Coronavirus: Barley row with China goes against the grain for innocent farmers

Braxton Large’s father Barry is busy planting the seeds of the family’s annual income as a diplomatic row threatens to blow a chunk of it away.

Barley farmer Barry Large and son Braxton, 3, on the family’s farm at Miling, 220km northeast of Perth. Picture: Colin Murty

Braxton Large’s father Barry is busy planting the seeds of the family’s annual income as a diplomatic row threatens to blow a chunk of it away.

The three-year-old knows every corner of the family farm 220km northeast of Perth, every piece of machinery, and he plans to be a crop farmer.

At the weekend, Braxton helped a neighbour who was struggling to start an old Land Rover by offering what turned out to be a winning suggestion: “Have you tried the kill switch, Graham?”

“Braxton will be running this place by the time he’s five,” Mr Large said.

While China’s dumping allegations against Australian barley farmers have created a worrying impasse, Mr Large has faith it can be resolved without huge damage to the nation’s exports and family businesses such as his.

“We are in it for the long haul, that’s the most important fact,” he said. “There is a process that enables us to deal with this. We’ve got to respect them (China).

“We’ve enjoyed good trade between China and Australia, and we’d like the door to still be open.”

On Wednesday, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan defended the state’s farmers, who would be hardest hit by any tariff because they produce about 88 per cent of Australia’s barley. In WA, barley exports to China were worth $809m in 2018-19. It is a bigger export commodity than the state’s prized red lobsters.

“Our farmers are just efficient, effective, they do a good job, they provide a great product, they have increased their productivity multiple times over the past 30 years and they are the victims in all this,” Mr McGowan said.

Asked if Australia was being bullied by China, Mr McGowan replied: “No, I’m not going to get into that sort of language. I’m just saying that on the ground I think people out there in (the farming communities of) Wyalkatchem, Koorda or Broomehill are the victims of things outside their control.”

China’s grievance centres on the higher prices for barley in eastern Australia than in China at the peak of the east coast drought. WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan met China’s consul-general in Perth, Dong Zhihua, on Sunday night in an attempt to salve the rift.

The allegations are old — they surfaced 18 months ago — and the McGowan government was optimistic they would be investigated and dropped. But that was before tensions ratcheted over Australia’s support for an inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic.

“We strongly believe there are no grounds for the claims that Australian barley is being dumped or subsidised into the Chinese market,” Ms MacTiernan told state parliament on Tuesday night.

“This is an important market for WA growers, with few alternative markets offering the same value for our barley. While work has been under way through the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre to establish new malting barley markets in India, we cannot switch on new high-value markets overnight.

“Seeding is just under way across the WA grain belt. The timing could not be worse for our growers, who have little time to reassess their options for the season.”

Ms MacTiernan fears a substantial writedown of farm incomes this year, which will reverberate throughout the grain belt communities.

Grains Industry Market Access Forum executive manager Tony Russell considered China’s analysis was flawed and ignored many factors behind the price moves.

“No exporter of grain goes around trying to sell it for less than they bought it for. It’s a total joke in that context,” he said.

In Miling, where the Large family farms, barley comprises as little as 15 per cent of annual crops, but on the state’s south coast it is routinely more than half.

Mr Large believed the quality of Australia’s barley production would help it find other markets if China were to shut its doors.

“With COVID-19 and everything else going on out there at the moment, it’s pretty hard running a business. This is just something else we have to factor in,” he said.
Although the WA Labor government is adamant that the state’s barley farmers have done nothing wrong, Mr McGowan claimed on Wednesday that the state’s importance as a trading economy was not well understood.

“On the broader question of our trading relationships, Western Australia has carried the nation. We have carried the nation over this (pandemic) period and I don’t think they understand that in Melbourne or Sydney or other parts of the country,” he said.

“But for Western Australia’s trade, and the fact that we have continued to export our minerals and our iron ore and our gold and our LNG and some of our agricultural products, the country would be in enormous trouble and we would not be able to afford things like the JobKeeper payment and JobSeeker payment increases and big infrastructure packages.”