Australia: South Australian grain growers are forming a working group to decide the future of barley marketing in their state, ABC National Rural News posted on February 7. The move has brought together three key groups in the industries that have previously been at loggerheads.

The South Australian Farmers Federation, the Single Desk Foundation and the SA Grain Growers Association have now formed a working group, to make recommendations to the annual meeting of SAFF next month. SAFF grains chairman Greg Schulz says one group will be a model for a licensing authority, like that in WA.

"The general consensus was that under the licencing arrangement, we wouldn't accept a licencing arrangement as precisely as has been set up in Western Australia. "We'd need some improvement to that before we'd consider it, particularly in the areas of accountability, both to the principal licence holder and the minor licence holders, and also with the things like the definition of what a market premium is."