WEBINAR — Agriculture & Food Forum Series
Feeding a carbon neutral world:
Implications of escalating input costs for Australian farms
Tuesday 1 March
12.00-1.00pm AEDT
COVID disruption or emerging trend?
Generally the COVID years have been good for Australia’s farmers with favourable weather and strong export markets leading to record production. However in the past year we have seen a disturbing trend of rapidly increasing costs of key farm inputs, especially fertiliser. In this webinar Professor Ross Kingwell from the University of Western Australia will discuss the underlying reasons for the input price increases and their importance to farm profitability and the outlook. Prices of nitrogen fertilisers will be highlighted. Dr John Kirkegaard FAA Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Agriculture and Food will explore the vital role of nitrogen in Australian farming systems and explain why Australian farmers (and scientists!) face important challenges regarding its ongoing supply for sustainable food production.
Also see the second webinar in this series:
Feeding a carbon neutral world — Artificial meats and alternative proteins
SPEAKERS
Dr John Kirkegaard
Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Agriculture and Food
Dr John Kirkegaard is a Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food, based in Canberra and Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia and Charles Sturt University. His career has focussed on understanding soil-plant interactions to improve the productivity, resource-use efficiency and sustainability of food production systems. He has led numerous national research programs, is a regular invitee to international forums and advisory committees on agriculture and food security, and was Visiting Professor at Crop Science Department, University of Copenhagen in 2012 and 2019. His team was awarded the Eureka Prize in sustainable agriculture in 2014 for research to improve the water-use efficiency of Australian agriculture. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2016, was recipient of the Farrer Medal for distinguished contribution to agriculture in 2017 and is an ISI Web of Knowledge Highly Cited Researcher for Agricultural Sciences in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
Professor Ross Kingwell
Professor, University of Western Australia
Ross is a respected agricultural economist; the author of more than 130 journal articles and book chapters, and more than 300 conference papers and policy reports. He is a professor in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia, chief economist in the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre, and a leader of a small group of economists in the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.
Ross chairs the Australian Farm Institute’s (AFI) research advisory committee. He has been a co-editor of the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AJARE), and is a former president and now distinguished fellow of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
MODERATORS
Professor Anna Koltunow FAA FTSE
Professional Research Fellow in QAAFI, University of Queensland
Professor Anna Koltunow (FAA, FTSE), is a Professorial Research Fellow in QAAFI at The University of Queensland. Her research is focused on plant seed and fruit development. She and is an internationally recognised expert in an asexual form of seed formation in plants called apomixis. She has been involved in collaborative research projects on seed and fruit development with various laboratories in the United States, Europe, China, Japan and Brasil. She and has worked with the horticultural industry to develop seedless fruit. Her research on apomixis is being applied to a range of crops where it should significantly economise hybrid seed production. She currently leads a multiparty international research program funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to develop self-reproducing hybrids in cowpea and sorghum which are subsistence crops for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Snow Barlow FTSE
Chair of the ATSE Agriculture Forum
Snow Barlow is Professor of Viticulture and Horticulture at the University of Melbourne. He has been intimately involved in climate change research and policy within agricultural and food sector for more than 30 years. He was a member of the Australian delegation to the Conference of Parties in Kyoto (COP 3) that resulted in the Kyoto Protocol. Subsequently he chaired the Expert Advisory Panel of the Department of Agriculture’s Filling the Research Gap and Action on the Ground Carbon Farming Futures RDE programs.
As President of Science and Technology Australia, he was a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, engineering and innovation Council chairing the development of 2 influential PMSEIC reports.
He is an ATSE Fellow and in 2009 he was awarded the ‘Australian Medal of Agricultural Science’. Snow currently chairs the ATSE Agriculture Forum and is a Commissioner of the NSW Independent Planning Commission.