Global trade meetings are now full of angst: DAFF's Chris Tinning at AMPC conference

This was the report from one of the country's top agriculture trade and market access officials, Chris Tinning, who has just returned from an extensive trip including meetings with European Union leaders and the World Trade Organisation, along with the G20 meeting in Indonesia.

As a 'middle nation', Australia was a voice for the importance of countries not being able to bully or buy their way through these times, he said.

Sectors like red meat need to speak up about the value of trade in protecting food security.

Having those conversations with the importers they work day-to-day with, who then take the message back to their leaders, will go far further than any government-to-government work, Mr Tinning said.

Mr Tinning is the first assistant secretary for trade and market access with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. He heads a team whose work helps Australian primary producers to maintain and expand exports through bilateral, regional, and multilateral engagement. The division includes 22 overseas agriculture counsellors.

He gave a report on his recent geostrategic overseas work at the Australian Meat Processor Corporation's conference in Melbourne this month.

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The huge concern about global food security had been driven by conflict - the effects of events like the war in Ukraine; by climate change; by ongoing disruptions to supply chains post-COVID and by fast-rising costs of living, Mr Tinning said.

"Those issues are resulting in a lot of rips and some short-term reactions and policy settings from governments that are hurting Australian ag's interests," he said.

"A lot of protectionist measures are being imposed in the name of food security - sometimes export bans, sometimes import bans but all barriers to trade aimed at helping grow domestic food industries.

"There is less trust in the multilateral institutions that underpin the rules of global trading.

"We are a trading nation and it is in our interests that those rules are protected.

"Global standards that are so important for trade are definitely being undermined by some of the events happening now."

However, there was a huge opportunity for Australia to play a leadership role, Mr Tinning believes.

"We are a voice for evidence-based decision making and for the importance of trade in protecting global food security," he said.

Mick Johnston, from the country's largest meat and food processing company JBS Australia, also spoke at the conference, saying the way we get ahead of geopolitical issues was to have numerous market options and numerous good relationships.

"We need to find a way to get 70 per cent of our product to overseas markets each year," he said.

"Crucial to that is working closely with the government around both maintaining market access and opening up new opportunities.

"What we are looking for from the government is to keep those close customer countries engaged and to modernise the aging agreements in place."

He said the international commercial world would continue to send Australia's red meat exporters signals about 'where we need to be with our product around sustainability'.

What would be critical in that space is that the producer 'come on the journey too.'

"The livestock sector will need to come too as we head to an open book, transparent, digital platform that provides end-to-end information," he said

Putting up tariff barriers to try to grow a domestic food industry was not a good way of ensuring global food security but that was what is happening in many countries right now, Mr Tinning said.

"It's in our interests as an export nation to be telling the story that trade is good for everyone's food security and is ultimately in everyone's interests," he said.

"It would be very useful for industry to be talking to industry in other countries about these issues because government-to-government engagement has less influence than industry talking to their own governments."

While it remains the case that some exporters, including numerous red meat plants, are blocked from supplying China, Australia had been very successful in diversifying markets, lead by industry, Mr Tinning said.

China's share of Australian exports had fallen from 29pc to 20pc, he reported.

ASEAN as a whole was now a larger customer than China.

"China will remain a valuable market and we are hopeful those restrictions will be lifted, but there has been a lesson in this to ensure we are never overly dependent on one market," Mr Tinning said.

"Geostrategic uncertainty is not going away."