GPA Southern Grower Director, Andrew Weidemann AM spoke with ABC NSW Country Hour host Michael Condon about the looming decision on re-opening the Australian barley trade to China.
This followed on from an interview with Assistant Minister for Trade, Tim Ayres, about the situation.
Mr Weidemann said there is an opportunity to move on and re-open the market into China, not only for Australian barley but also to remove other tariffs placed on agricultural producers four years ago.
“We’ve had plenty of inquiries from Chinese buyers in the recent past……and we expect that that will probably go towards a business outcome, should the tariff removal be successful,” he said.
“At the end of the day, our quality of barley here is top of the class, because of the Mediterranean climate it’s grown in, whereas our competing countries are generally harvesting in what we’d call humid moist conditions right around the world.
“We know that our barley is sought after for that particular purpose, in terms of malting.
“At the end of the day malting barley has been the reason that we really opened up that China market over the last two decades and that’s the market that we continue to look to source into, because it’s a premium market for our barley and again that’s returned hopefully to growers.”