Keynote address to the International Farm Management Association

1. HOW CAN WE BEST MEET GROWING FOOD
DEMANDS (AND HEALTH EXPECTATIONS)
SUSTAINABLY BY 2030
Andrew Campbell, ACIAR
Launceston, March 2019

2. Outline
• Converging insecurities
• Food & nutrition
• Water
• Energy
• all amplified by climate change
• Potential solutions
• Technical
• Policy
• Agricultural Research: an
international enterprise
• Some promising ACIAR work

3. Personal declarations
• Farming background south-eastern Australia
• Family farming in the district since 1860s, own farm managed since 1987
• 450ha: 30% farm forestry, 10% environmental reserves, 60% leased for crops, prime lambs & wool
• Studied forestry and rural sociology (Creswick & Melbourne)
• Extension Officer/Potter Farmland Plan Project Manager 1982-88
• National Landcare Facilitator 1989-92
• Studied Rural Knowledge Systems (Wageningen/Toulouse) 1992-4
• Environment Policy Executive (Canberra) 1995-2000
• CEO, Land & Water Australia 2000-06
• Private Consultancy (sustainability strategy & policy) 2007-10
• Academic, Charles Darwin University (Darwin) 2011-16
• CEO, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research 2016-

4. Food & Nutrition Security
• In production terms, agriculture has done well
– Global population doubled from 1961 to 2003
– Food production increased by 2.5 (to 2772 kcal/day)
YET: we now face the triple burden of food insecurity
• 816 million people suffering from acute hunger
• ~ 2 billion people with micronutrient deficiencies
• ~ 2 billion people consuming too many calories
Which leaves less than 1/3 of all people on Earth
eating a healthy diet
• Agriculture now needs a new paradigm
– A food systems perspective
– Tailored to deliver against SDGs

5. The role of Agriculture
• Biggest employer of people
• Biggest water user (75% of diverted freshwater)
• 26% of global greenhouse emissions
- on track to be the largest emitting sector
• Causes 78% of eutrophication
• Uses 87% of ice-free, non-desert land
• The main driver of deforestation
AND
• The most effective way
to lift people from poverty
In the Anthropocene, agriculture is the
biggest lever humans can pull

6. Bill Gates (November 2018):
• “No other investment gets within a factor of 10
in impact (on climate change, food security and
poverty reduction), compared with increasing
productivity in agriculture”
• “The CGIAR is a very under-funded system, with
a very high marginal return per dollar.
The world needs to step up”

7. aciar.gov.au
The EAT-Lancet Commission

8. aciar.gov.au

9. aciar.gov.au
The EAT-Lancet Commission
• Easy to quibble with this particular analysis:
– planetary ‘boundaries’ problematic except for GHG & marine
– distorted/partial/unfair assessment of livestock
– asserts that forest conversion to agriculture is a big GHG contributor,
when in fact forest cover has increased (6.6mha/yr) over last 30 years
– insufficient distinction between industrialised & developing countries
• BUT: the footprint of global agriculture is such that this type of
scrutiny, analysis and scorecard will likely become more common
• It’s no longer sufficient to just feed people, we need to provide
adequate nutrition, sustainably and ethically

10. aciar.gov.au
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
High-tech silver
bullets for healthy,
efficient and
sustainable food
systems?
Source:
World Economic Forum
(2018). Innovation with a
Purpose: the role of
technology innovation in
accelerating food systems
transformation

11. aciar.gov.au
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2)
High-tech silver
bullets for healthy,
efficient and
sustainable food
systems?
Source:
World Economic Forum
(2018). Innovation with a
Purpose: the role of
technology innovation in
accelerating food systems
transformation

12. 2 Sustainable Intensification
• Valid objective, but we can’t intensify everywhere
• The ‘I’ is usually more evident than the ‘S’
We can manage some landscapes more intensively, but others
need to be managed more extensively: land sparing/sharing
• Need clear criteria on where to intensify:
– e.g. soils, water, infrastructure, proximity to markets
• Within the context of regional land use and watershed
management plans

13. Policy
- time for new alliances & perspectives
• Healthy farms, healthy
landscapes, healthy food, healthy
people & healthy communities are
interconnected
• We are not used to seeing farming
systems connected to health
systems
• This needs to change
– in research, in assembling the evidence
base, in policy and in leadership
Source: Tyrchniewicz and McDonald (2007)

