From the Director: Reflections on 2024

As 2024 comes to a close, it gives me great pride to reflect on the past 12 months and what the Agrifood Innovation Institute (AFII) and wider Australian National University (ANU) community have achieved.

As we enter another hot summer, the challenges facing agriculture remain pressing. Now, more than ever, universities have a responsibility to work with industry and government to tackle the complex, and in many ways existential, threats to our agrifood systems.

In recent months, Australian universities have weathered a difficult policy and financial environment which has called into question our institutions’ purpose and value. This presents us with an opportunity, as universities, to prove the value and impact of our research. We need to continue to invest in initiatives that proactively leverage our fundamental research capabilities to deal with complex societal, environmental and industrial challenges.

This is where the AFII has been making critical connections, supporting multidisciplinary teams of world-class researchers from ANU to deliver solutions to some of the more intractable problems in the agrifood sector.

I have been particularly pleased by the progress AFII’s Strategic Investment Program has made in attracting researchers from across ANU to bring their diverse intellect and expertise to tackle industry challenges.

Through 2024, AFII has awarded support to multidisciplinary projects across four ANU colleges – Asia and the Pacific; Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics; Science; and Business and Economics – on topics including: using value chain modelling to improve the sustainability of dairy and beef production systems, harnessing analytics to drive the grains sector’s profitability and global competitiveness, uncovering effects of Indigenous cultural burning on soil and native plants for cattle grazing improvements,?and identifying barriers and opportunities in repurposing waste streams from bioengineered processes.

Looking forward, AFII remains focused on building on our successes in developing and supporting multidisciplinary projects to meet the agrifood sector’s need for interdisciplinary collaboration in projects that integrate diverse disciplines, knowledge, and techniques to solve complex problems beyond the scope of a single discipline. These projects are often more complex in nature, require strong engagement with end users, and bring together researchers who may not speak each other’s ‘language’. AFII has an important role in enabling these projects from the establishment phase, to developing and managing teams of researchers who may be new to this way of working, and in translating the outputs into real world impact.

An example of our support for interdisciplinary projects is the work we have done this year with the Western Sydney University and University of Melbourne on a bid for a Centre of Excellence (CoE) around understanding the impacts of extreme heat on food systems and natural landscapes. The bid team brings together social scientists with ecologists, environmental modellers and plant scientists. The CoE bid has provided an opportunity to put into practice what we have learnt about the formation of interdisciplinary teams and how to deliver outcomes and outputs that are relevant to external stakeholders.

As well as working with other universities, there is much to be gained from collaborating with our partners at CSIRO, whose industry focus and expertise complements the fundamental research excellence at ANU. An example is a project currently underway that brings together researchers from both institutions focused on developing a way of harvesting valuable resources from wastewater. The team is working closely with industry – including the Atlantic salmon industry in Tasmania and municipal waste authorities – to understand the nature and scale of the challenges they face and how this technology may assist in solving them. This project presents an excellent example of how governments could consider investing strategically in R&D to incentivise collaboration on long-term industry challenges with benefits to the environment, economy and the education sector.

With a view to the future, AFII has reviewed how we will deliver on our strategic goals in 2025 and beyond. We will continue to invest our efforts and resources across six themes, delivering support to researchers and students in line with our mission to improve the profitability, sustainability and equitability of agrifood systems, aiming for transformative solutions to national and global challenges. We look forward to continuing to work with those in our community already, and to building new mutually beneficial partnerships with people already in industry and those who may never have considered working in the field of agriculture.

A sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed to the success of AFII this year. To our Board, who have given so generously of their time and insights, ANU staff and students who have brought an admirable level of energy, enthusiasm and expertise to projects, our Hub members, whose success is inspiring, our industry partners, and the wider Canberra innovation community, thank you.

Have a safe and relaxing break and we look forward to working with you all again in 2025.

Owen