INSIGHTS
Australian agriculture will be presented with incredible economic opportunities in the Asian Century and beyond. To seize these, however, AgTech will need to play a major role.
There are some great Australian AgTech ideas making an early impact, but if we want to develop from here we need to learn from the best in the world. Israel is one such global leader.
A paucity of arable land and hostile neighbours made food security a challenge for the Israelis from the beginning. As a result, Israelis revolutionised irrigation with drip technology and made their desert bloom.
Israeli companies are now at the forefront of organic pesticides, automated grafting – even a sexing analysis solution for eggs to determine which ones will hatch to become hens saving need to destroy billions of male hatchlings each year.
I therefore leapt at a recent opportunity to join the Australian Agri-Food Trade Mission to Israel. I returned eager to share my insights with farmers and industry back in Australia.
Here are three of the key lessons I believe Australia can take from the ‘Start-Up Nation'.
Improve access to capital
In Israel, one of the rare issues on which successive governments have agreed for decades is that grants, and not loans, will best stimulate an innovation culture that returns to the nation at a macro level.
This generous approach to public funding has been vindicated by creating an environment that attracts strong capital streams from large corporations and venture capital.
Australia could look to replicate some of this success by using public money to plug the seed funding gap in the local market.
We should also make it easier for government to procure from AgTech startups. Some of our government departments require a three-year trading history to qualify as a supplier. This is prohibitive for high growth startups and an unnecessary brake on innovation.
Improve cooperation between universities and industry
The doors to Israel's universities and research centres are generally wide open to industry. That's because the process for universities to take a commercialisation stake in projects is well understood, and well travelled.
Australian research centres and universities produce world class research, but incentives are driven toward getting new grants, and not around producing solutions for industry.
Australia needs to change the incentive models so scientists are remunerated for successful commercialisation, instead of viewing research grants as the main prize.
Co-operation and collaboration
In Israel there is an understanding that competition happens at a global level, and that there is more to be gained from collaboration at the domestic level.
Australia's collaboration culture, on the other hand, is poor by global standards. We are a highly competitive nation, on the sporting fields and across State lines; this competitive mindset prevails in research and industry and is holding us back from maximising the value we can create.
This could be improved significantly through the establishment of a national network of AgTech hubs and the newly announced Food Agility CRC.
It could also be bolstered by closer co-operation with the global AgTech industry. This would allow Australian entrepreneurs to draw on leading international research to help build local AgTech businesses with global reach.
Fortunately, the path is already being beaten.
A new dairy operation at the Project Bridge farm in Wagga Wagga, for example, will soon link Israeli agricultural technology with Australian entrepreneurs and researchers.
We need more such links across the country to stimulate new ideas.
- Ben van Delden is partner and head of AgTech at KPMG Australia. The full report, 'Dial up the Chutzpah Lessons from Israel for Australian AgTech' can be found at kpmg.com.au