14. 14
We need a third agricultural revolution
— policy elements
Set high level goals for agriculture by 2030: e.g.
• doubling water, energy and nutrient productivity
• becoming a net carbon sink
• becoming a net energy producer (from renewables)
Reposition agriculture as integral to the food, health, energy and
water systems
Re-engage urban populations with ag and food systems
Rebrand agriculture as sexy, ‘new economy’
All of the above will require a new breed of professionals

15. 5
• Cities suck in water, energy and nutrients from hinterland
• Much of which becomes waste
• Replumbing, rewiring, recladding needed on a massive scale
• Cities also attract people,
part of the sustainability solution, not the problem
• Agriculture should see cities as allies and opportunities
• Crucial for educating citizens/voters about food literacy
Regions around cities are fertile ground
for farming systems innovation

16. Farming Systems Research Priorities
We need a bigger share of Research spend on:
16
Blue Sky
• e.g. energy, closing waste loops,
ICT, public good GM, web-based
societal learning systems
Metrics
• e.g. C, H2O, energy, nutrients for
accountable agriculture
• nutrition
Farming system
Risk and Resilience
• biosecurity
• extreme events
• energy shocks
• mass migration of people
Cross-sectoral
• climate change
• gender
• agriculture/health system links
• innovation in value chains
• urban and peri-urban food systems
• regional planning (spatial optimisation)
• social acceptance of agriculture

17. Our agricultural innovation system
is so last Century…
• Big challenges for agriculture: climate, water, food,
nutrition, energy, gender, resource competition, biosecurity,
social license
• All cross-sectoral, with strong public-good dimensions
• Yet innovation architecture is overwhelmingly commodity-based,
production-focused, farm-based, agri-centric, with at best
modest incentives & capacity for public-good, system-level
innovation
• Innovation system architecture for the 21st Century needs better
integration of research, technology development, private sector
value chains, extension, education and governance

18. • Quickest way to increase productivity is to
narrow the gap between average & best farmers
and shorten the tail (structural adjustment)
• Traditionally we’ve done this through extension,
education, markets & climate
• Private sector can sell products, but rarely set up
for cross-industry, regional scale or public good
extension (or newcomers to farming)
• Web 2.0 and 3.0 (+ Digital Ag) a major
opportunity complementing face to face
• Extension (non-coercive, information-based) is
rarely used in an integrated way with other
policy instruments (planning, regulation, pricing,
taxing, welfare, credit, insurance, property
rights)
Reinventing Extension

19. Implications
(for CGIAR and RDCs?)
• Multidisciplinarity
(not at expense of disciplinary excellence)
• Transdisciplinarity (end users involved throughout,
sophisticated participatory methods)
• Brokering new collaborations
(e.g. public health, nutrition, energy, ICT, finance)
• Building critical mass
– 5% Global GDP – (primary production)
– 30% Global GDP – (whole food system)
– 5% Global R&D – USD $70B (0.9B in CGIAR)
• New coalitions of investors
• Need to get better at informing policy
(more social sciences, mixed methods, political economy)

20. ACIAR
“a unique asset at the intersection of Australia’s
diplomatic outreach and its innovation system”
• ACIAR is an independent statutory authority in Australia’s Foreign
Affairs portfolio, established in 1982
• We fund, broker and manage research partnerships
• We operate in >30 countries in the Indo-Pacific region
• We aim to boost agricultural productivity, sustainability and food
system resilience in our partner countries
• In 2017-18, we invested around $120 million in ~200 research for
development (R4D) projects
• We place a high priority on evaluating impacts and learning lessons

21. Foreign Minister The Hon Julie Bishop MP launched ACIAR’s new 10-year
Strategy 2018-27 in Parliament House Canberra on 26 February 2018

22. ACIAR OBJECTIVES
ACIAR brokers and invests in research partnerships to build the knowledge base on
which developing countries can progress crucial development objectives:
1. Improving food security and reducing poverty among smallholder farmers and
rural communities;
2. Managing natural resources and producing food more sustainably, adapting to
climate variability and mitigating climate change;
3. Enhancing human nutrition and reducing risks to human health.
In supporting these development objectives, we will ensure that our research
programs pay particular attention to improving:
4. Gender equity and empowerment of women and girls;
5. More inclusive agrifood and forestry market chains, engaging the private sector
where possible;
6. Scientific and policy capability within our partner countries.

30. www.aciar.gov.au
• Nutrition, water and climate change are the meta challenges
for agriculture, and ag & food systems, this century
• Effective responses will demand innovative partnerships and
new coalitions at all levels, across many sectors
• We need organisations like IFMA that span & cross-fertilise
farm management, science and policy