I'd say Mr Ruthven has set out to denigrate Australian agriculture with this article right from the start. He hasn't even got his facts right, probably on purpose.
I thought our total GDP was less than a trillion. CIA the world fact book says it's 880 billion. If total agricultural production equals 57 billion as he says, and I reckon that's about right as agricultural prices are better than average at the moment, then it's a hell of a lot more than 2%. I havn't got a calculator, but I can see it's at least 6% easy.
And lets not forget that GDP is a measure of total goods and services. It includes everything. It includes all services, so it includes unproductive things like someone buying a coffee at a coffee shop.
