent for genetically modified types.

The huge price increase partly accounts for the fact seeds have become better – for example, GMO varieties which have made farming more productive. But as Leigh points out, “there are not many other industries where the price of a key input has grown five-fold in 30 years.”

But that’s not all. Once the cattle has been raised or the blueberries grown, farmers have little choice or bargaining power when it comes to processing, transporting and selling produce.

When it comes to slaughtering cattle, the top five Australian processors accounted for about 57 per cent of the market in 2017, meaning cattle farmers had little choice in the prices and options they accepted. For fruit and vegetable processing, the biggest four companies hold about one-third of the market.

When the produce is ready to be sent out, farmers have even less choice. Two companies – ANL and Maersk – account for 85 per cent of the shipping freight industry in Australia, and four companies control 64 per cent of the market if farmers want to send things via rail.

Farmers, especially those who produce at a smaller scale, often become the “meat in a market concentration sandwich”. 

Farmers, especially those who produce at a smaller scale, often become the “meat in a market concentration sandwich”. Credit:Louise Kennerley

As Leigh points out, the risk of spoilage further limits viable options available to farmers.

Then there’s the supermarket sector, where Coles and Woolies control about two-thirds of the market – a higher share than every OECD country except New Zealand and Norway.

Concentration at all these points means farmers are at greater risk of facing power imbalances, which show up in things such as unfair contracts, where terms are obviously lopsided. Bigger players in these concentrated industries can generally muscle in with terms which are worse for farmers, such as restricting them from raising issues or selling things at unfairly cheap prices.

All of this not only puts pressure on farmers, but can reduce their ability and incentive to invest in improving their product and the way they do things.

As Leigh puts it, farmers, especially those who produce at a smaller scale, often become the “meat in a market concentration sandwich”.

There’s no easy fix in all this, but preventing too many mergers, where companies combine and gobble each other up to become even bigger, is key to promoting competition.

Of course, bigger companies are not always worse. Their scale can allow them to do things more cheaply. But too little competition can lead to pumped-up prices which flow all the way through from more expensive seeds and fertiliser to the prices charged by supermarkets.

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Climatic adjustment limits our farmers' Asia boom

The first thing to realise about the rise of Asia is that our farmers are about to join our miners in the winners' circle. The second is that climate change and other environmental problems may greatly limit our farmers' ability to exploit this opportunity. The third is that what we see as a looming bonanza, the rest of the world sees as a global disaster.

According to the government's white paper on the Asian century (which, be warned, shares economists' heroic assumption that there are no physical limits to consumption of the world's natural resources), continuing population growth and rising living standards in Asia will cause global food production to grow 35 per cent by 2025, and 70 per cent by 2050.

Rising affluence is expected to change the nature of Asia's food consumption, with greater demand for higher quality produce and protein-rich foods such as meat and dairy products. This will also increase the requirement for animal feed, such as grains. There'll also be demand for a wider range of processed foods and convenience foods, and for beverages, including wine.

But environmental and other problems will prevent the Asians from producing much of the extra food they'll be demanding. Unlike in the past, Asia is likely to become a major importer of food. And, of course, any delay in increasing food production to meet the increasing demand will raise the prices being charged.

You little beauty. "Australia's diverse climate systems and quality of agricultural practices position us well to service strong demand for high-quality food in Asia," the white paper says. After all, Australia is one of the world's top four exporters of wheat, beef, dairy products, sheep, meat and wool.

"As a result, agriculture's share of the Australian economy is expected to rise over the decade to 2025," we're told, something that hasn't happened for many, many decades.

So, a new age of growth and prosperity for Aussie farmers? Don't be too sure. The environmental constraints the white paper expects to bedevil Asian farmers will also limit our farmers' ability to cash in on Asia's growing affluence.

Also published last week was a determinedly positive but franker assessment of our agricultural prospects, Farming Smarter, Not Harder, from the Centre for Policy Development.

