WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Forty per cent of Australia’s food is produced in the NSW electorate of Farrer.
OUR VERDICT
False. The real figure is around six per cent.
AAP FACTCHECK - One Nation MP David Farley has falsely claimed his electorate of Farrer produces 40 per cent of all Australia's food.
An expert who has studied agriculture and the Murray-Darling Basin says Mr Farley's claim is "grossly overestimated".
The real figure is around six per cent when calculated by gross value, the expert said.
Mr Farley, who was elected to the House of Representatives in the Farrer by-election in May 2026, made the claim during an interview on ABC TV's Insiders program on August 23.
"I've got the full support of the party to pursue what I'm doing, especially for Farrer," Mr Farley said in the interview (timestamp 27 minutes 45 seconds).
"Forty per cent of the nation's food comes out of Farrer, so it's pretty important."
Mr Farley has also previously used the 40 per cent figure in regard to the Southern Basin, which consists of the southern half of the Murray-Darling Basin.
The basin is an agriculture-heavy region of south-eastern Australia and the Southern Basin is around four times larger than Farrer.
For example, in a June 28 Facebook video, he said (timestamp 0:16): "The Southern Basin produces around 40 per cent of Australia's food".
Mr Farley did not respond when AAP FactCheck asked him to clarify his claims.
Regardless of whether he is referring to Farrer or the Southern Basin, his claim is wrong.
The 40 per cent figure broadly matches the proportion of Australia's agriculture produced in the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin, an area that includes most of NSW and Victoria and is around eight times larger than Farrer.
The Murray-Darling Basin covers just over one million square kilometres, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
It includes around 75 per cent of New South Wales, more than 50 per cent of Victoria, 15 per cent of Queensland, eight per cent of South Australia and all of the Australian Capital Territory, according to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
It also contains 40 per cent of all Australian farms, according to the authority.
The Farrer electorate, which sits entirely within the basin, covers around 126,000 square kilometres, according to the Australian Electoral Commission, meaning it makes up around one-eighth of the basin.
Sarah Wheeler, a water economics professor at Flinders University, said the most recent reliable estimate of food production by local area came from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Agricultural Census 2021 data.
The data lists the gross value of agricultural output in certain statistical areas, including crops, fruit and nuts, vegetables, dairy, eggs and slaughtered livestock.
Prof Wheeler said monetary value was the best way to estimate food products that are measured in different units, such as tonnes, litres and livestock numbers.
While the ABS data did not report agricultural output by electorate, an estimate for Farrer could be calculated by adding data from 48 smaller statistical areas (SA2s) that fall wholly or partly within Mr Farley's electorate, Prof Wheeler said.
ABS defines SA2s as medium-sized geographic areas with a population between 3000 and 25,000 people.
Prof Wheeler said her team estimated how much of each SA2 fell within the Farrer electorate, and assumed agriculture was distributed evenly across those border areas.
Based on that analysis, carried out exclusively for AAP FactCheck, Prof Wheeler and her team estimated the gross value of agricultural production in Farrer was around $4.4 billion in 2021.
The gross value of all Australian agricultural production was $71 billion in the same year, meaning Farrer accounted for around 6.2 per cent of the total output.
Prof Wheeler said that while her estimate had a likely margin of error of around one to two per cent, it was clear Mr Farley was wrong.
"Overall, it's safe to assume that the figure of 40 per cent of Australia's food production value is grossly overestimated," Prof Wheeler told AAP FactCheck.
The ABS data shows the whole Murray-Darling Basin region produced $30 billion of agriculture in 2021, which is around 42 per cent of the Australian total.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority also says around 40 per cent of Australia's agricultural produce comes from the Basin, "including 100 per cent of our rice, 74 per cent of our grapes and 30 per cent of our dairy".
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