Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has arrived in China with the message for Chinese farmers that Australian imports are not a threat.
The issue remains a key stumbling block to the coveted free trade agreement between the countries, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
"We are not a threat," Joyce told reporters in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, a major agricultural hub in China's north-east.
"The people of China can rely on the fact that Australia doesn't have a hope in Hades of feeding the whole of the Chinese population – not even a portion of it."
Joyce has focused on Australia’s role as a producer of premium quality agricultural produce in recent weeks, straying away from the “food bowl of Asia” notion.
The Chinese government in particular is concerned over the impact of an increase in Australian beef on its local market.
Touring the city's iconic Harbin Brewery, which was founded in 1900 and now uses Australian barley in its brew, and the Tianshunyuan meat processing plant, the largest importer of Australian sheep meat, on Monday, Joyce said even if Australia doubled its agricultural output it would still only be enough to feed 120 million people, a fraction of the populations of key neighbors China and Indonesia.
The dairy industry would benefit greatly from a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), with milk selling in China for as much as $8 a litre.
The Australian Dairy Farmers’ (ADF) selfie campaign, recently ran a social media campaign aimed at generating support for a FTA with China, which reached over 1.6 million Twitter users.
On Monday (1 September), Australian Dairy Farmers called upon Australians to upload a #FTA4dairy ‘selfie’ holding a sign incorporating the #FTA4dairy hashtag and a positive message about the China FTA.