Yesterday it was merely the price of houses (discussed in the AFR today). Now it is our dairy farms that will have, so far as I can tell, absolutely no Australian content or input other than the physical existence on this continent.

ONE of China’s biggest milk companies is buying up dairy farms in Australia, convinced it can generate higher milk production and bigger profits here than most local dairy farmers are achieving.

The Ningbo Dairy Group says that to produce as much fresh milk as it would like to fly to China from its Victorian farms, profitably and rapidly, it needs to bring in Chinese employees, fast-track construction of a new milk processing plant and cut through government red tape. . . .

Ningbo Dairy vice-president Harry Wang said the key to its profitable Australian dairy investment lay in vertically integrating the group’s Australian operations, with it owning and controlling all parts of the supply chain.

They come here, bring their own workers, build their own infrastructure and export the produce back home. What’s in it for us I am not at all sure. He does, of course, put his finger on the problem faced by our own domestic producers:

The downside of Australian dairying to the Chinese newcomers is the low milk price paid by Australian processors to farmers, high labour costs, excessive red tape, a slowness to innovate and the lack of good young workers.

I will just repeat my conclusion from yesterday’s post. We used to pay for our balance of payments deficits through increased investment and the revenues that previous investments had brought about. Now we pay for our imports by selling off the farm. The first could go on for ever and made us prosperous. The second will be a disaster but no one is willing to stop the inbound flow of funds.