Improving market transparency in perishable agricultural goods industries

In late 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) conducted an inquiry into bargaining power imbalances in supply chains for perishable agricultural goods (PAG) in Australia. The subsequent Perishable Agricultural Goods Inquiry Report recommended that the government and industries explore measures to foster price transparency to increase competition in those industries.

In response to this recommendation, the Australian Government has committed $5.4 million to improve price and market transparency in PAG industries by:

delivering co-design workshops with PAG industries to understand their market transparency issues, opportunities and requirements
delivering a grants program to develop and implement tailored mechanisms to improve price and market transparency.
The workshops were held between August and November 2021.

Grants awarded under this program

Applications for the $5 million grant program Improving market transparency in perishable agricultural goods industries closed on Tuesday 22 February 2022.

This competitive, targeted grant process was open to research and development corporations and industry representatives that engaged in PAG workshops held in 2021.

The following organisations have been awarded grants:

Grantee	Project	Grant (GST exclusive)
Wine Australia (consortium lead), Inland Wine Regions Alliance, Australian Grape & Wine	Developing a winegrape price indicator, digital online analytics platform and independent winegrape price forecasts – including new domestic sales data collection	$989,000
Australian Dairy Farmers	Enabling efficiency and transparency in the dairy supply chain – creation of a framework for interoperable technology and systems to efficiently track and trace product and price throughout the supply chain	$740,000
Dairy Australia	Delivering the Milk Value Education Series – develop farmer capability to better understand production costs, overall profitability and the drivers of milk price	$200,000
Seafood Industry Australia	Developing the Seafood Industry Harmonised Australian Retailer Produce Scheme (HARPS) – simplifying multiple food safety and sustainability audits into a single process	$783,430
Fresh Markets Australia (the Australian Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable Industries Limited) (consortium lead), the Queensland Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable Industries Cooperative Limited, NSW Chamber of Fresh Produce Ltd	Creating FreshData – a verifiable market price reporting scheme that collects, processes, stores, manages, analyses, visualises and interprets market sales price and produce provenance	$594,500
National Farmers’ Federation (consortium lead), NSW Farmers’ Association, Australian Chicken Growers’ Council Ltd	Exploring the potential for a Code of Conduct to increase price transparency and competition in Australian poultry meat supply chains	$500,000
Meat and Livestock Australia	Strengthening the Australian red meat and livestock industry supply chain through improved price and market information services	$190,000

More information is available at GrantConnect.

The Australian Government Community Grants Hub will administer this program on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.