New national mapping shows that 37% of Australia's cropped land meets the dual test of strong long-term yields and frequent cropping.
DAS (Digital Agriculture Services) defined prime cropping land as country that does two things at once: yields well and crops often. To qualify, land needed a long-term average wheat yield of 2.75 tonnes per hectare or more across 2018 to 2025, and a cropping intensity of 60% or more. This means at least 60% of paddock area carried a winter or following-summer crop in a typical year from 2021 to 2025.
The analysis puts the national prime area at 9.7 million hectares, 37% of the 26.6 million hectares cropped in an average year across the five mainland cropping states between 2021 and 2025. New South Wales holds the largest prime area of any state at 3.4 million hectares, ahead of Western Australia with 3.0 million hectares.
DAS's Head of Data Science, Sam Atkinson, who ran the analysis, said it shows Australia's best cropping country sits in a handful of regions, and that averages taken across whole districts hide a good deal of it.
"People talk about the wheatbelt as though it's one thing, but it isn't. Some country yields well but isn't cropped intensively. Other areas are heavily cropped most years but at lower yields. We found 37% of the cropped area achieves both, and we are calling those areas prime cropping country.
"This matters because this is some of Australia's most productive agricultural land, and it isn't evenly distributed. Understanding exactly where it sits, how productive it is, and how that changes over time is important to recognise.
"That's why this has to be measured and tracked rather than assumed. DAS uses AI and geospatial technology to record crop type and yield paddock by paddock, season by season, and connects that productivity history with climate data at property, district and portfolio scale."
District averages hide some of Australia's best cropping country
The analysis found that prime cropping land does not always sit within districts that are themselves prime on their whole-of-district average.
Wheat yield and cropping intensity were measured in 10 km grid cells covering Australia's broadacre cropping regions, and separately for each Local Government Area (LGA) using the same paddock data. The prime area shown for each LGA is the cropped area of the prime grid cells whose centre falls inside it.
Only 61% of Australia's prime cropping land sits inside the 46 LGAs that qualify as prime based on their whole-of-LGA averages. The remaining 39% sits within districts that fall short on at least one of the two measures.
Atkinson said the finding demonstrates the limitations of relying on broad geographic averages to understand individual areas of agricultural land.
"Climate and soils don't align by local government area or postcode. An average across a whole district can conceal enormous differences in the paddocks and businesses inside it."
From asking what is happening to observing it in near real time
DAS co-founder Sarah Gorman said the findings point to a much broader shift in how Australia can understand its agricultural land, and raise the question of why we're still surveying farmers for information we can increasingly observe directly.
DAS's latest analysis grew out of a bid to verify current public information on this unusual winter grain season, amid ongoing uncertainty around fertiliser supplies and a spike in global wheat prices.
"It is staggering to see how many decisions are being made off the back of literal guesswork or farmer surveys when the technology exists to accurately pinpoint what is growing in each paddock," Gorman said.
"Australia operates one of the most technologically advanced agricultural sectors in the world, with AI, satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence fundamentally shifting what we can know. We can increasingly see what is being grown, where it is being grown and how productive that land is, and make decisions about land use based on data rather than assumptions.
"Technology is changing the nature of information itself, from periodic and aggregated to increasingly current, granular and location-specific. What's more, this season should be a wake-up call to adjust our methods and leverage new technologies, especially as chronic climate change reshapes what is normal for agricultural production."
DAS Grain Intelligence uses AI, satellite imagery and geospatial analytics to provide crop area, crop type, yield, production and harvest intelligence across Australia's major cropping regions, supported by up to 20 years of historical productivity data.
Gorman said the need for that intelligence increasingly extends well beyond the farm gate.
"Farmers are flooded with on-farm technology, but the biggest decisions affecting the future of Australian agriculture are being made off-farm. The issue isn't more data for data's sake. It's current, local, defensible location intelligence at the point a decision is being made, replacing assumptions and guesswork with evidence.
"Critically, much of that intelligence can now be generated without asking farmers to do anything more. The objective should be better intelligence with less reporting burden."