It says "winners of the food boom will be countries with less fossil fuel-intensive agriculture, more reliable production and access to healthy land and soils". That's not a good description of us.

The first question is climate change - the problem so many Australians have been persuaded isn't one. Although other countries - including China - are doing more to combat climate change than the punters have been led to believe, we don't yet know how successful global efforts to limit its extent will be.

What we do know is we're already seeing the adverse effects - hurricane Sandy, for instance - and can expect to see a lot more, even if global co-operation is ultimately successful in drawing a line. At present we're focused on efforts to prevent further change; before long we'll need to focus on how we adapt to the change that's unavoidable.

This non-government report says climate change is projected to hit agricultural production harder in the developing world than the developed world - "with the exception of Australia".

"Rainfall is forecast to increase in the tropics and higher latitudes, and decrease in the semi-arid to arid mid-latitudes, as well as the interior of large continents," the report says. "Droughts and floods are expected to become more severe and frequent. More intense rainfall is expected with longer dry periods between extremely wet seasons. The intensity of tropical cyclones is expected to increase."

So, without action to reduce or manage climate risks, Australia's rural production could decline by 13 per cent to 19 per cent by 2050, it says.

And it's not just climate change. "One of the biggest challenges for Australian agriculture is that our soils are low in nutrients and are particularly vulnerable to degradation ... every year we continue to lose soil faster than it can be replaced."

The productivity of broadacre farming used to grow by 2.2 per cent a year; since the early 1990s it's averaged just 0.4 per cent. Australian farmers use a lot of fertilisers and fuel, the cost of which is also likely to rise strongly. And that's not to mention problems with water.

Meanwhile, those who worry about how the world's poor will feed themselves - or about the political instability we know sharp rises in food prices can cause - don't share our hand-rubbing glee at the prospect of Asia's greatly increased demand for food.

Almost as bad as high food prices are highly volatile prices. The three world price spikes in the past five years each coincided with droughts and floods in major food supply regions. Extreme weather events are likely to become even more frequent. (The growing diversion of grain to produce biofuels is another contributor to higher food prices.)

After the food price spike in 2008, 80 million people were pushed into hunger. But the growing concern with "food security" is often a euphemism for resort to beggar-thy-neighbour policies: countries that could export their food surplus to other, more needy countries decide to hang on to it, just in case.

The Asians' attempts to continue their (perfectly understandable) pursuit of Western standards of living are likely to be a lot more problem-strewn than the authors of the white paper are willing to acknowledge.

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White paper shows way to Asian century

When governments make grand policy unveilings, as Julia Gillard has with her white paper on the Asian century, it’s terribly tempting for people in jobs like mine to sit back and criticise. After all, unlike you and me governments tend to be less than perfect.

If you’re disposed to criticise, there’s never a shortage of material - particularly if you’re prepared to offer mutually inconsistent criticisms, or shift your angle of attack from one week to the next.

Sometimes the media are so eager to fan controversy they hardly pause to summarise the content of a 300-page document before launching into their own and other people’s criticisms. And no matter how weighty the subject matter, you can bet it’ll be done and dusted within a week.

I prefer to be a little more considered, even more co-operative with our elected leaders (and nor do I regard a diet of unrelieved negativity as a smart way to sell news). So, though I have some major criticisms of my own, I’ll leave them for another day.

Throughout the life of the Rudd-Gillard government people have criticised its failure to articulate an ‘overarching narrative’ - an encompassing story of what Labor stands for and what it’s on about. A vision of the future; something that gives meaning and direction to our national life.

Well, it may have taken five years, but here’s Gillard’s best shot. It’s not, as some have imagined, the report of another committee headed by Dr Ken Henry; it’s a white paper, a firm statement of government policy intention.

So what do the critics say? It’s just more talk. Where are the new decisions? When will we be getting them? What about my pet project?

You may say this is a narrative with an arch that stretches from the economic to the commercial via the financial (and I may agree), but that makes it an accurate depiction of the breadth of this government’s priorities.

