In conversation with … Dr Sandra Milach
October 7, 2026
The Crawford Fund for Food Security is proud to present a new video series featuring conversations with prominent Australian and international researchers exploring their careers, passion and drive to pursue a more food secure world.
The challenges facing global food security have never been more obvious or urgent. Disease outbreaks, climate change, natural disasters and geopolitical shocks all threaten supply chains, trade, and stability.
Australia’s food security cannot be considered in isolation. It is bound to the resilience
of regional and global systems. Hunger and malnutrition fuel instability, while food builds trust, prosperity, and cultural exchange. By investing in people and partnerships, and embedding research and evidence in policy, food security and resilience into the future is possible.
The challenges are significant, and seem increasingly overwhelming, but there are extremely dedicated people around the world focused on the science, the solutions, and the networks to make a difference.
Now, is the perfect time to present these voices and hear these stories.
A keynote speaker from the Crawford Fund for Food Security’s 2026 Annual Conference, our next guest in this series describes herself as an explorer. Starting as a young agronomist in Brazil, she fell in love with genetics and plant breeding and built a career that led to what she calls the privileged position of leading the science portfolio of the world’s largest public goods agriculture research organisation, the CGIAR network.
We present to you, In Conversation with…Dr Sandra Milach.
Watch the video, or read more below.
Introduction
I am Sandra Milach. I’m the CGIAR chief scientist, and I am an explorer. That’s how I define myself. My background, of course, started with agronomy in Brazil, and then I became a corn breeder for many years, twenty years working different ways. And, now I’m leading the CGIAR science portfolio.
In that regard, I think it’s a privileged position to be in, the largest public goods international organisation and being able to really help set the direction of how we continue doing research for development.
Q: What is CGIAR’s global footprint for agricultural research?
A: The CGIAR is comprised of thirteen centres that are part of the integrated partnership of the CGIAR. These are centres who are actively invested in the the research portfolio of the CGIAR. We also have some other centres that are very close to us, although they are not part of the integrated partnership, like CIFOR-ICRAF, now operating as Landscape Alliance, and and others like ICIPE and WorldVeg, so they are very close partners, they work with the CGIAR centres.
But those thirteen centres, if you look across the globe, they are located very close to the equator line. In other words, the CGIAR footprint is really in the tropics, where we have most of the challenges in agriculture moving forward with climate change and other challenges that we have. We’re well positioned to translate science into solutions, if you will, on the ground, in the areas going to be most affected by the changes, especially climate and pests and new things that are going to come out of that.
Q: How did you get started as an agronomist in Brazil?
A: I never dreamed to be in the international agriculture. In fact, when I decided to become an agronomist, my father was like, okay: what is a woman in agronomy going to do? You’re going to plant potatoes? You know, that’s what usually agronomists would do, you know, back home many years ago. But when I was doing my undergrad degree, I really fell in love with genetics and plant breeding and then built my career on that.
I went and did a PhD in plant breeding at the University of Minnesota. Then I came back and taught at university for thirteen years and also overlapped at the end of that period with two years working for Embrapa as well in Brazil. And, then the private sector came after me, and I ended up, moving to the private sector and building a career twenty years in the private sector, working with plant breeding, corn breeding – as a corn breeder first, and then, you know, leading development of technologies and new ways of product development in all crops for DuPont Pioneer which then became Corteva Agriscience.
And then I was retired. And this opportunity came, and I felt this was the time to do it because I never really worked with the international agriculture. That was the only thing I had not done in my career, to be honest. So, I thought it was the time to do it and explore. So here I am.
Q: CGIAR’s current strategy covers 2025-2030. What progress has there been to the 20230 goals?
A: I feel you know, the first year, my agenda was really to come and and and do a change in this organisation. When I came, people said, Sandra, you’re so unlucky because I started in January of 2025 in this job, and in March, we got a big drop in funding, because USA closed the door, so you know, they retrieved the money. People say, you are so unlucky. Right? Like, the year you’re starting is like the year you have the most challenge with money with CGIAR. For many years, it was the year that we got hit the most. I saw that as an opportunity because I thought this is the year if you want to make changes, there is no other way. You know, when you have twenty per cent now less money, you have to make decisions about what you’re going to stop because, you know and you need to be strategic about how you do that.
So I looked at for that, for me in the year that I was starting was the year to make that change. And that’s what we did. I focused the team, the global science team, in really moving into that, you know, in how we how we create a process, if you will, of making these decisions of where we invest, using guidelines, principles, starting with that, but then developing a process to say, okay: Which country should we be in? And how do we look at the impact indicators that we want to achieve in the at the end of 2030, and how then we fund the research that allows us to have most impact at that point.
