Agriculture and Food Production

Historically the Tweed Shire was predominantly an agricultural-based economy, relying heavily on dairy farming, sugar farming, banana growing and a small cattle and vegetable industry sector. For a number of reasons including industry deregulation, global competition and urban encroachment, agriculture in the Tweed has now demonstrated significant decline with recent economic research confirming agriculture contributes only three (3%) per cent to the Tweed’s Gross Regional Product (Tweed & Northern Rivers Economic Model 2007/08).

The major issue with the agricultural sector in the Tweed is the capacity of rural-land owners to achieve economies of scale, financial viability and long term economic sustainability, mainly due to issues associated with farm lot sizes, slope, aspect, terrain, soil type and access to water.

Tweed Rural Land Use Stage I, undertaken by TEDC in 2002, established the facts relating to rural land use practices in the Tweed and broke new ground in terms of putting into perspective the challenges faced by agriculture in the Tweed. Stage I identified the following:

Traditional agriculture in the Tweed was declining at 7.4% per annum, which is almost three times the national average;
Agriculture employed only 6% of the Tweed work force, and therefore was not considered a major economic employer of the Tweed;
Farm or lot sizes in Tweed Shire are very small, which has a serious impact on economies of scale, particularly when other factors are taken into account, like aspect, slope, terrain, soil type and access to water; and
With the exception of cane, other traditional farming practices of bananas and dairy farming are either no longer large scale or in rapid decline.

The study in 2002 found that there were only 12 properties over 200 hectares, 22 properties over 100 hectares, 700 properties between 40 and 100 hectares and over 700 properties between 1 and 40 hectares. The report also found that not only are the farms/properties in the Tweed obviously fragmented small holdings, but due to the diverse biophysical attributes of the land, including slope, aspect and soil type, frequently substantial tracts of these farms/properties are not productive, bringing into question whether economies of scale can be achieved in some instances.

TEDC proposes to undertake further assessments of the Agriculture and Food Production industry within the Tweed Shire. This assessment will build onto the findings of the Tweed Rural Land Use Study have the following objectives:

To inform the rural land use component of strategic planning at a local, state and federal level;
To identify mechanisms for protecting rural land, while addressing the needs of its owners; and
To increase the viability of rural industries in the Tweed Shire.