Unknown Speaker 0:00
John Paul,
Jon Paul Driver 0:05
Welcome to the Feed Central Hay Matters podcast. Your go to source for all things hay related in Australia, I’m your host Jon Paul Driver in today’s episode, we’re joined by Dr Sabrina Greenwood with CSIRO, and welcome to the podcast.
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 0:23
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Jon Paul Driver 0:24
Yeah. Could you tell us just the high level about CSIRO? And then we’ll dive into the Ag2050.
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 0:32
So CSIRO, or CSIRO, you’ll hear it called sometimes is Australia’s national science agency. So it’s federal. I heard about Wi Fi. Yes, that’s right. CSIRO is behind many wonderful things, yeah, everything from Wi Fi to different types of contact lenses, money, right? With the different polymers, yeah, yeah, cool, yeah, some pretty amazing science happening,
Jon Paul Driver 1:02
just a variety of scientific topics, but including agriculture. So let’s talk about ag 2050
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 1:10
So maybe I’ll explain it a little bit. Ag2050 is an initiative within CSIRO from the research unit. It’s called agriculture and food. And so this initiative is really around envisioning what the agricultural sector in Australia could and should look like in 2050 so it’s bringing together a lot of different commodities and aspects that are drivers for agriculture in Australia and thinking about what direction they’re headed, what science we have, you know, to work towards and alleviate some of the problems we have, so that we’re aiming towards the futures that that we want, right? So aiming towards the good and hopefully avoiding avoiding the bad.
Jon Paul Driver 1:58
You’re at the Afia hay conference. So we’re talking about hay How does hay play into…
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 2:06
So in Ag2050, we are covering, you know, different forage based commodities. We’re also thinking about how they’re impacted by things like climate drivers, you know, ground water availability. And then we also have research and work packages that are working towards envisioning, for instance, the livestock and aquaculture sectors, which is what I’m in charge of for 2050, and CO leading. And so we’re thinking, okay, so if you’ve got things like climate and water availability impacting what your feed base can look like in terms of growth and productivity and where things can grow. What regions are we talking about? And then, consequently, what is that going to do for human food chains as either direct feed sources, if you’re talking about, say, grains, or indirectly, because they’re the feed base for our livestock sector, which is also a really important one, yeah, so it’s, it’s interwoven in a lot of these different discussions, right?
Jon Paul Driver 3:08
What roles do the cross sector collaborations play in achieving those 2050 goals?
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 3:13
Yeah, they’re pretty heavy. So within the 2050 work package, we, we have all the work packages work together. So we interact with each other on a really regular basis to find out what each other are doing and figure out ways to connect them. And this is also an initiative that’s really embedded with stakeholder engagement. So at the beginning of a 2050 they had over 100 different stakeholders from around the country come and participate in workshops to talk about what some of the major stressors and drivers are for their industry sectors, so that the Ag 2050 team could essentially use those and the futures team developed draft scenarios for Australia. So they came out with four draft scenarios that are inclusive of all these different components and pieces. And said, okay, here is scenario. One is called regional, AG, capitals. This is, this is a scenario that could play out in Australia, and why. Another one is landscape stewardship. Here’s a different scenario. You know that that could play out and why. Then there’s climate survival as a third scenario, this is what could play out and why. And then there’s systems decline, which is obviously even by the name of it, not one we want to head to, but that is another option. So they’ve created these four scenarios and all the different disciplines and drivers and commodities are kind of within that right, and they’re each getting different pressures in these different, you know, Vision scenarios for different reasons.
Jon Paul Driver 4:53
Is that connection with stakeholders ongoing?
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 4:57
Yeah, it kind of goes through waves. Right, in terms of where we are in this, in the kind of timeline of the work, right? So there was a lot of stakeholder engagement to kind of get input and feedback so that these scenarios could be developed, right? So then, you know, there was, there was some time where the the kind of collation and completion of those scenario development needed to happen, and now that we’ve got those scenarios that’s going back out into the stakeholder realm again. So one of the reasons I’m here right, to talk about, okay, here are the scenarios. And they’re not meant to say, like, we have a crystal ball, and this is the future of Australia. That’s not it at all. But it’s to help us exercise, yeah, right. It’s to kind of go, like, look, you know, here are different things that could happen, and we are going to provide the evidence base for why that could be, but we also want to help identify and prioritize the science and help advise the policy to head towards those pieces that we want, right? So now we’re in that process again of saying, okay, here are the scenarios. We want feedback on them, right? So, so let’s talk about them. Let’s talk about why they were, you know, grouped in these different ways. And what you know, other things have we missed that that we want to bring back and refine these more, so that that stakeholder conversation is starting to ramp up again, so that we can have these discussions. And the Ag2050 is also meant to be an initiative that helps to unify the Australian agriculture sector as a whole, to get behind some some ideas together, so that we’re not fragmented in terms of of the where we want to go, right? So, so us having a, you know, it’s not, not that we all have to agree on every point, but sort of a collective vision, right, that we know where to drive towards, so that we can work together, that we can create this as a win win, and we can make more gains aiming towards the future that we want, rather than us doing it, you know, in kind of a fragmented or separated way, without any sort of guiding unification, right, where we might not make as many gains in the in the direction that we want to see.
