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While deregulation of Australia's wheat industry is a done deal, how it affects wheat growers now and into the future remains a hot topic and was the subject of spirited debate at the recent 2011 University of Western Australia (UWA) Institute of Agriculture (IOA) Industry Forum .

The brainchild of UWA IOA Director, Winthrop Professor Kadambot Siddique, this year's hotly anticipated forum attracted farmers and other industry stakeholders up and down the grain chain, all keen to hear and then challenge fired up speakers, including Ron Storey, ex AWB manager and now a respected crop forecaster and chair of a leading plant breeding company.

After fairly and squarely declaring up-front his potentially perceived vested interests, Mr Storey immediately noted that post-deregulation, Australian wheat growers had proved to be savvy sellers, despite having to deal with a price volatile market.

"The world's wheat industry is more determined by global traders than whether or not Australia has a single desk," he said.

Mr Storey was adamant that growers should work hard to ensure they own the data gained by bulk handlers at the weighbridge and receival points.

"Growers need access to the aggregated data currently only held by bulk handlers and warehousers," he said.

Bryce Banfield, representing bulk handler, CBH, said deregulation had allowed growers to network with CBH and had also allowed differentiation for WA grain.

While saying that grain pools still had a place in the next 5-10 years, Mr Banfield agreed that pool transparency needed to be lifted.

Lake King farmer's son Nathan Cattle, a UWA Agricultural Science 1st Class Honours graduate now working with Market Ag, an independent commodity market and price risk management advisory company, suggested price volatility was not a direct function of deregulation.

He advised growers to question service providers, by always asking them to convince them that their service or offer would have a direct benefit.

"This was consistently drummed into me during my agricultural science studies at UWA," Mr Cattle declared.

To best manage price risk, growers needed to establish what the risks were, determine what products were the most sustainable and, finally, they needed to access good market information.

John Orr of Premium Grain Handlers, a Fremantle-based grain trader focused on container trade, admitted that a post-deregulation market was stretching his company's resources and facilities, although the prospects of a new port at Kwinana was likely to improve that situation.

"The container trade is now happening at a level it should always have been at," Mr Orr said.

Coorow farmer Rod Birch, a regular participant at UWA Institute of Agriculture events, was candid in his view that growers, such as himself, were delighted that grain traders, in a deregulated market, were "climbing over themselves to get a share of our business" and that choice could be as complicated or as simple as a grower chose to make it.

However, he did lament that some of what he referred to as industry good functions had, effectively, "fallen through the cracks", post-deregulation.

"Quality assurance needs to be adequately advocated and, for the benefit of WA growers, the whole world needs to know our grain is produced in a quality environment," Mr Birch said.

He also declared support for a centralised storage system, saying that he had no on-farm storage to speak of and that during a frenetic harvest, he needed and valued time talking to grain traders.

Summing up, WA Department of Agriculture and Food economist and UWA School of Agricultural and Resource Economics Professor, Ross Kingwell, said he saw a great window of opportunity, as the next few years were likely to be very positive for the WA wheat industry.

"WA's economy is buoyant and so I encourage participants to take advantage of this environment as we move forward, blessed with very good institutions," he said.

Media references

Authorised by ‘The UWA Institute of Agriculture' and issued on its behalf by

Brendon Cant & Associates (+61) 8 9731 6739

Winthrop Professor Kadambot Siddique AM, FTSE

Director, The UWA Institute of Agriculture

(+61) 0411 155 396