The future of the agrifood sector is in good hands!  That’s what I took home after watching 10 Horizon Scholar teams pitch their ideas on how to address industry challenges at the AgriFutures Australia Stakeholder Showcase Dinner last week.  Through a hackathon process, each team had only a few days to come to grips with an industry challenge statement, and to develop a strategy on how those challenges could be addressed.  Noting that the teams were made up mostly of undergraduate students, I was super impressed by the confident ways in which each team pitched innovative solutions to a wide array of rural industry challenges.    

One of those challenges was how to attract young researchers to undertake R&D relevant to the chicken meat sector – a sector that plays a crucial role in providing high quality and affordable protein to Australian consumers.  While chicken meat is a relatively low-impact (environmental) animal protein, there are challenges to increasing production in ways that do not increase release of carbon emissions.  Addressing those challenges will require R&D by biologists, environmental scientists, technologists and experts in regulation and policy development – all areas where ANU has expertise.   

This followed an earlier visit from the Horizon Scholars to the AFII Agrifood Hub as part of their Amazing Race activity, where the scholars undertook a blind milk taste test along with a discussion about the social, economy and environmental aspects of various milk industries.   

I was super pleased to see that one of the two Masters of Ceremony at the Showcase Dinner was Julian Craven – an ANU student who is enrolled in our BSc degree with a major in agricultural innovation.  Along with his co-MC Alyssa Seckinger-Crow (University of Melbourne), Julian confidently used wit and charm to introduce a star-studded list of headline speakers that included Cathy McGowan (Chair, Agrifutures) and Adam Fennessy (Secretary, Dept of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry).  Julian was awarded a Horizon Scholarship in 2024, with CRDC Innovation Broker Rachel Holloway helping Julian with industry placements.  More recently, Julian undertook an internship with Sheep Producer Australia that was organised by AFII as part of the AgConnections - Skilled Agricultural Work Liaison pilot program.  Another great example of how the ANU is helping train the next generation of talent needed to drive innovation in the agrifood sector.   

Earlier in July, AFII was pleased to host two Trade Commissioners - Ven (Rudaralingum) Coopamootoo and Shinal Prasad - from the High Commission of Canada in Australia.  We used the visit to introduce Ven and Shinal to a wide range of ANU STEM and HASS disciplines that are of relevance to the agrifood value chain and demonstrated opportunities to forge closer R&D links. While it is not immediately apparent how we could resource large-scale agrifood projects that leverage R&D capabilities from our respective countries, there is clearly a need for Australia and Canada to work together on projects that tackle global food security challenges. If you know of a funding framework that would support collaborations between Australian and Canadian researchers, please reach out to me via email or LinkedIn.   

Tackling global challenges is also the focus on the recently launched Food Security Leadership Council (FSLC) – you can read more about the FSLC initiative in a recent Crawford Fund article. The FSLC President is Cary Fowler (2024 World Food Prize Laureate), with Brian Schmidt – past ANU Vice Chancellor and Nobel Prize winner – being a FSLC member.  When Cary visited ANU in 2023, much of the discussion was around the need for large scale, mission-style investments to accelerate agricultural innovation as part of a strategy to address global food security challenges.  Ideally, this would be done through government-backed efforts.  However, with the current USA administration disinvesting in agricultural research, other structures are needed – with the FSLC being an initiative that I strongly support.   

Lastly, the past few weeks has seen growing interest in the upcoming in-person event: ‘Made & Grown – The Future of Food’ that AFII is co-hosting with Cellular Agriculture Australia and the ANU National Security College.  I will be facilitating two sessions at the event on August 21st being held on the ANU campus in Canberra.  In the first session, we will hear from Amos Palfreyman (Co-founder & CEO of Miruku), Thomas Vanhercke (CSIRO Future Protein Mission) and Sebastian Eckersley-Maslin (Co-founder & CEO, Phyllome) about the ways crop plants are being used as factories to successfully produce a range of novel functional ingredients needed in the food and nutraceutical industries.  This will be followed by a session with Caitlin Byrt (Co-founder, Membrane Transporter Engineers), Barry Pogson (ANU Lead, Plant Synbio Australia) and Simon Schmidt (Research Manager, Australian Wine Research Institute) on how they are redesigning biology to disrupt traditional industrial manufacturing, create smart climate ready crops, and ensure the future of the Australian wine industry.  There are still tickets available for the event. Why not join us? 

Owen Atkin