Australia must look to agriculture as a critical part of global engagement and better leverage its agricultural sector to deepen the country’s international relationships. We have a strong agricultural sector and, thanks to the Cairns Group, a history of leadership in international agricultural trade policy. Integrated Australian agricultural diplomacy can engage a diverse range of partners at the bilateral, minilateral and multilateral levels while supporting our domestic industries.

Australia’s agricultural sector is a national asset. Fifty-five percent of Australia’s land use is for primary production, we export approximately 72 percent of our agricultural product, and in 2022–23 Australian agricultural exports hit a record value of $80 billion. As Australia pursues a whole-of-nation approach to international policy and ways to tangibly strengthen our connections with the international community, our agriculture sector is low-hanging diplomatic fruit.

Within our immediate region, agriculture provides a handful of clearcut opportunities. Growing conditions across northern Australia are complementary to those of international partners (in that they are similar to the conditions of many of our regional neighbours). As the populations of Southeast Asian nations continue to grow, and their wealth increases, Australia’s importance as a close and secure source of food will also grow. Existing people-to-people links (including through seasonal labour and diaspora groups) also bridge cultural divides and open new markets for labour and products.

Australia already has strong agricultural-diplomacy foundations. Murray Watt, Australia’s agriculture minister at the time, in a 2023 address to the Australian Institute of International Affairs, highlighted areas that already bound together Australia’s agriculture sector and foreign policy. They include our agriculture-heavy trade relationships, our global reputation for producing high-quality food and fibre, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, the Australian-Chinese agricultural trade relationship, and international cooperation through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. While only briefly mentioned by Watt, the Cairns Group is a unique element of Australia’s foreign policy environment that we should seek to strengthen and replicate.

The Cairns Group is a coalition of 20 agricultural exporting countries, established in Cairns in 1986 on the eve of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations—talks that ultimately led to the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The group is made up of a diverse range of medium-sized agricultural exporters: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam. It seeks to ‘push for liberalisation of global trade in agricultural goods’, principally through the WTO. It contrasts with the relatively high, trade-distorting subsidies provided to farmers in countries such as Norway, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union.

Since the establishment of the WTO, the Cairns Group has been the principal driver of global agricultural trade reform. It continues to bring agriculture to the fore in trade negotiations. ‘Agriculture remains the most important unfinished business of the WTO’, the statement of the 43rd Cairns Group Ministerial Meeting in February 2024 reads, ‘and should be at the heart of ongoing reform efforts and advanced at [the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference]. It is recognised globally that agricultural trade reform is fundamental to the health of the multilateral trading system and future rule-making.’

The Cairns Group cumulatively represents a concerted effort by an unlikely collection of politically, economically and geographically diverse nations to cooperate on major global reforms. Australia’s founding role and leadership of the group—significantly promoting policies in opposition to many of our traditional international partners—is exceptional. At times, Australian foreign policy is perceived, both domestically and internationally, as overly influenced by the US, but our agricultural diplomacy is largely free from that stigma. It is proof of Australia’s independence, capacity to engage with diverse partners and commitment to the international rules-based order. It exemplifies middle-power diplomacy and coalition building.

The breadth of Cairns Group membership also bucks the global trend. Most multilateral groupings are region-specific (ASEAN, APEC, PIF), ideologically aligned (AUKUS, Five Eyes, BRICS), both (NATO, EU), or accessible to all or nearly all nations (UN, WHO, IMF). But the Cairns Group brings together a collection of nations that are geographically, politically and economically disparate. Together, the group accounts for 30 percent of global agricultural exports. It points to the unique power of agriculture to diversify foreign policy networks, the importance of the agricultural sector, and the overarching importance of national food security.

The Australia–China relationship and their ‘trade war’ often dominate conversations about Australian agriculture and foreign policy, one-dimensionally focusing on specific commodities’ access to the Chinese market. As important as that subject is, Australia’s agriculture sector is dynamic rather than one that is reliant on a single market, and the ‘trade war’ should be a lesson to both the industry and government. It is in the mutual interest of government and producers for industries to be diversified away from reliance on a foreign market.

As a heavily trade-exposed sector, Australian agriculture cannot lose sight of the domestic and international elements that both safeguard and threaten production, supply chains and market access. Importantly, if the international system continues to fracture, producers will need a diversity of trade partners and a relationship with government to ensure access to those partners.

New Zealand recognised this in its National Security Strategy 2023, expressly stating the need for diversification and flexibility to protect its national economic security. Australian policy should similarly recognise the need for market diversification and encourage greater collaboration between policymakers and industry to achieve it. And we can move beyond the economic security lens to execute—as in our National Defence Strategy 2024—a whole-of-nation approach to national security.

Australian agriculture presents a natural partner for the nation’s foreign and strategic policy. While many initiatives, including the work of the Cairns Group, have sown the seeds of that complementarity, many more opportunities are ripe for harvest.