The privatisation of grain handling in New South Wales was taken on by a farmer organisation as a great entrepreneurial opportunity and the capture of a government function to which farmers had been subservient. The Grain Handling Authority, previously known as the Grain Elevators Board, was sold in its corporatised form, the NSW Grain Corporation, by the Prime Wheat Association in 1992. In 2000, it merged with its Victorian counterpart. It merged with Queensland-based Grainco in 2003. In a letter to the Leader of the NSW Opposition, the Prime Wheat Association states:
We appreciate the support of your Party in our objective to acquire NSW Grain Corporation Ltd on behalf of the growers of NSW. It is essential that the privatisation of GrainCorp results in ownership by the users of the system as a natural and logical extension of their production process.
The letter goes on to state that the association has 8000 grower members and has been in existence since 1958. It concludes by saying: ‘Your policy of growers acquiring ownership of GrainCorp as expressed by Mr Jack Hallam, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Forests receives our strong endorsement’ (Parliament of New South Wales 1992).
Elias (2005) reports that only 22 per cent of Graincorp shares are in the hands of farmers, but this does not alter the apparent enthusiasm and competence of a farmer organisation through acquiring not just a business, but a government function, which had been managed from Sydney since 1917. Farmers, at least for a time, placed themselves much further towards the entrepreneurial autonomous ends of the economic and political dimensions of their relationship with metropolitan Australia.