Some say suspiciously that the white paper includes a mention of just about every project Labor is working on: the carbon price, the national broadband network, education reform etc. Sure. That’s what overarching narratives do.

It’s a vision of increasing our material prosperity by ensuring we fully exploit the opportunities presented by our proximity to Asia, which is transforming itself from poor to rich within the short space of our lifetimes.

Within that limited purview, it’s on the right track. It’s hard to imagine our equally materialist opposition disagreeing - though you can be sure it will find plenty to criticise.

The white paper says that, to succeed in this objective, Australians need to act in five key areas. First, we need to build on our own economic strengths. In particular, we’ll need ‘ongoing reform and investment’ across ‘the five pillars of productivity - skills and education, innovation, infrastructure, tax reform and regulatory reform’.

Second, we must do more to develop the necessary capabilities. ‘Our greatest responsibility is to invest in our people through skills and education to drive Australia’s productivity performance and ensure that all Australians can participate and contribute.’

Third, we need businesses that are highly innovative and competitive. ‘Australian firms need new business models and new mindsets to operate and connect with Asian markets.’

Fourth, we need stable defence security within the region. And finally, we need to strengthen our relationships across the region at every level. ‘These links are social and cultural as much as they are political and economic.’

It’s easy to say there’s nothing new in the white paper. We already knew about the rise of Asia. And prime ministers have been banging on about our need to get closer to Asia since Malcolm Fraser.

It’s all true. But it misses the point. The experts may be full bottle, but public doesn’t know as much about Asia as it should; this is an attempt to lift our ‘Asia literacy’ as well as getting more study of Asia and its languages into curriculums.

And governments bang on about a lot of things; this is a decision to give our relations with Asia top priority. This is a long-term project and it didn’t start yesterday. It doesn’t hurt to have a grand renewal of our commitment. It maybe old to us oldies, but to our kids it’s new and sparkling.

The white paper seeks to dispel a lot of misperceptions among Australians. For one thing, it’s not just about China. It’s also about India, South Korea and developing Asia in general - and hugely populous Indonesia in particular.

For another, it’s not just about mining. Though the mining boom has further to run, it’s also about selling a lot more food and fibre to Asia at much higher prices, and supplying Asia’s burgeoning middle class with education, tourism, sophisticated niche manufactures and many services.

But deepening our economic (and, inevitably, social and cultural) relations with Asia is two-way street. Exporting more to Asia will mean importing more from it (giving the lie to criticism this is about exploiting the poor people to our north)
And increasing our business investment in Asia will mean accepting more Asian investment in our businesses.

And, as we’ve already seen with the mining boom, maximising our benefit from the rise of Asia will inevitably mean accepting change and upheaval in our economy. The more we try to preserve the world as it was, the more we pass up the opportunities Asia presents.

The other bad news is that full benefit from Asia isn’t something this government or any other can deliver us on a plate. It needs to be a national effort, with most of the heavy lifting done by business, schools, universities, unions and individuals.

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The Asia boom is just getting going

Have you noticed how joyfully the media trumpet the bad news they seek out so assiduously? The latest is that the resources boom is finally busting. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

It's true the prices we're getting for our exports of coal and iron ore, having lifted the terms on which we trade with the rest of the world to their most advantageous level in 200 years in the September quarter of last year, have been falling ever since and have further to go.

It's true China's economy has slowed markedly in recent times and this, combined with the fall in export prices, has prompted some of our smaller mining companies to shelve their plans for new mines.

And last week the Reserve Bank warned the peak in mining investment spending was likely to occur next year and reach a lower level than earlier expected. Fearing a slowdown in the economy, it cut the official interest rate another notch.

So, is this the dumper many people have feared? Is the much ballyhooed resources boom about to disappear into the history books?

Don't be misled. As the secretary to the Treasury, Dr Martin Parkinson, argued last week, it was always misleading to think the resources boom, being just another boom, would soon bust, leaving us in the lurch with nothing to show but holes in the ground.