Jon Paul Driver 7:04
This is a whole of the system change kind of concept, right?
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 7:08
It’s super transformative, yeah. So, so some of these, you know, when you’re talking about, say, the regional, ag, capitals, or the land stewardship scenarios, like, they’re really transformative. We’re talking about some, some pretty big potential movements for the Australian agriculture sector based on different drivers that that could come to fruition, like these things could happen. You know, we’re not talking about really crazy things. These are legit drivers that that could come down and create these changes. So, yeah, yeah. We are talking about some pretty big potential system impacts for some of these scenarios, especially some of the ones that are putting us globally, at the forefront, right at the cutting edge of, you know, what do we want to be? This is a, you know, a sustainable, resilient farm that that is is beneficial for us as a society and us as a landscape, right, you know. And some of those words get, get thrown around a little bit. And I understand, I understand that that sometimes that that can get a little bit confusing in terms of what those those terms mean. But if you, if you want to think about them on the fundamental side, right, we want to create farming systems that could go for another 60,000 years and not have a negative impact on our society and our landscapes, but instead help to restore them to what we want them to be, because there has been degradation right through time, and that’s pretty well, pretty well proven at this point.
Jon Paul Driver 8:38
So are there any contemporary boots on the ground implementation?
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 8:43
We’re gonna get there, right? So this gets interwoven with a lot of different things, and so, so we’ve got these scenarios that that are outlined. Now the discussion is happening, and now it’s kind of going like, okay, like now that we’re sort of creating division, how do we, how do we get from current so point A to that future we want. Point B. So, so what’s that route? Right? And that starts to identify, well, we can do this part, but we can’t do this other part. We don’t know how to do that yet, or we don’t have the tech, or we don’t have the tools, or we don’t have the management plan, or whatever it is in place
Jon Paul Driver 9:18
Monitoring capacity, those types of elements
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 9:21
All the stuff, right? Yeah, so let’s, let’s solve that. Or maybe we actually have a lot of tools, but we haven’t used them in the right combination yet to get further along. So let’s try that new combination that maybe we’ve never thought to try before, or just haven’t had the ability to try. Or maybe it’s just a little bit on the risky side. And so everybody’s been a bit nervous to try it, but let’s try that in, you know, a kind of a case study kind of way. Sure move it and give it a go, and hopefully we can make a bigger leap forward than what we could if we had kind of held back a little bit more.
Jon Paul Driver 9:57
And I mean, the things here. We’re talking about here could include tax structure, risk management, I mean, just, I mean the whole spectrum of everything surrounding agriculture. Those are, this is the scale and scope of what you’re talking about.
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 10:12
Yeah. I mean, it’s really exciting, right? And CSIRO is really, we’re doing it too, right? So even for one of our own, owned and operated farms. We’re kind of saying, Look, we are actually, you know, going to take these things that we’re hearing from the community and from experts that we think are going to work together, and we’re actually going to try them. We’re going to de risk them on our farm, and we’re going to, we’re going to try this, and we’re going to show it in a really, you know, kind of real way how this could work, sure, and so that’s another initiative within CSIRO, but it works closely with Ag2050, right? So that we can, we can again, leverage off of each other, play off of each other, learn more, move further forward, faster, right? Nothing of this is in isolation at all. This is all very much, you know, kind of working together and leveraging for the win. Wins.
Jon Paul Driver 11:11
Oh, very interesting. Do you have any key takeaways from AFIA?
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 11:15
I think there’s some really exciting initiatives, Ag2050, and others inclusive that are really looking to help our Australian agricultural sector make some pretty big bounds forward. And it’s really exciting to see that they’re also deeply embedded in community engagement, right? You know? So local, community, farming community, indigenous community engagement and really thinking about how to listen and share and develop together. And I think that that is pretty amazing, as somebody who this is country number four for me, that I’ve lived in every country you know, is taking different approaches. And it’s pretty exciting to watch. So I would say even me, as a scientist participating in like, I’m I’m pretty in awe of what this is doing and how it’s how it’s doing it. So it’s pretty, pretty fantastic. And egg 2050 itself does have a website that you can reach out to if you’re just interested to learn more. There’s some opportunities there to connect and potentially engage in it.
Jon Paul Driver 12:20
Wonderful. Sabrina. Thank you very much for your thoughts today and sharing a little bit about your experience at Afia and and talking about the vision for Ag2050, no, thank you.
Dr Sabrina Greenwood 12:32
It’s a pleasure again.
Jon Paul Driver 12:33
I’ve been joined by Dr Sabrina Greenwood with CSIRO. This podcast is proudly presented by Feed Central. Stay tuned in for upcoming episodes.
