Agriculture - Statistics - New South Wales

New South Wales

Introduction

New South Wales covers an area of 801,600 sq km, has 1,900 km of coastline and comprises 10.44% of the total Australian area. It is also the most populated state.

The climate varies with the landscape; sub-tropical along the north coast, temperate on the south coast, hot, dry summers in the north-west, and the high country has cold, sharp winters with extremes of cold in the highest Alpine areas. Sydney has a mid-summer average of 25.7 degrees, a mid-winter average of 15.8 degrees, and sunshine 342 days a year.

In 1770 Captain James Cook took possession of New South Wales for England. He designated it as all the land east of Longitude 135 east. In January 1788, 1000 people, 750 of them convicts, led by Governor Arthur Phillip established the first settlement. In 1813 Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson crossed the Blue Mountains in the Great Dividing Range and settlements expanded into the rich grazing plains to the west of the mountains. Transportation of convicts ended in 1840, and the gold rushes of the 1850s led to much development throughout the State. Responsible government was granted in 1856.

The State divides itself into four natural regions. The fertile coastal region which supports most of the population and has New South Wales' industrial heart in the area between Newcastle and Wollongong-Port Kembla, the high tablelands and peaks of the Great Dividing Range where Mount Kosciusko, Australia's highest mountain, rises to 2228 metres, the pastoral and farming country of the Range's western slopes, and the huge dusty plain that stretches westward to the South Australian border.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data has been analysed by the Bureau of Rural Sciences using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available from the Australian Spatial Data Directory

Select one of the following Statistical Divisions to view information for that region:

The figures and text are reproduced with permission of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, © Commonwealth of Australia, 2000.

Statistics

Area of region (ha): 80,073,801.90

Area

Total Area of Holdings with Agricultural Activity (Value in 1996/1997 = 61,008,553 )

Agroforestry

Apples

Berry Fruit

Cattle and Calves

Cereals excluding Rice

Citrus

Cotton

Grapes

Legumes

Nuts

Oilseeds

Other Livestock

Other Non-Cereal Crops

Other Vegetables

Pastures

Pears

Pigs

Number of Pigs (Value in 1996/1997 = 710,289 )

Plantation Fruit

Potatoes

Poultry

Rice

Sales of Livestock

Sheep and Lambs

Stone Fruit

Sugar Cane

Further information

Please Note: Not all the selected data items are available for every year or for every statistical region.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data have been analysed by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia to report them using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available through the Australian Spatial Data Directory.

The subset includes 436 data items for plant production and 40 data items for livestock which were commonly available in the AgStats database over the 15 year period and each year for respondents having an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) above the cut-off of $22,500.

The data have been concorded by bringing data collected using different geographies to a consistent geographic base, being Version 2.6 Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries (ABS, 1996) and using the non-agricultural lands mask from the National Land and Water Resources Audit's National Landuse Map (1996/1997).

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