Connections - Farm, Food and Resource Issues

Activity Gross Margins and Water Reform

Robert Douglas, Gavan Dwyer and Deborah Peterson

Productivity Commission

Gross margins can be of some use when comparing the short term gross returns and variable costs of similar farming activities, or when comparing similar production options. However, gross margins have serious limitations when used for deciding the merits of changing farming enterprises over the longer term e.g. for water reform.

Changes Back at the Grass Castle

Ian Whan

Rural Management Partners, Brisbane

The Kidman concept of moving cattle across huge expanses to exploit each region’s competitive advantage, and in the process managing drought risk and production costs, is still relevant today but just about everything else in the original ‘model’ has changed.  Identifying and analysing these changes is important to our understanding of beef production and marketing, 100 years after Kidman started amassing a huge slice of the Australian outback. 

Editors