Attitudes and Expectations of Wheatgrowers in New South Wales

The Australian Agricultural Council and its Standing Committee on Agriculture have recently paid considerable attention to methods of increasing rural output in Australia and of expanding wheat production in particular. One of the problems at the forefront of discussion has been that of the provision of adequate incentives, designed to encourage farmers to intensify their production programmes. It is clear that detailed factual information on the attitudes and expectations of farmers is essential to the satisfactory formulation of suitable incentives and of policy generally. As a contribution to an understanding of the wheat farmers' problems, attitudes and expectations, the Commonwealth Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Division of Marketing and Agricultural Economics of the N.S.W. Department of Agriculture have conducted a co-operative, fact-finding inquiry on a group of wheat farmers in New South Wales, the results of which are published here. The results presented will be of interest to all concerned with the problems of agricultural production in Australia. The survey represents a new phase of agricultural economic research in this country, not only because it covers new ground, but also because it is the first occasion on which a major research project has been conducted co-operatively by the two organizations concerned.