The Crawford Fund’s 2011 annual development conference was once again a well attended and nationally reported event. Speakers’ presentations are available in PDF format on the Conference Program and Presentations page, as is a Conference Summary. Full proceedings will be published by the end of the year. read more
Presentations for the 2011 Crawford Fund State Parliamentary Conference in Queensland, A Food Secure World - Challenging Choices for our North, are now available here read more
The 2010 International Development Conference, focusing on food security imperatives in relation to biodiversity conservation was held on 30 and 31 August and 1 September in Parliament House in Canberra. The Executive Director, Dr Denis Blight, has provided a conference summary report and it is available on the Conference Page, as well as PDFs of the presentations. We hope to have the conference proceedings available later this year read more
Some technologies produced for the developed world flourish in the developing world. The most obvious recent example is the mobile phone which has been readily adopted around the world with such significant impact. But agricultural technologies that have taken hold in wealthier economies often don’t find their way to poorer countries.
Given that the private sector now does half of the world’s agricultural research and development, and some innovations like Roundup and cheap power sources are rapidly spreading to the small farmers of poorer nations, why isn’t more private agricultural R&D reaching them? read more
The current global food crisis with escalating food prices and the risk of food shortages only adds to the urgency of our 2008 topic "Agriculture in a Changing Climate: The New International Research Frontier". Climate change is now accepted as a fact by most members of the Australian community and many would argue that agriculture is the sector that is most affected by, and with a significant impact on climate change. read more
The future energy demands of rapidly-developing countries, the increasing concerns about the reliability of oil supplies and costs, the climate changes that are likely to result from burning fossil fuels and the certainty that transport will remain a major user of liquid energy sources for many years are key issues in current thinking about future energy supplies. These concerns have led to a dramatic re-assessment of the role of biofuels - liquid fuels including ethanol and biodiesel derived from organic matter. read more
Less than 1% of the world’s water is accessible for direct human use as fresh water in rainfall, runoff, lakes and shallow aquifers. The 2006 conference emphasised the challenges of providing irrigation water for agriculture during the next 20 years; the potential impact of water shortages, including the effects of climate change and the need for ongoing international agricultural research to mitigate these effects read more