For a start, it's a bit previous to be kissing the boom goodbye. Spending on the building of new mines and liquefied gas plants is expected to keep growing strongly for another year before it starts to fall back. Even then it will stay way above what we normally see for several more years.

Coal and iron ore prices may be falling, but don't imagine they'll return to anything like what they were. At their best, our terms of trade - the prices we get for our exports relative to the prices we pay for our imports - were almost 80 per cent better than their average throughout the 20th century.

The econocrats now expect that, by 2019, they will have collapsed to a mere 50 per cent above that 100-year average. Nothing to show for it? This means we'll remain wealthier than we were (our exports will continue buying far more on world markets than they used to).

Taken by itself, this lasting improvement in our terms of trade suggests another thing we'll have to show is a dollar that stays well above the US70? or so it averaged in the decades following its float. That means a dollar that remains uncomfortably high for our manufacturers and tourism operators.

All this ignores a further benefit from the resources boom which, though it's already started, is largely still to come: vastly increased quantities of coal, iron ore and natural gas for export. This, too, adds to our wealth.

Before the start of this supposed here-today-gone-tomorrow "boom" - which began almost a decade ago - mining accounted for less than 5 per cent of the nation's total production of goods and services. Its share is now well on the way to 10 or 12 per cent.

At the same time, manufacturing's share will continue its decline from about 15 per cent in 1990 to 12 per cent at the start of the boom and 8 per cent today to maybe 6 per cent by the end of this decade. (Much of this decline, however, is explained by the faster growth of the services sector as we, like the rest of the rich world, move to a knowledge-based economy.)

So yet another lasting effect of this fly-by-night boom is a marked and lasting change in the structure of our economy. To the consternation of some, the non-services part of our economy is becoming less secondary and more primary.

The underlying reason for this shift is the same reason it was always mistaken to imagine this is a transitory commodity price boom like all those we've seen before: the economic emergence of the developing world, led by Asia.

With the industrialisation of China and India, the globe's centre of economic gravity is shifting from the North Atlantic to the Indian and Pacific oceans. It's happening so fast it's visible to the naked eye. All the economic troubles of the Europeans and Americans are speeding it up, not slowing it down.

Remember how the world's richest 20 per cent owned 80 per cent of the wealth? Forget it. The poor countries already account for half the world's annual production of goods and services. Over the next five years, they'll account for three-quarters of the growth in world production.

So we're witnessing a tremendous change in the structure of the world economy, something so big economic historians will still be talking about it in 200 years' time. Is it surprising the effects on our economy are so big and so lasting?

We're greatly affected because of our proximity but also because our economy is so complementary to the emerging Asian ones. We have in abundance what they need in abundance: primary commodities. Their need for our raw materials will roll on for decades, including as Indonesia transforms itself from the world's fourth most populous country to its fourth richest.

This raises the final reason the mining boom shouldn't be lightly dismissed. As Parkinson reminded us, it's just the first wave of change arising from the Asian century. Next comes the rural boom as global demand for agricultural produce surges.

The third wave is the global growth in the middle class - from half a billion to more than 3 billion souls - with its growing demand for better services, goods and experiences. Just another passing boom?

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Farmers fall silent while food brings home the bacon

Sometimes, as when Sherlock Holmes solved a mystery by noting the dog that didn't bark, the story is not what happened but what didn't happen. If so, don't hold your breath waiting for the media to tell you such a story. Omission is much harder to notice than commission.

But let me ask you - in this year of endless complaint about the supposed two-speed economy - what's been missing? The retailers have been doing it tough and they've let everyone know. The high dollar is great news for consumers - overseas holidays are booming - but bad news for those of our industries that sell on export markets or compete against imports in the local market.

We keep hearing about the difficulties our manufacturers have encountered and, to a lesser extent, the problems facing our tourism industry (see above). Now we're hearing of staff cutbacks in universities because foreign student numbers are down.
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But who haven't we heard from?