Ranking each state
New South Wales holds the most prime cropping country at 3.4 million hectares, followed by Western Australia on 3.0 million, Victoria on 1.6 million, South Australia on 1.1 million and Queensland on 0.5 million. New South Wales also has the highest share of any state, with 46% of its cropped area classed as prime.
| State | Wheat yield (t/ha) | Cropping intensity (%) | Cropped area (Mha) | Prime area (Mha) | Prime share of cropped area (%) | Prime LGAs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | 2.71 | 56 | 7.5 | 3.4 | 46 | 11 |
| QLD | 2.37 | 32 | 2.0 | 0.5 | 26 | 1 |
| SA | 2.19 | 51 | 4.0 | 1.1 | 27 | 6 |
| VIC | 2.93 | 54 | 4.2 | 1.6 | 39 | 4 |
| WA | 2.46 | 70 | 9.0 | 3.0 | 34 | 24 |
| Australia | 2.57 | 55 | 26.6 | 9.7 | 37 | 46 |
Wheat yield is the 2018 to 2025 average, cropping intensity the 2021 to 2025 average, and cropped area the annual average over 2021 to 2025. State rows are rounded to one decimal place and so do not sum exactly to the national row; the unrounded figures do.
Where the prime country sits
The largest continuous block runs across the north-west plains of New South Wales, from Walgett through Moree and Narrabri to Gunnedah and the Liverpool Plains, and over the border to Goondiwindi and the Darling Downs.
- Moree Plains (NSW): 839,000 ha of prime cropping land, 92% of its cropped area and more than any other LGA in the country
- Walgett (NSW): 337,000 ha, 77% of its cropped area
- Narrabri (NSW): 267,000 ha, 85% of its cropped area
- Liverpool Plains (NSW): 77,900 ha, 74% of its cropped area
Beyond the northern block
- Victoria: prime country is concentrated in the Wimmera and Southern Mallee, where Yarriambiack holds 348,000 ha
- South Australia: prime country runs from the lower Eyre Peninsula across to Yorke Peninsula and north through the Mid North
- Western Australia: the biggest block is on the south coast and Great Southern, with Esperance alone holding 444,000 ha
Even the best country is exposed to changing conditions
Across the 46 prime LGAs, all averaging 2.75 tonnes per hectare or better over eight seasons, wheat yields fell as low as 0.79 tonnes per hectare in a single season.
Twenty of the 46 held their worst-season yield at 2 tonnes per hectare or above, and 14 of those are in Western Australia. Eight fell below 1 tonnes per hectare, six of them in New South Wales, including Urana at 0.79 tonnes per hectare in 2018 and Moree Plains at 0.86 tonnes per hectare in 2019.
For 39 of the 46 districts, the worst season was 2018 or 2019: 21 of them in Western Australia, reflecting WA's own 2019 drought, and 11 in NSW, all of the state's prime districts, in the 2018 and 2019 droughts there. Four districts recorded their worst season in 2024, three of them in South Australia.
The gap between a long-term average and a worst season shows how exposed a district is to a single bad season, its drought risk. It is not a measure of chronic climate risk, the long-run shift in rainfall and temperature; that needs a longer record than the eight seasons in this analysis.
"An eight-year average tells you what land is capable of. It doesn't tell you what happens in a bad year," Atkinson said.
"Moree Plains LGA holds more prime cropping area than anywhere else in the country, 839,000 hectares, 92% of what it crops. Even there, yield fell to 0.86 tonnes per hectare in 2019. For a grower, a grain trader planning supply, a lender assessing default risk or an investor pricing an asset, that worst-year number is what they can plan around."
The analysis measures wheat yield and cropping frequency only. It does not account for the yields of other significant crops such as cotton, or for profitability, soil type, rainfall or land value.
Gorman said this was ultimately why more current agricultural intelligence mattered.
"Near real-time data isn't valuable simply because it's faster. It's valuable because it can change a decision. Whether that decision is about grain availability, infrastructure, investment, risk or competing land use, the value of data is greatest before the decision is made, not a year afterwards."
Media contact:
Harrison Polites
+61 409 623 618
harrison@nomen.partners
About DAS
DAS (Digital Agriculture Services) is an agri-fintech and proptech company transforming how financial systems and governments locate, finance, insure and invest in rural assets and portfolios. Its Rural Intelligence Platform™ serves over 120 clients, including state and federal governments, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Rabobank, Ray White Group, IAG, Nutrien and Viterra, along with small and medium businesses, integrating intelligence on climate risk, productivity, sustainability and carbon to help them lend, insure, invest and sell better. DAS was recognised in the Deloitte Access Economics Impact of Fintech in Australia report (2026) as a company transforming insurance and credit decisions in the agriculture sector, making farmland more insurable, financeable and fairly priced.