Xenophobia risks bright future: Sanger Australia

Graham­ Greenhalgh has warned governments to ignore the “emotive” debate around foreign capital supporting domestic agriculture

DEAL-20150918 embargo for DEAL 18 Sep 2015 no reuse without permission Graham Greenhalgh of Sanger meat export pic : Nick Cubbin

The head of top Australian meat exporter Sanger Australia, Graham­ Greenhalgh, has warned governments to ignore the “emotive” debate around foreign capital supporting domestic agriculture.

The Sanger chief said agriculture had been in the wilderness for 40 years but was on the cusp of enjoying what he suspected would be 100 years of prosperity if the country was smart and brought in capital to further develo­p it.

Mr Greenhalgh said the government policies guiding investment in the sector were right but he feared people were becom­ing “xenophobic” in their ris­ing concerns about foreign capital.

“If we want to play in the world and we want the world to be our marketplace we need to be mature around how we engage­ with it and be careful around some of the emotive reactions,” he said in an interview in today’s The Deal magazine.

Australia’s agriculture sector has pushed through some tough years but the fortunes of Australian farmers are on the rise as the food boom gathers strength and the country positions itself as the “food bowl of Asia”.

Sanger’s rising fortunes were highlighted in this year’s IBISWorld Top 500 private companies list, published in The Deal today, which revealed a good year across the board for agribusiness.

Mr Greenhalgh said Australia had to be careful not to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.

“Being scared of our current policies could help us achieve that. The changes we’ve had to policy have been good but then we have had some of this kneejerk stuff, such as you can’t buy a farm,” he said.

“Australia is one of four to five great pastoral areas on the planet­ … if we hang around and be boofheads, they (foreign invest­ors) will go elsewhere.”

He said people thought that “someone can come and take what we have’’.

“They can’t, they can come and buy it but they can only buy it if someone wants to sell it.”

Mr Greenhalgh said Australia was now in the right place at the right time.

“The world wants what we have, which is value, and the effort­ of farming is starting to be acknowledged as deserving of the premium it needs, to be sustain­able.”