THE Northern Australia Food Futures Conference being held at the Darwin Convention Centre on November 3 – 5 will bring together agricultural companies, successful producers, government and research organisations from across northern Australia to discuss opportunities to grow the cropping and horticulture industries.
Conference Convenor and retired mango farmer, Mr Ian Baker, said the idea for the conference has been driven by a group of farmers from the Northern Territory Farmers Association and is starting to generate some interest and excitement.
“This will be the first time in 30 years that the northern Australian agriculture industry has come together to discuss our future,” Mr Baker said.
“There’s been a lot of focus and talk about the Asian century and the opportunities it presents for Australia,” he said.
“We’re hoping the conference will help us to explore the opportunities and influence thinking and decision making around the market and economic drivers for growth, rather than just simply looking at resources.
“We need to ensure the right policy settings, so we can turn some of these opportunities into reality.”
The first day of the conference will focus on broad sector issues while the second day will involve commodity sessions with an emphasis on cotton, sugar, horticulture, grains, fodder and niche crops such as guar, chia, forestry, aromatic rice and peanuts.
Discussions will also centre on the markets that present the best opportunities for northern Australia agriculture.
“Indonesia is an obvious one – they import billions of dollars’ worth of crops every year including sugar, soy beans, cotton and peanuts to name just a few.
“If we could snare even a 10 per cent share of the market that would be huge for us”.
Importantly, Mr Baker says, the conference will also provide a platform for successful farmers and enterprises to share their stories and lessons learned.
“In many cases, when people think of farming in the northern Australia they think of failure.”
“But we’ve got some fantastic cropping success stories and business models and we see opportunities to work across northern Australia to build on these.
“NT Farmers represents 8000ha of irrigated agriculture valued at around $200 million annually.”
There will be few formal presentations; rather a ‘round the kitchen table’ approach with panel discussions to encourage open discussion and debate.
A high profile line up of guest speakers will include John Howard (Peanut Company of Australia), Gavin Scurr (Pinata Marketing), Bob Del Alba (Queensland Cotton), David Anthony Auscott, Noel Pearson (Cape York Institute), Barnaby Joyce and the three Ministers for Agriculture from the Queensland, Northern Territory and West Australian Governments.
“We’re also very excited to be hosting speakers from Indonesia and Brazil to share their experiences and identify synergies and opportunities to work together.”
In addition to Federal and State/Territory Government support (WA,Dept. Regional Development and Lands, Qld DAFF and NT’s North Australia Development Office), the conference is sponsored by the RIRDC, Horticulture Australia, ACIAR, Regional Development NT, Vanderfield and Primary Industries Training Advisory Council and media partners Fairfax Agricultural Media and ABC Rural.
Registrations close on October 3. Visit the website http://foodfutures.ntfarmers.org.au for more information.
