In 2003/04, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Kimberley Development Commission estimated that there were approximately 170 agricultural establishments in the Kimberley, covering 23 million hectares and representing around half of the Region's total land mass.

The value of agriculture production has fluctuated over the years. In 1994/95, the value was $71.6 million, gradually increasing to $126.8 million 2000/01, before declining to $95.9 million in 2003/04. The total value of agriculture is largely split between crops and livestock, dominated by the beef cattle industry.

Crop production is dominated by the Region's largest irrigated agricultural project, the Ord River Irrigation Area, located near Kununurra. There are also horticultural activities undertaken in the West Kimberley, near Broome and Derby.

East Kimberley - Ord River Irrigation Area (ORIA)
The Ord River Irrigation Area includes approximately 14,000 hectares of developed land, which has access to considerable water resources from Lake Argyle on the Ord River. In 1995/96 the crop area was 9,714 hectares, which increased to 12,298 hectares in 2004/05.

The Department of Agriculture Western Australia estimates that sugar production accounts for approximately one third, by area, of the cultivated land in the ORIA, with a range of crops grown on the remaining two thirds. These crops include chickpeas, sorghum seed, melons, pumpkins, mangoes, bananas, citrus, irrigated pasture and tropical forests. There is potential for the sugar crop to expand further with the development of the Ord River Stage 2 Irrigation Scheme.

Crops grown in the ORIA are in a period of transition, which has seen a decline in the total value of production over the five years to 2003/04. Conventional horticulture crops, with an annual crop cycle, are being replaced by perennial tree crops, which take six to eight years to grow to a commercially harvestable size. The expansion of sandalwood plantations with long-term growing cycles (over 18 years) will cause the trend for the value of production to remain lower until this tree crop is harvested. The value of production as a consequence has fallen from $67.5 million in 1999/00, to $46.6 million in 2003/04. However, despite these developments the value of production rose in 2004/05 to $53.6 million, a 15 per cent increase over the previous year. This is due to the supply of high quality pumpkins and melons which led to exceptional market prices and good return to the growers.

In 2004/05, the ORIA crops consisted of sugar ($16.1 million), melons ($12.2 million), mangoes ($1.9 million), hybrid seeds ($3.6 million), pumpkins ($9.0 million), bananas ($0.5 million) and other (a range of crops grown in smaller quantities with an aggregate value of $10.4 million). Beef fattened on irrigated pastures and leucaena had a combined value of $1.5 million (included in other).

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West Kimberley - Horticulture
There is a relatively small horticulture industry operating near Broome and Derby in the West Kimberley currently producing mangoes, melons, bananas and irrigated pasture seeds.

Pastoral Industry
The pastoral industry is one of the Region's most established industries, with the first herds arriving in the 1880s following the overland movement of cattle from Queensland and New South Wales.

The Department of Agriculture reports that there are an estimated 100 pastoral stations in the Region. The value of cattle disposals from the Region was $48.0 million in 2003/04, being 9.7 per cent of the State total. This value has increased to between $60 to $70 million in 2004/05. The Department also estimates that the Kimberley herd of beef cattle is around 600,000, representing around 30 per cent of the total State herd.

Most cattle turnoff from the Kimberley is exported live to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East. In 2003/04, approximately 128,000 Kimberley cattle were exported live from the Region. A further 36,000 were sold as store cattle (transferred from one station to another) and 10,000 to abattoirs.

The live cattle trade is expected to increase in 2005/06, following the signing of recent agreements with Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Source: Kimberley Economic Perspective