Mr Broad returned from his visit to Argentina and Chile this week.

He said he embarked on the tour because of his role as secretary of the government’s foreign affairs trade, tourism and investment committee.

“What I try to do most years is self-fund a trip to look at marketing opportunities for Australia,” he said.

“We’ve recently signed a free-trade agreement with Peru, which will allow us to export wheat to the country.

“We have also just signed a trans-pacific partnership with Chile, which includes trading opportunities.

“Argentina has recently had a change of government and the country is becoming a lot more open to the world.”

Mr Broad said while Chile was mostly a mining country, Argentina was ‘agriculturally rich’.

“They have two metres of top soil and if they don’t get 800 millimetres of rain in a year, they don’t worry about farming the land,” he said.

Mr Broad said farmers in Argentina were looking at ways to grow three crops in two years.

“They are exploring double cropping, growing soy beans, corn and wheat,” he said.

“They also have a significant cattle industry.”

Mr Broad said there were opportunities for Australia to work with Argentina.

“The opportunities for us are in genetics, technology exchange and training,” he said.

“We also have trade opportunities with Peru when looking at exporting wheat.”

Mr Broad said overall the tour was a chance look at what other countries do agriculturally.

“The farmer in me was inspired – I was very jealous of their soils,” he said.

“Sometimes we think of these countries as being backwards in terms of agricultural techniques, but they are really not.

“However, their infrastructure is worse than ours.”

Mr Broad said silo bags, which were used frequently in the Wimmera, were a South American invention.

“They came up with the bags because they couldn’t drive their trucks down the roads to the silos,” he said.

Mr Broad said Wimmera farmers had more access to overseas markets now than before.

“If we look at chickpeas and lentils at the moment, we are quite constrained with exporting them into India,” he said.

“India grew a lot of chickpeas and lentils themselves, so they put tariffs on exports this year.

“The best thing we can do now is find other markets because we never want to be reliant on just one market.

“We spend a lot of time focused on Asia, but we haven’t really engaged with Latin America.”