Wool research project generates additional $2.8 million a year for Australian industry
A Sino-Australian wool research project involving the University of Queensland has contributed to Chinese tariff changes and an extra $2.8 million a year for the Australian economy.
The impact of the four-year collaborative study is outlined in a recent report for the project's funding body, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
School of Natural and Rural Systems Management Professor John Longworth, the Australian team leader, said following the release of the project's findings in China, the Chinese Government agreed to remove or reduce tariffs on Australian wool.
According to the ACIAR's raw wool production and marketing in China report, these tariff changes had generated extra foreign exchange earnings of $56 million with $2.8 million of this directly attributed to the University of Queensland project's findings, he said.
"The Chinese buyers are now buying more Australian wool at higher prices than would otherwise have been the case," he said.
"This is a wonderful result representing an enormous ongoing return on the $766,167 ACIAR grant which funded the project."
The study was carried out jointly by Australian agricultural economists at the University of Queensland and their Chinese colleagues from the Institute of Agricultural Economics within the Chinese Academy of the Agricultural Sciences and the Institute of Rural Development within the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences.
Professor Longworth said the 1989-94 study identified and quantified the technical, economic and institutional constraints on the production and marketing of domestic raw wool in China.
It also established the basis for further research between Australian and Chinese scientists and scholars, he said.
The project focused on problems facing both the sheep and wool industry and China's vast north and north-western pastoral region.
"The project has had important and permanent benefits for the Australian wool industry. It greatly assisted Australian trade negotiators by providing a much-improved understanding of the domestic Chinese factors affecting wool imports by China," he said.
"This information has become critically important after China emerged as the principal buyer of Australian wool."
The team initially led by Professor Longworth and former University of Queensland staff member Dr Ross Drynan, before he transferred to the University of Sydney, included University of Queensland senior lecturer in agricultural economics Dr Colin Brown and PhD student Greg Williamson.
Professor Longworth said the project had provided first-hand information and insights into an almost forgotten part of China.
"There had been no previous industry-wide, economic analysis of the wool industry in China by either Chinese or foreign scholars," he said.
With the help of Chinese scientists, the Australian team conducted extensive fieldwork over a four-year period in remote and otherwise inaccessible parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Gansu Province in the north of China, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the north-west.
These areas produce around 52 percent of China's total greasy wool clip and almost two-thirds of its fine and improved fine wool.
The project also resulted in more than 80 research papers, reports and books written in both Chinese and English.
Professor Longworth and Dr Brown are currently completing another major research project in China. This research is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the massive Chinese cattle and beef industry.
The China cattle and beef industry study is being funded by ACIAR and Meat and Livestock Australia.
A small part of this work involved a survey of 1500 households in six Eastern Chinese cities.
The report on this survey entitled The mass market for beef and beef offal in Eastern China recently completed by Professor Longworth will be unveiled by Queensland Minister for Primary Industry, the Hon Henry Palasczuk MLA, at a symposium on Agribusiness ?99 - Competing in the new millennium on Tuesday, April 20.
Hosted by Hunt & Hunt and the Department of Primary Industries Queensland and supported by international agribusiness financiers, Rabobank Group, Agribusiness '99 will be held at the Brisbane Heritage Hotel.
For more information, contact Professor Longworth (telephone 07 3365 1528 or email j.longworth@mailbox.uq.edu.au).
