The government intervention needed for future-proofing Australian agriculture

Food is fundamental to survival and rich in meaning to every human on the planet, while the agricultural systems on which food production depends is infinitely complex, constantly changing and under threat from a range of population, political and environmental pressures.

Concern about how we will feed ourselves into the future has preoccupied humans since evolution. It is no wonder then that future-proofing Australian food and agriculture is such an appealing idea.

The idea of government intervention can be equally appealing – or terrifying – depending on one’s political persuasion, view of the problem, or position within the food system. Both of these ideas deserve deeper consideration, relative to the scale and complexity of the future challenges faced, and the evolving societal context in which food and agriculture operates.

The reality of climate change impacts and experience of the pandemic has underlined the interconnectedness of global food and agriculture systems, the risks they face, and the need to take a systems-wide approach to addressing those risks, both nationally and globally.

Future-proofing Australian food and agriculture is a task that will be best served by system-wide approaches, building on work already under way in several areas. While governments will play a critical role, this may or may not include a capital “P” Plan for Australian food and agriculture.

Australia’s reputation for producing high quality food and agricultural products has been consistently strong, with recent research by Mintel for Food Frontier noting that “Australia and New Zealand … are consistently seen as suppliers of high-quality, natural, and trustworthy products.” This reputation is valuable and is mirrored in Australia, where consumers generally have a high degree of trust in farmers and locally grown food, as well as Australia’s food regulatory system.

Reflecting some of the evolving societal contexts in which food and agriculture operates, improvements in environmental management and animal welfare standards have also made important contributions to this success – noting of course that these issues are rarely if ever ‘settled’ and continue to evolve.

For example, animal welfare standards are prominent in Australia’s national conversation about food and agriculture, including recent government commitments for an updated strategy, standards and guidelines. There has also been a steady shift (as a result of activism, industry policies and commercial strategies) away from practices such as dehorning, tail docking and mulesing, and the widespread adoption of ‘better welfare’ domestic food labelling.

Similarly, environmental indicators such as water use efficiency and low tillage have been established practices in Australia for many years, with more recent commitments to reduce GHG emissions, including the red meat sector’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030 which, “if achieved, it would be the world’s first industry of its kind to do so”. As with welfare, environmental issues are rarely if ever ‘settled’ and continue to evolve.

Australia’s food manufacturers have also oriented their brands and sourcing strategies towards healthier and more sustainable products, in response to societal contexts that shape consumer preferences and expectations.

Despite this success, there is no shortage of concern about the future of the food and agriculture system that feeds us. Globally, it has been part of policy and academic debates for more than a century, has been the source of political unrest in many countries around the world, has been the subject of many high-profile activist campaigns, and has been a major focus of UN efforts to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. Food futurism has always evolved within the context of social, cultural, political and ecological concerns of various periods in history.

So universal have key themes of this concern become – related to climate change, obesity and animal welfare, for example – that ‘healthy’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ have become regular features in food marketing in Australia and elsewhere. This brings them right to the table, so that every part of the food chain, including individual consumers, are expected to take responsibility for addressing them.

These challenges of the food and agriculture system are indeed very real. They are also multifactorial, cross-portfolio, multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary, and therefore often difficult to grasp, let alone to tackle or solve.

Whether to address market failure, externalities or the public good, there are a number of areas where a role for government intervention is clear and critical – such as ensuring appropriate macro-economic settings, providing transport and energy infrastructure, conducting international trade negotiations, ensuring standards and regulations for food and workplace safety, and providing coordination and funding in times of crisis such as droughts, natural disasters or a pandemic.

Government can also bring stakeholders together like no-one else in the food system – from the most to the least powerful in our communities and from every sector and perspective across food and agriculture.

Calls for a national food plan is a recurring theme in debates about Australian food and agriculture, with plenty of well-argued rationale for the need, and frustration about its absence. The absence of a national food plan is one of the reasons Australia was ranked just 48^th overall for food availability by the recent EIU Global Food Security Index.

In the absence of a national plan for food and agriculture, we should instead focus on the essential elements of successful system-wide approaches that will ensure a strong and resilient future for food and agriculture.

We could do this in three ways. First, constructively and fully incorporate health, environmental and social outcomes as essential components of policy and planning related to food and agriculture – alongside short-term business goals and traditional economic drivers.

Second, find ways in which the incredible interconnectedness of food and agriculture policy areas across portfolios, agencies, sectors, commodities, research disciplines, business, civil society, consumers and generations can be harnessed productively as an asset like any other asset in our food and agricultural system – rather than as a barrier to greater cohesion.

Third, we need to operate in a way which enables reflexivity and adjustment as needs and expectations change, while retaining coherence in our collective vision for food and agriculture as a nation.

Some examples of efforts already underway to operate along these lines will help to clarify where government intervention could be most useful, such as:

• the NFF 2030 Roadmap, which includes pillars that cover areas beyond productivity, such as food waste, community trust and carbon neutrality, and acknowledges the need for cultural change;

• the Australian Farm Institute’s work on the Australian Agricultural Sustainability Framework (coordinated by the NFF on behalf of the Department of Agriculture), which recognises that agriculture “must continuously improve and respond to stakeholders’ expectations of meeting sustainability goals”;

• CSIRO’s Reshaping Australia’s Food Systems Roadmap, which identifies areas of opportunity and priority for the national research agenda, through “a broad look at food systems and how they interact with wider societal systems";

• the National Statement on Climate Change and Agriculture, which identifies the role First Nations peoples can play in Australia’s food and agriculture system and response to climate change; 

• the AgriFutures research on Community Trust in Rural Industries, which brings the citizen/consumer voice directly into food and agriculture policy and industry consideration.

Some of the common threads in these examples could be useful to highlight in our approach, such as: building a stronger common language around systems thinking in food and agriculture policy; building the connective infrastructure for more effective policy collaboration between different parts of the food system; and enabling opportunities for political support along the way, but without relying on it.

Productivity and efficiency have been key ingredients in the historical success of Australian food and agriculture, shaped by decades of open trade, supported by world-class innovation infrastructure and supportive policy settings.

Our future success will not discard productivity and efficiency, but will overlay them with new strengths, in systems-thinking, organisational cultures of sharing intellectual and other resources for common system-wide goals, building respect for differences and the value they bring to the wider system, and better understanding of the ways in which systems are shaped by their social context.

Future-proofing Australian food and agriculture is a task that cannot be guaranteed by any specific degree of government intervention, because the best solutions will be system-wide. What government is, however, uniquely positioned to facilitate is to find the gaps, resource the connectivity, be inclusive, transparent and consistent in its role and expectations of others in the food system, and be responsive to (and transparent about) change.

This article is extracted from the winning essay in the 2023 Farm Institute John Ralph Essay Competition. Read the full essay and additional perspectives on the topic presented in other essays in the Farm Policy Journal, available at www.farminstitute.org.au