A clue - which dog usually barks the house down every time the dollar goes up? Another - which industry contributed to our economy's boom and bust in the mid-1970s by virtually forbidding the McMahon government to revalue our currency in response to a world commodity boom?

That's right, the farmers. So, have they been suffering in silence for once in their lives? Have they, unlike other industries, stoically resisted the temptation to blame all their problems on a Labor government?

No, nothing so worthy. We've heard nothing from the farmers because they've been doing quite well for themselves. And we never hear from farmers when times are good. City slickers never get invited to the harvest festival for fear of undermining the media's stereotype that ''the man on the land'' is ALWAYS doing it tough. In any case, who's interested in GOOD news about the economy?

You can find the story in the official statistics and forecasts, of course, but public officials know always to understate good news about the farm sector for fear of bringing the farmers' ire down on their heads. The few parts of farming that are the exceptions to the rule will declare all you say is lies.

Our farmers export about three-quarters of what they produce. With the exception of wool, the stuff they sell abroad is priced in US dollars. So when the Aussie dollar goes up, the money they earn in US dollars isn't worth as much to them back home.

That's just as true of our miners. They, too, have suffered from the rise in the Aussie. But they're not complaining because the prices they're getting in US dollars have risen by far more than the Aussie has gone up.

It's a similar story for the farmers, though on a much smaller scale. Since the start of the resources boom in early 2003, the prices being received by our miners have risen by 380 per cent in US-dollar terms. Thanks to the Aussie dollar's rise against the greenback, they've risen by a smaller 175 per cent in Australian-dollar terms - which is what the miners care about.

Over the same period, the prices being received by our farmers have risen 90 per cent in US-dollar terms and almost 10 per cent in Australian-dollar terms. (The rise in the Aussie isn't just a matter of bad luck for our miners and farmers. Since our dollar's been floating it has always risen, or fallen, roughly in line with world commodity prices. What these comparisons show is that rising rural commodity prices contributed to the higher dollar, along with rising minerals and energy prices.)

If that was all there was to the story we probably WOULD have heard whingeing from the farmers. But what matters to our farmers even more than what's happening to prices is what the weather's doing to the size of their harvests and other kinds of production. Whatever the price, the world will always take however many tonnes our farmers are able to produce.

And the truth is that, despite exceptions (West Australian wheat for one; the effects of flooding and cyclones), the weather's been a lot kinder to our farmers over the past year or two. It's rained when rain has been needed, there's been more water for irrigation and the moisture content of the soil has improved, allowing more dryland plantings.

This year's winter wheat crop is expected to be a near-record high of about 40 million tonnes and this follows a good harvest last year.

This financial year, our agricultural export earnings are expected to be the second-highest since 2002-03, even after allowing for inflation. Last year's earnings were pretty good, too.

Rises in export earnings are expected for wheat, wool, rice, canola, cotton and lamb, though wine exports continue to languish.

After a bad year in 2009-10, real farm income more than doubled last financial year. This year it's expected to be down only a bit from that.

Why are world agricultural prices so strong? Various reasons, but mainly because of the development of Asia and the steady rise in incomes of its many hundreds of millions of people. As low incomes rise, food consumption tends to increase. And the increase is concentrated in the more expensive types of food.

So food prices are rising for much the same reason minerals and energy prices are rising. And that says they've got a long way further to rise over coming years. Whichever way you look, Australia is sitting pretty in the Asian century. The only shadow over the future of farming comes from climate change and our long mismanagement of water.

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There are lies, damned lies and vested interests' reports

What's the world coming to? The latest is that Australia has become a net importer of food. Last financial year our imports of food and groceries exceeded exports by $1.8 billion, a dramatic turnaround from our $4.5 billion surplus five years earlier. This alarming news comes from a report by the accounting firm KPMG for the Australian Food and Grocery Council.

The council's chief executive, Kate Carnell, said the industry "is still a major exporter but imports are rising fast, eroding the trade surplus historically enjoyed by the industry".

