THERE was a time when sometime farmer and business maverick John Elliott was going to Fosterise the world.

The big blue Australian logo turned up everywhere, from the Melbourne Cup to Monte Carlo.

But has it all come back to bite us on the agricultural backside?

Not only has a demerger of Foster's made the beer producer, and sometime wine maker, vulnerable to takeover, it also makes it just one of a rash of major Australian brands being, or potentially about to be, gobbled up by global heavyweights.

Viterra purchased ABB grain. Fellow Canadian Agrium snatched AWB - and got Landmark as part of the deal.

Before flogging off its commodity management business to Cargill.

Now Spain's Ebro wants NSW rice processor SunRice.

Middle East interests own a big slice of Australian Agricultural Company, the nation's biggest beef cattle herd.

International buyers, led increasingly by China, are also buying up farming land.

Brazil's JBS Friboi almost overnight became Australia's biggest red-meat processor.

But beware Cargill - the world's second-largest beef trader - which last week took over 50 per cent of Teys and now controls 20 per cent of the Australian market.

The money in Australian agriculture is good and shareholders are swooning at the mega-millions. But is our agricultural independence being thrown out with the bath water? Almost certainly.

One of Australia's claims to global agricultural fame is that, given normal to good seasons, it is a surplus producer. Which, in a world searching for food security, makes us increasingly appealing.

So at what point is enough actually enough?

Are we able to maintain our own agribusiness and remain not just viable, but increasingly profitable as demanded by shareholders?

Do we need government intervention to provide balance or do we, as the economists would like us to believe, let market forces manage the market?

Whatever the decision, it will need to be made soon.