Northern Territory has the highest proportion of farm foreign ownership

The area of agricultural land in Australia owned by businesses with some level of foreign ownership increased from 44.9 million hectares at December 2010 to 49.6 million hectares at June 2013.

The increase of 4.7 million hectares, or 11%, was detected in the second survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in its 2013 Agricultural Land and Water Ownership survey (ALWOS).

The Northern Territory had the highest proportion of its agricultural land owned by businesses with a level of foreign ownership at 32% or 17.7 million hectares.

Victoria had the lowest proportion of its agricultural land owned by businesses with a level of foreign ownership at 2% or 238,000 hectares.

The first survey was conducted following the introduction of the Foreign Acquisitions Amendment (Agricultural Land) Bill, when the ABS was asked to collect information on the level of foreign ownership of agricultural businesses, land and water entitlements used for agricultural activity to inform government policy.

But doubts exist around the thoroughness of the survey. In 2012 the federal government announced it would fund ongoing and expanded statistical data collection by the ABS on foreign ownership of agricultural land and water entitlements. This was to be collected via stand-alone sample surveys in 2013 and 2018 and through the Agricultural Census in 2016 and 2021.

The latest data result showed in 2013 that 95% of the total area of agricultural land owned by businesses with a level of foreign ownership (47.2 million hectares) was owned by some 45 businesses.

Each of these businesses had land holdings over 100,000 hectares in size.

In 2010, 94% of the total area of agricultural land owned by businesses with a level of foreign ownership was owned by 44 businesses, each with land holdings over 100,000 hectares in size.