Major Commodities - Grains

Covering every state of Australia, grain growers occupy almost 20 million hectares of productive land.

Producing a wide variety of cereal products - primarily barley, grain sorghum, maize oats, triticale and wheat - Australian grains are internationally regarded for their high-quality and reliability, both as bulk commodity exports and value-added products - valued at approximately $9 billion-a-year.

Australian grains: fast facts

• In Australia, 40,281,000 tonnes of coarse grain were produced in 2010-11 (cereal crops
  primarily including barley, grain sorghum, maize, oats, triticale and wheat), covering 19,283,000 hectares of land.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics, 2011

• The total amount of wheat produced in Australia in 2010-11 was 27,891,000 tonnes on 13,645,000 hectares. The total amount of barley produced in the same time frame equalled 8,145,000 tonnes on 3,740,000 hectares.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics, 2011

• Production of the major winter grains in 2011 is estimated at over 27 million tonnes for wheat, 2.4 million tonnes for barley and 2.4 million tonnes for canola.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics, 2011.

• The total gross value for all grains and oilseeds in Australia in 2009-10 is approximately $9 billion-a-year.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, Value of Agricultural Commodities Produced, 2009/2010, Catalogue No. 7503.0

• Globally, 1,100 million tonnes of coarse grain were produced in 2010-11, covering over 306
  million hectares of land.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics 2011.

• Australia’s annual export volume of coarse grains in 2010-11 was 5,337,000 tonnes, with an export value of $1.493 billion.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics 2011.

• Australia exported 4,625,000 tonnes of barley in 2010-11, worth $1.295 billion. Exports of sorghum for the same period were valued at $146 million, and totalled 553,000 tonnes.

ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics 2011.

For more, view NFF Farm Facts 2012.