Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his government “wants to back people who are prepared to back themselves”, and that a newly released vision for Australian agriculture will do just that.

But the Opposition has criticised the plan, saying it failed to deliver the broad strategic plan that Australian agriculture needs, while the Greens have slammed the absence of climate change considerations in the document.

The government’s long-awaited Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper outlines a range of tax reforms designed to help farmers put more money aside in good times, to support themselves when things turn bad.

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Mr Abbott said agriculture “is one of the sunrise industries of our country”, and that the White Paper will support farmers in producing the high quality food the world needs.

“Thanks to what this government has done with three free trade agreements, our food exports are increasingly significantly and substantially,” Mr Abbott said.

“Thanks to the innovations that this White Paper has announced, things will go from strength to strength here on the land.”

National Farmers Federation president Brent Finlay welcomed the tax reforms in the White Paper, particularly moves to increase access to Farm Management Deposits (FMDs) and changes to allow farmers to use those deposits to offset business loans and reduce their interest costs.

“These changes will help strengthen the resilience of farm businesses, and ensure farmers get a fairer deal from their banks, allowing investments to offset farm debt,” Mr Findlay said.

The White Paper also contains $300 million in new money for dams and irrigation projects, although there is no firm decision yet on which projects may be funded.

Mr Abbott said he expected that any successful water projects would be partnerships between the Commonwealth and state governments, as well as the private sector.

“If you’ve got skin in the game, you’re going to work very hard to make the investment work out and that normally means that it makes sense to put a bit of Commonwealth money in, because there are people who are serious about the investment,” Mr Abbott said.

White Paper lacks strategic visions: Labor

Labor’s agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon welcomed changes to the Farm Management Deposit scheme and the installation of five new overseas trade counsellors to increase Australia’s access to export markets.

But he said the White Paper failed to deliver a strategic vision for agriculture, instead providing “a grab bag of initiatives, some good, some bad, many on the never-never, some contingent on state government contributions which are quite unlikely”.

He said the plan included little to reverse Australia’s declining agricultural productivity, with insufficient focus on building skills and training and a comparatively small investment in rural R&D that was outweighed by recent cuts to the sector.

Mr Fitzgibbon said Labor “believes dams have a role to play” in Australia’s agricultural future, but said the government’s approach to dam building lacked focus on improving soils.

“We can improve our soils faster than we can build dams,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.

“What (Mr Abbott) doesn’t say is that dams from the point of inception to construction will take a decade at least, and he knows he has no fiscal commitment there over that period of time. It’s on the never-never.

“But we do have to have a regulatory process, an approvals process.

“Dams do have other environmental implications, and I think that as a community, we are right to take those into consideration as well.”

Climate change considerations absent from White Paper: Greens

The Greens’ agriculture spokeswoman Senator Rachel Siewert said the absence of climate change considerations from the White Paper meant the document was “fundamentally flawed”.

She also flagged concern about the environmental impact of major dam expansions, which she says “doesn’t seem to be factored into the thinking” in the White Paper.

“But more importantly, they haven’t considered the impact of climate change on water supply and dams,” she said.

“Of course we need to be bettered prepared for drought, but drought isn’t the only thing that we address in climate change.

“Extreme weather events need to be factored in properly, planning for what our agriculture will look like in a drying climate and in a changing climate, but that’s not there.”

“Climate change will shape the future of agriculture and it is fundamentally missing in here. The fact that it’s not acknowledged says a lot about where this government’s head is at.”