Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation.
Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper.

Australia's farmland is on the next frontier in the global race for critical minerals after a $13.5 billion framework agreement was signed by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday.

Stakeholders predict the historic pact will trigger large-scale prospecting across inland Australia's arid and semi-arid basins, whose land use includes major cropping, cattle and grazing districts sitting above what are believed to be some of the world's potentially richest but least-tested mineral belts.

With critical mineral stocks spiking on the ASX following the announcement, Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief executive Warren Pearce predicted the funding and building of new mining projects would become more viable and "indeed things will move very quickly" away from brownfields expansions to new investments with the security of the US now taking Australia's minerals.

The situation has parallels to the uptick in large-scale renewable project investment and approvals following Labor's landslide election win in May, while ringing land use and community engagement alarms in the regions.

Mr Pearce said Australia would likely become the "foundation stone" of a new rare earth supply chain world order, and that other allies would likely follow the US lead.

While regional mining areas like the Pilbara and Mt Isa are well known, and nickel, cobalt and rare earths lie beneath agricultural land from Esperance and Dubbo to Julia Creek and Cleve.

The situation is that most of the easy, or "outcropping" rocks, where solid rock exposed by erosion pokes out of the earth, have been drilled.

Meaning authorities need to find what is currently invisible, and which prompted the scattergun drilling of six million metres nationwide last year.

To target the exploration Geoscience Australia released the first 10-year plan of its 35-year precompetitive Resourcing Australia's Prosperity initiative in August to accelerate the mapping of large sections of "untapped" land for critical mineral, hydrogen, carbon storage and groundwater resource potential.