Crop and horticulture industries in Queensland

With its rich natural environment and favourable climate, Queensland's crop and horticulture industries have a reputation for high-quality produce.

Queensland's plant industries are supported by innovative research and development. They demonstrate best-practice techniques and respond to international and domestic market signals and emerging opportunities.

Horticulture

Queensland is renowned for producing fruit, vegetables and nuts of exceptional quality and taste. Innovations in plant varieties, cultivation, crop protection, supply chain management, best practice and marketing have made Queensland's horticultural industry a world leader.

Field crops

Queensland has a reputation for producing high-quality field crops that are consumed throughout Australia and exported around the world.

Field crops include:

• sugarcane
• cotton
• summer and winter grains
• fodder
• pulse crops.

These crops play a significant role in Queensland's economic, social and cultural fabric. The industry employs thousands of people on the land, in food processing and other areas along the supply chain.

Broadacre cropping is a regulated activity under the Regional Planning Interests Act 2014. Regulated activities may require a regional interests development approval if located within a strategic environmental area.

Bio-based industrial products

Bio-based industrial products (or bioproducts) are industrial and consumer products manufactured from renewable materials using advanced processes.

Queensland has a wealth of natural resources to produce the feedstocks for this emerging industry, including plants such as sorghum, algae, sugar cane, short rotation woody crops and forest waste—all of which can be transformed into plastics, industrial chemicals and aviation fuels.