Australian farmers propose new wheat export body

Australia's major farm groups agreed on a new plan for Australia's monopoly wheat exports on Sunday, proposing a new business be set up to manage the so called "single desk".
The new organisation would have control of Australia's bulk wheat exports, after the government stripped former monopoly exporter AWB Ltd. of the single desk when AWB was found to have bribed the former Iraqi government to secure sales.
Under the new plan, put forward by the newly formed Wheat Export Marketing Alliance, AWB would still be able to bid for lucrative contracts for services such as marketing, ship chartering and trade finance.
"We intend to commence negotiations with AWB and other potential providers for contestable services," Wheat Export Marketing Alliance head Graham Blight, a former National Farmers Federation president, told Reuters on Sunday.
The new model still needs government approval, but Blight said his organisation had a "very positive" response from both government and business.
The Wheat Export Marketing Alliance is composed of Australia's key farm and grain groups from Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia states.
The government in May decided to maintain the national monopoly export system, but to move it to a new independent grower-owned group next year. It set a March 1, 2008, deadline for farmers to set up a new entity to manage the single desk.
The model recommended by the farmer organisations through the Wheat Export Alliance is seen most likely to be accepted by the government, although agreement by scandal-tainted AWB is also a key element.
AWB last month abandoned a plan to hive-off subsidiary AWB International, which it had hoped could then bid to operate the monopoly, because of the costs and complexity.
The United States, the world's leading wheat exporter, strongly opposes the wheat export monopoly system operated by Australia, as the world's second-biggest wheat exporter.
Australian wheat growers strongly support the monopoly system, although many no longer favour its operation by AWB after revelations of the group's secret payments to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.