Australia

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott throws his support behind Jakarta’s plans to invest in Australian cattle farms to help end a trade dispute that has devastated his country’s cattle industry and boosted beef prices in Indonesia.

A Chinese conglomerate has hit back at critics of its WA farming operations and vowed to press on with plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an integrated supply chain from Albany to China.

The Indonesian government may be in the market for an even larger slice of Australian land than the 1.5 million hectares it has proposed.

US, Canadian, Arabian and Swiss interests are buying up multiple properties in around Stockinbingal, and the handful of Australian family farms that remain want the federal government to intervene.

Pour assurer son approvisionnement en viande de bœuf, l'Indonésie envisage d'acheter plus d'un million d'hectares en Australie.

It has been reported that the state-owned China Investment Corporation and New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra are negotiating to buy Tasmanian dairy farm Van Diemen's Land under a proposed $200 million deal.

A move by the Indonesian government to buy one million hectares of land for beef production in Australia for its own local market has reignited the foreign ownership debate.

Indonesia has moved to solve its beef supply problems by approving a plan to buy one million hectares of Australian farmland, a plot four times the size of the Australian Capital Territory.

Indonesia's announcement yesterday that it plans to buy a million hectares of Australian agricultural land to raise beef cattle is the clearest signal yet that it wants to lower its dependence on the current live export system.

Australia's PM says he favours a joint venture approach to farmland investment, comprising equity from farmers, perhaps through co-operatives, with domestic or some external investment.

Australia's Murray Goulburn Co-operative says it plans to bypass traditional bank lending by forging alliances with international investors to support dairy farms.

The ABC's Vote Compass has revealed that three-quarters of Australians want more restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land.