So that’s sort of, you know, in one way or the other, you know, that challenge, I think it was a a enormous opportunity for making the changes. And we made substantial changes, for instance, we cut half of the countries where we focus our investment in the first year.
The other thing we also, you know, we used to have twenty three indicators of things that we’re doing, and we cut to seven indicators to focus as well. So, I mean, some of these things really end up helping us to really narrow down so we could really research for success.
Q: What are the barriers to improvement in food security?
A: You know, one of the challenges that we have in addressing changes in food insecurity or improving or creating more food security is that this is not a one angle problem to solve. It’s a systemic problem to solve, and for you to be able to move the needle, and really make this transformation, you need to look at several aspects. And you need to be asking the questions, what are the bottlenecks of these systems, and where do we have the best possibilities of intervention so that we can actually do this? So I I think, you know, barriers are different levels, depending on what where you look at in this.
In the early days of CGIAR, it was very, very focused on getting genetics, new varieties, new products. It was really about single interventions that were done by different centres in different crops in different regions. And that has really helped a lot. The CGIAR was very important in driving a lot of changes in Green Revolution in different regions. It really helped because there was a huge gap in that regard.
Over years, now we have a lot more solutions. And I think the the challenge is at a different level now. It’s actually how you actually bundle this with many other necessary solutions. Sometimes you have the products, but you don’t have the seed systems. Sometimes you have the products and the seed systems, but you just don’t have the market pool that the farmers can actually, you know, be able to to to get their crops into the market.
So, more and more as you raise food security, you keep raising the challenge of and the barriers become different types of barriers. Right? I think that is that’s why we have more and more barriers to continue decreasing food security, I think, because they become different types of barriers over time. When you solve and you raise your bar in terms of solutions, then you have to address some other things that to connect end to end, if you think for the food, land, and water systems transformation.
Q: How do you see Australia’s role in international agricultural research?
A: Australia has been very important in not only leading the science, you know, we have a lot of capabilities and resources in Australia that has been really instrumental not only for the global south, but also as a whole. So I think in that regard, you know, there’s recognition of that science that has been able to to help. But also, think it has played a very important role in in advancing research for development in international agriculture.
Like, in the last fifty years, I think it has CGIAR has been here most of the centres. I think the oldest centres are a little bit over sixty years now, but I would say that, you know, since the beginning, Australia has been very instrumental in participating in this multilateral system, in helping one way or the other through funding, through science, through that. And I think it has helped in developing this, but also has benefited quite a bit.
We have several examples of how this investment has actually returned investments for Australia as well. You know, our estimate is that for every dollar that is invested for research, for development in agriculture, it’s about ten dollars in benefit. And I think for Australia, I think it’s about eight dollars, 8.72 dollars, something like that, in benefit. So I think it’s has really benefited as well, but Australia has played a very active role into it, and we hope it continues doing so.
Q: How important is government funding in international agricultural research?
A: So government funding from around the world is very important in keeping, public goods, agriculture, research agriculture globally, going. This should be looked at as infrastructure. You know, I think one of the challenge that we have in research is that usually we fund projects, And projects are done for a period of one year, two years, three years, and then once they’re done, then, you know, you have to sort of go back into the rounds of doing that.
But I think the the beauty of having governments invested into it is that they do it for the longer term because this should be looking at infrastructure and investment. Because as you know, these problems are not going away, you you do new varieties as one example. You think, okay. I’d already done this. I don’t need to do anymore. You’ll be right if everything keeps the same, but we know that that’s not the reality. You know, things are always evolving, and they are evolving faster than ever.
With now, you know, global warming and climate change, you know, like, we have more pests. We have diseases coming cycles that are much shorter than before. Used to have that have sometimes cycles of diseases come, would like, every five years, you have a peak or maybe sometimes every ten years. Now it’s, like, every two or three years. They’re like, the intensity of these cycles is increasing. So all these things means that we need to continue investing. There is no stop investing to the solution.
If we stop something like a a pipeline of breeding as one example, you are you know, we stop one year and then you lose that germplasm. It means that if you have to start again, you are ten years late. So the point is, when the problem comes, it’s too late to solve it. So we need to keep evolving and keep investing in these things because we never know when the new next problem is going to come, so that we keep actually preparing ourselves for what’s coming.
So, absolutely, governments, they play such an important role because they are so important in investing infrastructure, not only in the countries, but also, I would say, in this in the global public goods.
