Food security inquiry hears need to prompt agricultural university degrees

The federal government has launched an inquiry into the nation's food security, following years of following supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, global conflicts and shipping and container shortages.

Several submissions flagged the need to push agricultural degrees to the forefront of the education system to ensure Australia can feed its expected population of nearly 50 million in 2066, while still remaining a reliable exporter of food.

International agricultural research expert and University of Melbourne Emeritus Professor, Lindsay Falvey, said the industry's breadth of needs was so vast, education was the fulcrum balancing the sector's sustained improvement.

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Within universities agriculture science was once a flagship course, he said, with a highly-complex mix of the biological, physical, social and economic sciences, which allowed graduates to pursue "all forms of agribusiness", including higher levels of research, government policy, complex finance, medicine and regulation.

"This is not the case today, for two reasons; universities are driven towards popular subject offerings, and as most universities are urban-based, agriculture is not front-of-mind and its image does not always match institutions' ideals," Prof Falvey said.

"The diversity of subject areas required to service food production that could once be contained in a single faculty, school or department of a university is now far beyond containment in a single faculty entity."

The University of Western Australia's submission pointed to modelling that showed up to 300,000 new jobs could be created within the food and agricultural industries over the next decade.

But to achieve the growth, the sector must attract new talent to the industry via tertiary courses.

"For example, Australia will need to train enough agricultural scientists, agronomists, technologists, and other specialists to work in the growing sector," the UWA submission stated.

"Australia will also need to up-skill people already working in the sector, as workers will need different skills to do future jobs in food and agribusiness, and demand for people with technical, managerial and numeracy skills will grow strongest."

Prof Falvey said although the current contributions of the ag science and education field were significant, they were poorly appreciated by their traditional institutions.

He called for a coordinated replanning of agricultural science tertiary education, including its funding, structure and research, to be a national priority.

"To service a future continuously-innovative food production sector in Australia will require a revamping of agricultural education.

"A modern innovative food production will be underpinned by discipline areas from most faculties in a comprehensive university. Such a change is almost impossible for a single university to initiate, and there are few incentives to do so."

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Another submission recommended encouraging agronomy as a career high school, along with establishing TAFE courses and agricultural colleges in regionally significant areas that already have an large agricultural presence.

In Australia about 300 to 400 students graduate with some form of agriculture degree each year. The former government dropped the cost of agricultural-related degrees by 62pc, in an attempt to funnel students into the field.

More than 50 submissions were made to the food security inquiry and several public hearings are expected in the new year.