Agriculture of Australia

Features of Australian Agricultureis that it uses a huge number of land mass in terms of one employed, and there is also an opportunity for extra-seasonal year-round keeping of cattle for grazing. At its development here there were no feudal vestiges, there was an advanced agricultural machinery and a relatively stable and quite capacious English market. 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 that,how different is the agriculture of Australia from the agriculture of Japan and European countries. However, this feature also indicates the great potential of the fifth continent. Even the most modest estimates show that only a simple increase in cultivated land due to land not yet involved in agricultural production provides an opportunity to provide food for 60 million people. And all this without harming the environment.

Australian agriculture suppliesexport 60% of all production, 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 breeding. The number of herds of sheep in the country ranks first in the world and reached some 180 million in some years. Then it was reduced because of the drop in demand in the world market for wool and for many years it is about 130 million head.

Sheep are pretty fastidious animals, they do notno moderate climate with high humidity, no tropical heat. 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. About one third of the herd of sheep is in these areas.

Among plant growing, agricultureIs 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 influence on yields. However, Australia has for many years been the leader in world wheat exports, behind only 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 exportare barley, oats and sorghum. And barley in Australia is grown on the same areas as wheat. Here the crop rotation scheme is used: wheat-barley-steam. Maize in Australia, in contrast to European countries and the United States is grown little, because for it local soils and climatic conditions are not suitable.

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