Trade deals aplenty, investment less so

Australia has scored major trade deals that will boost the agriculture industry, but Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is perplexed by the lack of investment in the sector by domestic superannuation funds.

Australia has settled free-trade agreements while South Korea, Japan and China while signing-up to Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"Work on other trade deals continue," Mr Joyce, who is also the agriculture minister, told the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences' annual conference in Canberra on Tuesday.

But while those agreements "may be cutting the ribbon on the bridge", investment by the $2 trillion superannuation industry was minuscule.

Foreign investors were more likely to purchase agricultural assets than Australian investors at a time when the sector was the second-largest exporter behind iron ore and now ahead of coal.

"We have to make sure that we create a culture where investment in the agriculture portfolio is just as logical as investment in the iron ore portfolio or coal portfolio," Mr Joyce said.

People were "quite shocked" when they heard their super fund had such little interest in agriculture.

"I truly believe Australian people want more than 0.3 of one per cent of their superannuation invested in agriculture," Mr Joyce later told reporters.