Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison-Joyce government is modernising and investing in Australia's agricultural innovation system, ensuring that this key pillar of our Ag2030 plan is supporting industry's target of a $100 billion sector by 2030?

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Member for Riverina for his question. I acknowledge also his significant contribution as Deputy Prime Minister in helping us achieve that Ag2030 plan with cold hard cash and particularly around the innovation systems, which has played a pivotal role in taking agriculture for the first time to over $70 billion. Innovation is driving that and will get us on that trajectory towards $100 billion. We're doing that through our 15 commodity research and development corporations, whether beef, cotton, grain, sugar or horticulture. They are the vehicles which are driving that. We have put over $147 million into modernising that since July 2020, plus the $1.1 billion a year that goes into agricultural innovation from levy payers and the Australian taxpayer.

While we've had great success, we are ranked No. 23 in the world. We have the same number of researchers and scientists as the United States and the Netherlands, who are No. 4 and No. 6 in the world. So we are making reforms to ensure that we become No. 1 in the world. We've created a new mechanism, a modernising ag innovation system, to ensure we have the environment and the infrastructure to achieve that. We've created Agricultural Innovation Australia, a commercial entity that will help to ensure that we get back to the first principles of agricultural innovation—value to the levy payer, value to the taxpayer, removal of duplication and commercialisation. We're giving them the tools to do that. The first tool was our growAG platform, a digital platform that lists all the research and development that all of our 15 research and development corporations are doing. We launched that in April last year, up in Wagga. Can I say that since then there have been over 15½ thousand users of that website from over 130 countries, and since then we've had over 120 commercial inquiries to partner with our research development corporations and our regional universities to put money in and to partner with our capital to ensure that we have even better research and development.

But we're going a step further in making sure we have a physical platform for those that want to invest to come and feel and touch and understand the research that we're doing. We put $86 million into eight innovation hubs right across the country, including one at Charles Sturt University, which the former Deputy Prime Minister opened with me back in April last year. That's played a pivotal role in making sure that the research and development is being done at a local level, so that the adoption is being taken up by the farmers, not only allowing them to interact with our investors but also our farmers and understanding what's important to them. Those investments are driving the decisions of commercial entities around the world and foreign states to look to Australia as a leader in agricultural innovation, but they're also creating the new jobs of Australian agriculture—bringing the next generation into the new jobs in science and technology in regional universities and connecting them to the users that we want to adopt this technology the most, the Australian farmer.

This is the environment and the infrastructure we're putting around the innovation system to ensure we continue to produce the best food and fibre in the world.