The Birth of Collective Wheat Marketing

Abstract

The previous chapter provided an overview of Australia’s rural policy settings until the late 1950s, indicating that there was a high level of government intervention in the markets for agricultural products with the dual goals of income stabilisation for farmers and fair prices for consumers. The wheat industry was particularly subject to intervention. Early schemes were put in place during both world wars followed by the establishment of the Australian Wheat Board on an ongoing basis in 1948. This chapter discusses the early debates over intervention in the wheat industry, culminating in the passage of the Wheat Stabilization Act 1948 which set up the Australian Wheat Board, and is broadly structured around the themes of the book. It begins with a discussion of the institutional aspects of the wheat marketing arrangements and then considers the nature of the policy community concerned with wheat marketing. It identifies the values that dominated the policy debate at the time collective wheat marketing became institutionalised, followed by a brief discussion of the development of a close cousin of the Australian Wheat Board, the Canadian Wheat Board. The chapter then places these policy developments in the context of international developments in the area of wheat marketing and attempts by both wheat importers and exporters collectively to manage the international wheat trade to their mutual advantage.