MAIN FINDINGS
The 2012-13 Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey (REACS) found that agricultural land represented just over half (52 percent) of Australia's total land area.
Around 86 per cent of that agricultural land (more than 340 million hectares) was mainly used for grazing, and just under eight per cent (or nearly 32 million hectares) was mainly used for crops.
The remaining agricultural land was set aside for other activities like conservation, forestry planation or other uses.
ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
This publication presents information on agricultural land management and farming practices. Data were collected from the 2012-13 Rural Environment and Agricultural Commodities Survey (REACS) conducted by the ABS in 2013. The 2012-13 REACS is the first annual resource management collection in this series. As such, the comparative data analysis and commentary uses the 2011-12 Agricultural Resource Management Survey and the 2011-12 Land Management Practices Survey as the benchmark references.
The data cubes provide important information on a variety of farming management practices of Australian agricultural businesses, including cropping and pasture management, fertiliser use, wetland protection and farm management.
Data are published at the Australian, State, and Territory levels. More detailed Natural Resource Management (NRM) level data will be released at a later date.
Complementary data collected from the 2012-13 REACS can be found in Agricultural Commodities, Australia, 2012-13 (cat. no. 7121.0), Water Use on Australian Farms, 2012-13 (cat. no. 4618.0), and Value of Agricultural Commodities Produced, Australia, 2012-13 (cat. no. 7503.0).
INQUIRIES
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