On a planet with diminishing reserves of agricultural land and escalating demand for food, Australia can't ignore the agricultural expansion potential of the vast regions north of the 26th parallel.
At the same time, a review of northern agricultural prospects pulled together by the Australian Farm Institute (AFI) makes it clear that it will take completely new thinking to capitalise on the north's three million square kilometres.
"The whole notion of somehow picking up agriculture and moving it north is a furphy," said AFI executive director, Mick Keogh. "The opportunities in the north are quite different."
The authors who contributed to AFI’s latest Farm Policy Journal, 'Hype, hope or just hard work? Agriculture in northern Australia', agree.
Beef will remain the north's dominant agricultural enterprise, although beef managed very differently to the south, but other opportunities exist for Australia to boost agricultural output and diversity.
"While it is true that Australian food exports are increasingly targeted at wealthier markets and might therefore be considered to provide little benefit to very poor consumers in developing nations, this ignores the inter-connectedness of global food markets," Mr Keogh wrote.
But investment in the north is being hampered by the low importance that Australians in general place on agriculture.
"There's a view that pervades within the community is that the whole notion of food security and agricultural exports really isn't that important," Mr Keogh said
"That means any issues that emerge around agriculture in the north are bigger than the benefits of agricultural production."
Mr Keogh confesses that he has no idea how to change this, except through a long campaign by the farm sector and governments to win the minds and trust of the broader community.
Don McKay, CEO of feedlotter Rangers Valley and former chief executive of the Australian Agricultural Company, in his paper argues that the north must become a vital hub of low-cost, high-value agriculture to feed the rising economies of Asia.
"Unfortunately, most Australians have a limited understanding of modern agriculture, with views of wheat, water hungry rice or cotton being their only image of farming," Mr McKay wrote. "These are not the crops for the north.
"Northern Australia grows beef, corn, sorghum, peanuts, avocados, mangoes, nuts, and sugar, a myriad of other fruit and vegetables as well as high-value plantation timber. It just has a long way to go to reach anything like its potential."
Mr McKay believes that much of the work of northern research and development will be up to "strong corporates", including large family-owned companies, which have the appetite for risk and the resources to create the critical mass necessary to make agriculture investment worthwhile.
When it comes to developing new crops on new land, Gary Gray, Parliamentary Secretary for Western and Northern Australia, observed that the push for northern development in part comes as a result of mistakes made in the Murray-Darling system — "especially in the unsustainable allocation of water for irrigation".
Not making those mistakes again in the north is important, but establishing clear policy is currently difficult because of a lack of data, "not only economic statistics, but … in areas ranging from river flows to marine resources".
"Good data is not only essential for public policy formulation, but an essential ingredient for efficient markets and enticing investors."
(The Office of Northern Australia [ONA], headed by Mr Gray, was formed in 2008 to co-ordinate the Federal policy approach to the region, including the data deficit.)
Although the enormous water resources of the north, home to nearly two-thirds of Australia’s fresh water, offer the possibility of more large-scale irrigation development like the Ord, Chris Chilcott of the WA Department of Agriculture and Food suggests that small-scale "mosaic" development might be more appropriate.
Although less efficient, "small-scale irrigation precincts offer an opportunity for existing land managers to diversify their enterprises, and given that the dominant land use in the 'north' will remain pastoralism, to integrate into their current cattle production systems," Mr Chilcott wrote.
A recent review said that properly spaced across the landscape, small irrigation precincts could reduce some environmental risks, like water table rise, allaying fears of a repeat of the problems that have arisen in the south.
However, a necessary first step will be governments determined to open up northern agriculture.
CSIRO researcher Stephen Yeates noted that the Ord's early cotton industry collapsed in the early 1970s due to pest pressures, but it was only in 2007 that government approval was given to grow BT cotton on the Ord.
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