Opening the Australian Cotton Conference on Queensland's Gold Coast, National Farmers' Federation president Ian Donges said half of Australia's current exports to Asia were already made up of products from intensive agriculture and processed products, including cotton, sugar, dairy, wine, fish and forestry.

Donges contrasted this with recent developments in Australia's embattled wool industry, part of the unprocessed products category.

"The recent decision to freeze the wool stockpile...sent the wrong kinds of signals about how farmers in Australia want to market what they produce," he said.

"The problems in the wool industry will continue to manifest themselves unless the industry adopts more streamlined selling arrangements," he said.

In addition to the intensive agriculture and processed products which form half ofAustralia's agricultural exports, Australia also exported A$1.5 billion worth of horticultural and highly processed food products, with exports growing strongly, he said.

Globally the nature of agricultural exports was changing, with horticultural exports alone increasing from seven percent to 18 per cent of the value of all agricultural exports over the past decade, he said.

"For many reasons the focus on (Australia's) comparative advantages in producing broad acre, bulk commodities will shift towards products which can be differentiated through the addition of marketing services and intellectual property."

He said 77 per cent of the price of a bottle of wine was attributed to bottles, labels, marketing services, capital and "know-how".

Australia faced opportunities to increase its access at the top end of agricultural markets, he said. The Asian food market would approach A$1,000 billion a year by year 2000 with Australia supplying a range of products to more than 25 Asian countries, hesaid.

"Most growth in Australian agriculture will be in the areas which excel in marketing," Donges said.

Sugar was an example, with Australia achieving success in marketing sugar by differentiating the product and providing high levels of service in terms of delivery, forward contracts, guarantees of quality and efficient shipping.