Spatial patterns and temporal trends in productivity of Australian agriculture

We derived national patterns and trends of total biological productivity expressed in the common denominator of dry sheep equivalents (DSE) using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Historically, agriculture has passed through phases when first sheep, then cattle and latterly grain cropping constituted the dominant phase. Productivity shows a spatial association with total rainfall, with consistently high areas occurring in coastal Queensland, the irrigation areas of southern NSW and northern Victoria, and dairy areas of southern Victoria and northeast Tasmania. Most areas increased in agricultural productivity between the early 1980s and the middle 1990s, although some decreases occurred in the Darling Downs and some isolated parts of NSW and Victoria