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the australian farmer
Our agricultural future will be defined by Science and Innovation Prof. Victor Sadras is a world authority on crop ecophysiology with an interest in the adaptation of crops to environmental stresses, including water deficit, extreme temperatures, nutrient deficit, soil physical and chemical constraints, pathogens and insects. He leads the team of Crop Ecophysiology at the South Australian Research & Development Institute (SARDI). Prof Sadras has distilled the background, objectives and findings in his co-authored paper Making Science More Effective for Agriculture published in the international journal “Advances in Agronomy”, Volume 163, 2020.
by the widespread, persistent and severe millennium drought. Innovative producers engaged with an ef- fective scientific community underlie this outstand- ing trajectory. The evidence is clear – investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) is highly profitable for Australian agriculture; returns on invest- ment are 10:1 and often much higher; few investments elsewhere in the economy are more profitable. A group of scientists, breeders, economists, farm- ers, managers and industry representatives met in Adelaide to pose questions about effective investment in agriculture R&D. Acknowledging Australia’s already high return on investment record historically, the meeting asked: “can we do better?”. Despite a com- pelling case for more investment, we see less. In many countries, especially the high-income countries like the United States and Australia, public investment in agri- cultural R&D has stagnated or is declining in real terms. At the same time, funding is occasionally misallocated to fashionable R&D programs with unlikely payoffs. Additional concerns are many and varied including: (1) a shift towards bureaucratic industrial principles to organise scientific work; (2) the opportunity cost of the scientists’ time for applying and managing funds; (3) reduced scope to pursue the unexpected because of contractual constrictions, incentive structures, and restricted exchange of information between scientists; (4) and the erosion of scientific expertise in core disci- plines including crop science and ecology. The core issue is to manage the tension between the
Food Agility is a $150 million innovation hub funded by the federal government and a long list of prom- inent partners in agribusiness, technology and research. The CRC’s mission is to lead a digital revo- lution in food production and supply by brokering in- novative research, educating the industry workforce and influencing policy in the sector. How can Australian agriculture embrace the opportunities offered by digital technology, par- ticularly big data and the Internet of Things (IoT)? “Six or seven years ago, agriculture was considered to be at the bottom end of the scale in terms of digital
Food and Agriculture (FAO) Net Production Index aggregates all agricultural produce, weighted by price and normalised to 2004-2006.
MAKMAKING SCIENCE MORE EFFECTIVE FOR AGRICULTURE Australian agricultural output increased 2.8-fold since 1961, a growth trajectory only disrupted transiently
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