"I don't think Australians really understand what we're facing at the moment," she said. "We really are facing a scenario where Australia really won't manufacture much at all in this space. The majority of products will come from overseas.

"The ... costs of power, costs of staff, costs of transport, costs of government regulation, costs of the drought in the food space [have] really put pressure on costs for Australian manufacturers.

"To protect Australia's food supply and overcome this challenge, there must be a 'whole-of-government' national strategy to ensure food and grocery manufacturing's long-term growth, increase export earnings and boost competitiveness. Proposed water allocation cuts for food production in the Murray-Darling Basin will also threaten the future viability of numerous food manufacturers in the basin ... and making it harder for locally produced goods to compete with imports."

There's just one problem. This is all nonsense. Australia? A net importer of food? Yeah, sure. If you fell for it, your bulldust detector has seriously failed you in the media space.

And in these days of he-said-she-said journalism, you need your detector working as never before. Increasingly, the media are used by interest groups - whether governments, oppositions, businesses or lobby groups - to push their own barrows. And increasingly the media suspend disbelief and happily pass on the most dubious claims, provided they're sufficiently novel, alarming or combative.

Often the vested interests are waving some "modelling" or "independent report" they've bought from some seemingly reputable source. Only if you find the report and read its fine print do you discover the reputable source covering its backside with disclaimers.

Consider this from KPMG's report for the food and grocery council: "no opinions or conclusions intended to convey assurance have been expressed. The report has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only, and does not constitute professional advice.

"You should not act upon the information contained in this report without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this report ..."

Translation: if your bulldust detector isn't working that's your look-out.

According to figures compiled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in calendar 2009 we had total food exports of $25.4 billion and imports of $11 billion, leaving us with a surplus of $14.4 billion. Even if we ignore unprocessed and look only at processed food, we still had a trade surplus of $5.8 billion.

So how did the food and grocery council get exports of $21.5 billion and imports of $23.3 billion for 2009-10, giving that deficit of $1.8 billion? By using its own definition of "food and groceries". We're not talking about farmers here but the people who take what the farmers produce and process it for presentation in supermarkets.

So the council's figures exclude unprocessed food exports, including wheat (worth $4.8 billion in 2009), other grains and live animals. They include "grocery manufacturing products", such as medicines and pharmaceuticals, plastic bags and film, paper products and soap and other detergents.

That's food? It turns out our exports of "groceries" totalled $4.9 billion in 2009-10, whereas our imports totalled $12.9 billion, leaving us a "grocery" trade deficit of $8 billion. This is hardly surprising. Since when was Australia big in the manufacture of medicines? (And since when were they a major part of the Murray-Darling Basin economy?)

If you leave out groceries, the report's figures show we had exports of processed food and beverages worth $15.9 billion compared with imports of $9.9 billion, plus exports of fresh produce worth $700 million against imports of less than $500 million. That leaves us with a trade surplus of $6.2 billion for fresh and processed food and beverages. Don't be conned.

It is true, of course, that agriculture has been hard hit by the drought and by our very high exchange rate. And the international price competitiveness of manufacturing - whether of food, "groceries" or anything else - has been, and will continue to be, harmed by the high dollar.

The food and grocery council claims to represent about a quarter of Australian manufacturing industry. Rest assured, for as long as the resources boom keeps our exchange rate uncomfortably high - which might be for a decade or more - we'll be hearing complaints from manufacturers and demands that the government do something. The rest of them won't be hiding behind farmers, however.

Just to prepare you for the onslaught: Australia has long had, and always will have, a positively huge deficit on trade in manufactures and it's almost certain to get worse. None of this is a worry because you can't be good at everything.

Australia has long been a major world exporter of agricultural, mineral and energy commodities. Being a net importer of manufactures goes with that territory. Live with it.

Now we're being paid a fortune for our coal and iron ore and we're engaged in a decade-long period of investment for a huge increase in export capacity. The dark side of this is a high exchange rate and pressure on our farmers, manufacturers, tourism operators and education providers. You can't have everything.

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