TropAg conference gets lowdown on Northern Australia development

The message from the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia at last week's TropAg conference in Brisbane was that situation analyses had brought a number of issues to the fore.

Sectors covered during the two-hour session included beef, aquaculture, forestry and rice industries, as well a report on indigenous-led diversification initiatives on Country.

Challenges were different, depending on the industry but included power costs, the lack of skilled labour, market vulnerability, turning R&D into actual gains, and seasonal variations.

There was a clear message from speakers that without a proper recognition of indigenous land ownership, development plans would fail to reach their potential.

In his introductory remarks, CRCNA chief scientist Alan Dale said they were working through policy tensions that had been in the north Australian landscape for a long time.

"These tend to be development that doesn't look after natural assets, regulations that don't take into account the economy, and that 94 per cent of the land is indigenous-owned," he said.

Much of what is being done is industry-led collaboration at ground level, while about 15pc of the money available was going towards higher-level collaboration and supply chain development.

Professor Dale said a more cohesive policy plan could be expected by mid-2020.

Related: Scientists averting global beer shortage

While identifying that derisking development, especially in greenfield areas, most of the emphasis was placed on the clear appetite for investment across the north, driven by southern water shortages and overseas expansion, and the current political appetite for development.

Professor Dale said they were in the situation of having major new dam developments for the first time in a long time, citing Rookwood Weir and the Big Rocks project at Charters Towers.

Speaking of water shortages, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation director Robert Henry told the audience rice growers had reached the capacity of the water available in southern Australia.

Rice is native to Australia and has a large grain size, offering the potential for a premium from a high yielding crop, if it can avoid the diseases endemic in the varieties that grow in the north.

Mr Henry said the higher temperature in the north meant the plants wouldn't need water providing a blanket and so wouldn't need to be grown in paddies.

"There will need to be investment in storage and processing," he said. "And we have to take seriously the indigenous involvement in this space."

CSIRO representative Chris Chilcott said much of the work done on all eight industry situation analyses would also benefit the beef industry in the north, thanks to sectoral overlap.

One of the things to recognise is that most of the important infrastructure for the northern beef industry is sited in southern Australia and is already mature.

Findings included that much of the risk for the industry lies in market vulnerability as well as in existential threats such as changes in consumption habits and virtue signalling by some corporates.

Among the recommendations are that it will be important to translate research and development into farm practice, and that there is still a need for R&D to beef up productivity gains so that production systems can be diversified.

Mr Chilcott described the mechanism of sharing ideas as being like a "sausage pipe" and said freeing that up could be helpful.

Questioned further about the capacity of the north's beef industry to put the benefits of technology to use, he added that there was currently a lot of effort but little coordination.

"The sector is over-represented in structures and under-represented in ideas," he said.

The picture presented of aquaculture was one of great opportunity given the amount of coastline Australia boasts but one vastly constricted by regulation.

Globally, it's the fastest growing primary industry, making 8pc gains a year and is providing almost 50pc of the world's seafood requirements.

Most of it happens in tropical countries but Dean Jerry from James Cook University said it hadn't reached its potential in Australia.

"The issues that were most challenging in the survey came down to power, to drive pumps and aerators, and labour was another," he said. "That's an impending crisis - there's a very low base of trained technicians."

The regulatory burden was the second highest challenge when data from producers was singled out.

Professor Jerry said they felt they had lots of hoops to jump through.

Risks were also rated differently depending on the industry; barramundi producers were quite optimistic but prawn farmers less so, given the biosecurity issues they have been dealing with.

For pearl oyster farmers, disease and marine drilling and mining was a huge concern.

As far as recommendations went, biosecurity was the over-riding need as all are farming in open systems and testing laboratories are currently a long way away in the south, along with skills development and supply chain development.

When asked whether aquaculture had the potential to be self-destructive, Prof Jerry said regulators ignored the science that "old" aquaculture was not the preferred model these days.

"In some cases, aquaculture is delivering water back to the Great Barrier Reef cleaner than what it receives," he said. "We need to look at the potential, not the historical legacy."

Seasonal issue were listed for north Australia's forestry industry, 73pc of which is in indigenous ownership or in cooperative arrangements.

Timber Queensland spokesman Mick Stephens said there was potential to look at partnerships with grazing operations, such as in Kunnunurra where they were trialling goats in plantations to help with weeds.

He said different regions had picked different timbers to grow for good reasons and the labour market was the main weakness for the industry as a whole.

Ricky Archer, representing the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, said their key findings were that where activities were linked to cultural practices, there was a higher chance of success, such as savannah burning in the carbon market.

Dr Dale said the CRCNA was working on how to develop the relationship between traditional owners and existing landholders so that it became an opportunity rather than a tension.

"Traditional owners have rights and interests across vast areas of the landscape of the north, and without that recognition, it's not going to work," he said. "There's been incredible progress, partly because of the recognition that our work has got to start from an indigenous base."

Mr Archer agreed, saying the reality was that it was important to build strong partnerships on the ground.

He also spoke about a $4m grant secured to look at feral animal management on the Cape and in the Northern Territory.

Overall, the panel said research to date had showed that supply chain development was an unambiguous theme, and that there was a gap in small to medium enterprise development.

Queensland's QRIDA was noted as a vehicle that could assist in that regard.

"We feel if we work on the big picture, that can turbocharge these issues," Dr Dale said.

The cost of putting proposals together for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund was one of the issues the CRCNA will be taking to the federal government in response to fund managers' comments that there was a lack of projects coming through.