State Planning Policy No. 2.5 - Rural Planning.

The purpose of this policy is to protect and preserve Western Australia’s rural land assets due to the importance of their economic, natural resource, food production, environmental and landscape values. Ensuring broad compatibility between land uses is essential to delivering this outcome (pag. 1). The objectives of this policy are to perform the following activities: support existing, expanded and future primary production through the protection of rural land, particularly priority agricultural land and land required for animal premises and/or food production; provide investment security for existing, expanded and future primary production and promote economic growth and regional development on rural land for rural land uses; outside of the Perth and Peel planning regions, secure significant basic raw material resources and provide for their extraction; provide a planning framework that comprehensively considers rural land and land uses, and facilitates consistent and timely decision-making; avoid and minimise land use conflicts; promote sustainable settlement in, and adjacent to, existing urban areas; and protect and sustainably manage environmental, landscape and water resource assets (pag. 4).
Intensive agricultural products are important contributors to the State’s economy and are sold to domestic and export markets. In order to operate effectively, producers may require areas of high agricultural productivity, water availability, suitable climatic conditions and ready access to markets and freight networks. In order to operate effectively, producers may require areas of high agricultural productivity, water availability, suitable climatic conditions and ready access to markets and freight networks (pag. 8). This policy is given effect by the Planning and Development Act 2005. The appropriate planning instruments to protect rural land and land uses are: State and regional strategies, region schemes, local planning strategies, local planning schemes, local planning policies, structure plans, subdivision and development applications (pag. 11).