The potential for Australian farms to be incubators for some of the world's most innovative thinking in agricultural practises was highlighted to a huge international audience in Sydney on Monday night.
Hosted by the Council of Rural Research and Development Corporations in conjunction with the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists and the NSW Farm Writers Association, the Ag Innovation forum was the culmination of a four-day tour of far north Queensland's diverse production systems for journalists from around the world.
The group of around 30 journalists from countries such as Finland, Japan, Slovenia, North America and the UK has a combined audience reach of 23 million people and had been taking part in a Hot Tropics tour prior to attending the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists conference in New Zealand this week.
After inspecting Australia's largest banana farm and coming face to face with the world-class coral reefs that farmers are helping to protect with smart practices, they heard how innovative thinking is supported from the research end at a forum at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
While the CRRDC operations manager Tim Lester explained that just under 50 per cent of agricultural profit improvement is coming from research and development, Australian Farm Institute CEO Mick Keogh told the forum the university business model meant that rural topics were falling down the ladder in Australian institutions.
“While universities are being run as a business, papers on rye grass fungi won’t cut it for research dollars,” he said. “The government needs to find policy settings that give a greater engagement between industry and research.”
He was responding to a presentation by Ben McNeil, the founder and CEO of Thinkable.org, an online R&D platform seeking to make research more public and attract more funding partners.
“We want to take those ideas out of the lab,” he told the forum. “Anyone in the world can access them via the internet, and they can collaborate and talk out problems that way too.”
Concerns were expressed via the webcast forum that innovators would be reluctant to disclose details of their research in such a public way but Dr McNeil said it would be possible to engage with people on a broad perspective without disclosing intellectual property.
“Once you’ve done that you can take further discussions behind closed doors,” he said. “There’s a generation shift going on here. Tenured professors don’t like the idea because it challenges their foundation.
“The structures in place at the moment are for safe incremental ideas. If there’s no structural change, we won’t change agriculture.”
Mr Keogh added that the reward structures in place at the moment were not based on what the community needed or wanted.
“The Rural Research and Development boards do a good job but the universities are selling education.”
Tim Lester explained to the forum that of the profit improvements made from research and development, 32 per cent was generated from foreign sources and 17 per cent domestically.
“We can’t pay for it all – we have to be very clear about who we connect with,” he said.
When questioned on the return on investment gained from overseas investors, Mr Lester said that every Australian farmer fed 600 people, many of them in other countries.
“That’s how we are giving back to the world,” he said.
Blantyre Farms pork producer Edwina Beveridge and Rabobank commodity analyst Georgia Twomey joined Markus Rediger, the president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists on the panel, debating topics such as innovations in agricultural robotics and commodity branding.
The pioneering robotic work done by Robert Fitch and the University of Sydney, in conjunction with Emerald cotton and grain grower Andrew Bate was highlighted as an example of technology being incubated on Australian farms for the world that only needed investment capital to grow.
Ms Beveridge added a cautionary note, describing an illegal invasion of her piggery by activists with hidden cameras that resulted in 700 images being shared.
“So much was shown out of context. I likened it to going into filming in a hospital and telling people they were seeing a whole community. That’s how technology can be used against you.”
When the global impact of the MLA “True Aussie” campaign was being debated, Ms Beveridge told the forum that it should also be shown domestically.
“Farmers get a bad wrap. We need to get this message out to our own consumers,” she said.
Mr Keogh said the campaign should have been undertaken long ago.
“We’ve not understood what we’ve got in this country, or global marketplace competition.
“We’ve let the Kiwis get away with so much. They use 10 times as much nitrogen fertiliser as us and they get away with the clean green approach.”
He also said the separate marketing undertaken by each state was “bewildering” overseas consumers and would continue to do so while Australia couldn’t get a common purpose at a national level.
IFAJ president Markus Rediger told the forum that from his perspective in Switzerland, Australia had quite an efficient agricultural system.
He believed that more could be made from adding value and not selling everything as a commodity.
- The Council of Rural Research and Development Corporations sponsored Sally Cripps’ participation in the Hot Tropics tour of far north Queensland and attendance at the Ag Innovation forum in Sydney.
