QFF team heading to next week's evokeAg 2025 main program and sideline events

Next week Brisbane will be hosting AgriFutures’ evokeAG 2025 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on 18-19 February. evokeAG is the Asia Pacific region’s largest agrifood tech event, bringing together farmers, startups, scientists, and business and industry leaders.

Promoting adoption of, and attracting investment for, cutting-edge agricultural technologies and production methods will play a key role in the long-term productivity and profitability of Australian agriculture.

Since the year 2000 productivity growth in Australia has continued to slow when compared to the gains achieved during the 1980s and 90s. This slowdown in productivity growth is a potential threat to the Australian agriculture sector’s international competitiveness, while also impacting the profitability and viability of individual producers who continue to be challenged by rising input costs and unstable output prices.

Increasing productivity, or getting more output with fewer inputs, is talked about a lot, but farmers are interested in the tangibles of ways in which they can actually achieve this. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARES) has identified research and development (R&D) funding and farm expenditure on information and communication technologies as two of the potential pathways to kickstart a turnaround in Australia’s overall productivity.

Since 2010, private sector R&D spending has significantly surpassed university and federal and state government spending. This investment has led to the commercialisation of a range of AgTech solutions, and some of these local success stories will be shared at evokeAG 2025. ?

It is important that policymakers and government leaders commit to R&D funding for the long-term discoveries that public expenditure enables, while also implementing programs to support on the ground adoption by farmers.

evokeAG features a broad range of interesting sideline events, including events being run by QFF’s corporate partners at CarbonLink and Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise (TSBE).

TSBE will be hosting a two-day site visit tour on 20-21 February to demonstrate real-time advances in robotics, automation, and tech-driven innovation, driving business efficiency, drought resilience, and sustainability.

CarbonLink will be hosting a screening of the ‘Roots so Deep’ regenerative agriculture documentary in Brisbane on 19 February. The film’s director Peter Byck, as well as CarbonLink and RCS Founder Dr. Terry McCosker will be present for screening, which will be followed by a Q&A facilitated by QFF CEO Jo Sheppard. ?

You can find tickets to both events by visiting each partner’s respective profile on the QFF website at www.qff.org.au/qff-corporate-partners/.

Representatives from the QFF team will be attending a range of evokeAG main program and sideline events, so if you are attending be sure to keep an eye out and say hello.

evokeAG 2025 tickets are still available at www.evokeag.com/evokeag-2025/