GLOBAL megatrends in agriculture were the focus of the morning of day two of the 2015 Youth Ag Summit – and with 100 delegates from 33 countries the discussion was, not surprisingly, wide-ranging.
The Youth Ag Summit is being held in Canberra this week, hosted by Bayer along with the Future Farmers Network, with the theme Feeding a Hungry Planet.
The megatrends session featured presentations from speakers representing CSIRO, Rabobank, Monash University and culminated with a talk from Her Excellency, Naela Chohan, High Commissioner for Pakistan in Australia.
Rohit Fenn from India says it was an interesting, multi-faceted discussion about the many forces that act on agricultural industries.
“India’s mainly small farm holdings, so it’s a lot of farmers working sometimes as subsistence farmers, which means they grow just enough food for themselves and a little bit more for a basic amount of money, and there’s a lack of social support and there’s quite a high illiteracy rate among farmers as well," he said.
"One of the important megatrends was about educating these farmers and how that’s going to play a role in evolving this workforce."
Rohit says the role of education has been widely recognised by delegates as one of the biggest problems facing agriculture.
“We’ve had these breakout sessions where all of us get together and talk about the 15 themes that have been laid out and we’re trying to narrow out the most important ones, the most pressing, urgent problems," he said.
"Education and training the workforce, everybody seems to be in agreement that that’s the most important theme."
It’s also an area of great importance for Canadian Courtney O’Neill, who wrote an essay on the subject to be selected as a delegate for the Youth Ag Summit.
Delegates are voting during the summit on the top five themes to form the basis of a declaration, which will be taken to the UN in October this year, and education is clearly a priority so far.
“I’m very pleased education is on top of the list on day two and actually there’s a link to the second theme on the list, which is communication and I feel that falls pretty clearly in with education," Courtney said.
"My essay looked at improving producer knowledge as well as consumer knowledge and linking the gap between the two, as well as creating new R&D towards new farmer research to increase production."
In the afternoon, delegates moved down the street to the National Press Club, where a Solutions Marketplace involving a range of organisations working on sustainable agriculture lay in wait for them, as the United Kingdom’s Lydia Jeffs-Joory explains.
“The Solutions Marketplace was really an opportunity for all the delegates to learn a bit about different areas from industry, and looking at what their solutions are to helping address global food insecurity," Lydia said.
"I’m particularly interested in plant science and crop development, so what they’re doing at CSIRO really interests me because I think that we’re going to have to develop crops further in order to help us feed this hungry planet, so I believe that trying to develop crops that will protect themselves against disease and perhaps pests may be a way forward rather than using lots of agrochemicals."
Claudia Coleoni from Brazil is studying environmental management at university, so she was impressed with the work presented by the WWF.
”They were talking about ecosystem services and how you can increase production without depleting the land and at the same time conserving the natural resources, so I really liked their solutions because they’re more market oriented," she said.
"The Solutions Marketplace was incredible, actually I was very surprised that we would have this as part of the conference, because most of the conferences are made of lectures and then just some breakout sessions, but here we get personally in touch with people that are making a difference, so I will take this back home and show to my friends, my professors and maybe try one of these opportunities.".
Day two will conclude with delegates spreading out across Canberra at smaller networking dinners, before taking to the road on Day 3 on field trips to look at wheat breeding, integrated weed management, precision agriculture and animal welfare.
