Australian Natural Resources Atlas

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Agriculture - Statistics - Far West (SD)

Far West (SD)

Location map for SD: 160

Introduction

Far West Statistical Division covers 18 percent of the State, and with a population of 25,085 persons at 6 August 1996, was the most sparsely populated of the Statistical Divisions in NSW. The population in the Division is declining. This decline, from 1991 to 1996, amounted to a reduction of approximately 1000 persons. Broken Hill(C) contains 85.1 per cent of the population in the Division.

The Division comprises the City of Broken Hill, the Shire of Central Darling, and all of the unincorporated area of New South Wales. It is bounded by the Queensland and South Australian borders in the north and west, by the boundaries of the shires of Wentworth and Balranald in the south, and the shires of Bourke, Cobar, and Carrathool in the east. The Darling River passes through the region from the north east to the south. To the west of the river, the very flat plains give way to gentle slopes reaching the low, geologically ancient Barrier Range on which stands Broken Hill, the only sizeable city in the far west. The climate is of semi-arid desert type. Temperatures range from hot in summer to cool to mild in winter. The average annual rainfall is in the range of 200-250 millimetres, with the maximum rainfall occurring in summer. The western railway line, which is part of the Sydney to Perth.

The most significant rural activity in the Division during 1994-95 was sheep and lambs, numbering 2.5 million or 5.9 percent of the State's flock.

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

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

Statistics

Area of region (ha): 14,685,245.11

Area

Cattle and Calves

Cereals excluding Rice

Citrus

Cotton

Grapes

Oilseeds

Other Livestock

Other Vegetables

Pastures

Pigs

Sales of Livestock

Sheep and Lambs

Stone Fruit

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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