2019 Crawford Fund Annual Conference Proceedings Released

February 11, 2020

If you missed the Crawford Fund’s annual conference, a key event in the development and food security calendar in Australia, or you want to rediscover the speakers and their presentations, we’re pleased to release the full conference proceedings, which can be downloaded here.

For more than two decades we have successfully brought into focus an issue worthy of global and Australian attention, and in 2019 our focus was on Weathering the ‘Perfect Storm’ Addressing the Agriculture, Energy, Water, Climate Change Nexus – a topic that is becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world.

These proceedings now provide an enduring record of the keynote speeches, overview presentations and case studies, and includes the conference papers, and the Sir John Crawford Address delivered by Professor Ross Garnaut AC, who spoke in part, about the challenges of climate change being especially acute and the opportunities exceptionally large in Australia. 

By attracting the world’s best speakers, providing extended question and answer sessions and opportunities for informal networking, this conference continues to enable participants to contribute and to place food security issues into a context relevant to their lives and work.

Droughts, floods, fires and their devastating consequences understandably receive considerable attention as stand-alone events on the evening news. However, in laboratories, in research facilities and on farms our agricultural scientists, policy makers and farmers have come to appreciate that climate change is occurring hand-in-hand with depleting natural resources and a growing and hungry population. Our 2019 annual conference held at Parliament House in Canberra on 12 and 13 August addressed the question – is our work for a more food and nutrition secure world, at the intersections of agriculture, energy and water, changing to both address these challenges and successfully harness a new future?

The Crawford Fund would like to thank those who sponsored the event, supported a scholar or donated to our efforts last year.

And we have announced a ‘hold the date’ for our 2020 event, to be held in the Great Hall, Parliament House, Canberra on 10 and 11 August. Stay tuned…