Food security in a changing climate in Australia and the Pacific
April 7, 2026
The Crawford Fund for Food Security’s ACT Committee hosted a high-level panel dialogue on Australia and the Pacific’s role in addressing climate-related issues in the global agri-food system at Parliament House last week.
The event was moderated by the Chair of the Crawford Fund for Food Security Ms Su McCluskey and panellists included Chair of the Pacific Farmers’ Organisation Mrs Aileen Burness, former Chair of AgriFutures Australia Ms Cathy McGowan AO, the Chief Scientist from Impact Ag Dr Susan Orgill and Member of the Global Food Security Leadership Council Professor Brian Schmidt AC.
Around 60 people attended the event including politicians, scientists, policy-makers, NGOs, emerging scholars and thought-leaders across food security, climate change and agriculture.
The panel discussed the need for agriculture across Australia and the Pacific region to have a bolder integrated vision for the future, with Professor Brian Schmidt calling for an agricultural total factor productivity target of at least 1.9 per cent to avoid calamitous food shortages by 2050.
Pacific Farmers Chair Mrs Aileen Burness emphasised the importance of having small farmers involved in decision making at all levels, and for farmer organisations playing a coordination role to ensure the voices of smallholders, particularly women and youth were contributing to true agrifood systems transformation across the Pacific, and beyond.
The need to understand the diversity of farming systems and how innovation in technology, financing, policy and institutions play an important role in transformation supported by effective research and development ecosystems was also discussed. The scaling of innovation in these diverse farming systems is critical to ensure agriculture becomes part of the climate solution the globe moves towards its net zero emissions targets.
Impact Ag’s Dr Susan Orgill warned of the risk of technology not reflecting a farmer’s reality and that it was essential to have a clear vision of “the farm of the future” that we can grow towards.
Panellist Cathy McGowan challenged attendees to consider the role of emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms to help collate, synthesise and spread ideas and solutions to some of the wicked productivity and climate issues that agriculture across the region will continue to face over coming years.
Crawford Fund ACT Committee Chair, Dr Wendy Craik AM, said discussion about the importance of Australia’s Pacific Island partnerships and how we ensure food systems transformation remains in focus in the lead up to COP31 discussions was extremely timely.
“The world’s food system is currently contributing one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that is predicted to rise to half of total emissions by 2050. We believe Australia and its Pacific partners have a critically important role to play in addressing this issue at the global level. Australia’s leadership in COP31, and our long history of contributing to global food security and rural livelihood improvements through institutions such as the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), makes this a timely conversation,” Dr Craik said.
“I particularly want to thank Meryl Swanson MP, Senator Anthony Chisholm and Matt Burnell MP for their support, and our moderator and panel for a thought-provoking discussion,” she said.
Outcomes from the discussion will be shared with the National Food Council and will feed into further dialogues around Australia’s positioning at COP31.
