Earlier this month Parkes MP Mark Coulton announced the federal government had awarded a $169,300 grant to the Constructive Farming Cooperative to undertake a national scoping and feasibility study.

Constructive Farming Cooperative secretary Bruce Maynard said the project aims to “fully scope and study the feasibility of increasing the supply along all elements of the chain of organic grain production”.

“We’re developing up systems that support people through the process of moving towards these new innovative systems,” he said.

“The economic driver is there and the environmental and social drivers are there as well but sometimes that’s not enough. We need the support systems to help people achieve these new methods.”

He said there was substantial interest from farmers to produce organically certified grains and the demand was there, but there were still “many” challenges, including the fact that a reliance on natural processes meant “the amount produced in any one area can vary more widely than conventional approaches”.

“So we need supply coming from all parts of Australia in order that processors have more certainty and they can produce more products,” Mr Maynard said

“The nexus that has been there for quite a while is that people would like to produce, and gain the higher economic returns from this, but the certainty has not been there on the processing side.

“So it’s chicken and egg. There needs to be more production before the processors will offer contracts and they won’t offer that until they’re assured of more broad scale production.”

Speaking of chickens, Mr Maynard said an increase in organic grain production could have flow-on effects for other sectors of the agriculture industry.

Many pork and chicken producers in particular were keen to go organic, but were also limited by uncertainty in the supply chain.

The feasibility study is set to be completed by April, 2018, after which the reigns will be handed over to industry to invest.

Mr Maynard said a thriving organic sector would add another string to the bow of Australia’s agricultural exports, and help to boost rural and regional economies in the process.

“We’re dealing with the high end of production here …  focusing on quality rather and quantity, so nutrient dense foods rather than mass-produced foods,” he said.

“This is a worldwide trend – the increased demand but the fairly static supply of high value grains – so this is an opportunity for Australia to continue to fill these niches and especially with our ongoing and opening trade relationships into Asia.”