ABARES has been conducting surveys of agricultural industries since the 1940s. Farm surveys conducted by ABARES provide a wide range of information on the current and historical economic performance of farm business units in the rural sector. This information is used for research and analysis on a range of industry issues of concern to government and industry.
An overview of results for Australian broadacre and dairy farms is released at the ABARES OUTLOOK Conference each March. This includes analysis of farm costs, receipts, income, profit, rates of return, performance by state and performance by industry (defined by ANZSIC). Farms are classified to ANZSIC-based industries based on the relative contribution of farm outputs to total output. This method allows analysis to focus on relatively homogeneous groups of farms.
Subsequent analyses of farm performance are published for beef, lamb, grain and dairy farms. These industries are classified more broadly than those published at OUTLOOK to provide a more complete picture of trends and variation in performance across farms by type of commodity produced, size and region.
Latest releases
19 December 2018: Drought impacts on broadacre and dairy farms in South-Eastern Australia has been released to provide timely information from ABARES most recent surveys of broadacre and dairy farms in the 2017-18 financial year. Given the drought situation in eastern Australia, ABARES is keen to provide timely information from this survey as soon as possible. To this end we have produced a short report containing early estimates of key financial variables for farms in South-Eastern Australia.
14 December 2018:
Australian vegetable-growing farms: supplementary survey results web-report is now available. This web-report presents estimates of cost of production, markets for vegetables and value adding, irrigation and other production management issues, training and business management, research and development and opportunities and future intensions for the vegetable-growing industry from 2006-07 to 2016-17. The report draws on data from the ABARES annual Australian vegetable-growing farms survey.
21 September 2018:
Australian vegetable-growing farms: an economic survey 2016–17 and 2017–18 report is now available. This web-report presents estimates of the physical characteristics, farm incomes, profits, costs, rates of return, debt, equity and debt-servicing capacity, farm capital and investment for vegetable-growing farms for 2016–17 to 2017–18. The report draws on data from the ABARES annual Australian vegetable-growing farms survey.