It may not seem like it at present, but Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Australia's drought risk is higher than Ethiopia, Morocco and India.
While our focus is rightly focused on flood-recovery efforts in Victoria and the cleanup from tropical storms in Queensland, we must remember drought is inevitable.
As climate change tightens its grip on the planet's weather patterns, drought impacts will become even more damaging, and the need for agricultural resilience more critical.
Global food security is under threat by increasingly erratic rainfall and extreme weather events. The World Bank warns that by the midpoint of the century, drought could reduce global crop yields by 10 to 20 per cent by 2050 in Africa (Jones and Thornton, 2009).
The world must find solutions that allow us to withstand these climatic onslaughts, and Australia has a pivotal role to play.
Australia's history with drought is a tapestry of climatic challenges and human endurance.
The Federation Drought (1895-1903) ravaged the nation at the turn of the 20th century, decimating livestock by the millions and precipitating the collapse of many rural economies.
Between 1937 and 1945, the country suffered under the World War II Drought, leading to the Black Friday bushfires of 1939, testing the resolve of a wartime nation.
More recently, the Millennium Drought (1997-2009) was a long slow burn which like bacteria on a petri dish slowly spread from the southeast of the country, making its way North and West.
Above average temperatures culminated in the loss of 374 lives in Victoria and many more during the Black Saturday fires.
Drought is rightly seen as a crisis. But in Australia, we need to be view it as an opportunity.
Not only is it a chance to 'help our own', but it's also an opportunity to build new industries and technologies based on our hard-won knowledge and expertise. For all the heartache and destruction drought has caused in this country, Australia's natural adversity has seen us become a hotbed for agricultural innovation.
For example, over the first 90 years of the 20th century, Australian grain production has exhibited a remarkable resilience, achieving a threefold increase in yields despite a backdrop of decreasing rainfall. Put simply, for every millilitre of water that falls onto a wheat field Australian farmers are producing 300% more grain than they did a century ago.
This shows farmers have improved their agricultural practices, water management techniques have advanced, and science has enabled us to develop drought-resistant crop varieties. This progress proves the adaptability of Australia's agriculture in the face of climatic adversity.
On the startup front, the fruits of Australian ingenuity are already on display. In 2013, Australian company, Climate Corp, which developed a machine learning to predict the weather, was sold to Monsanto for $1 billion, creating the world's first AgTech unicorn.
We are also seeing a new wave of drought resilience startups like Loam Bio, harnessing the power of microbes to improve soil health and resilience, and ReGrow, which leverages satellite imagery and AI to optimize carbon farming practices. These enterprises embody the spirit of Australian innovation: ambitious, and ready to tackle global drought challenges by exporting our expertise to the world.
Despite these shining examples, the road from research to commercial success is far too quiet.
It is no secret that Australia ranks as one of the worst countries in the developed world when it comes to commercialising research, with public research organisations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom having two or more times the level of invention disclosures and start-ups for every dollar spent on research.
Australia's researchers produce world-class science. But, despite spending over $2.2b every year on world leading agriculture research, Australia only invested $316m in early stage agrifood tech startups in 2022 (out of a total of $6.5b invested across Asia-Pacific).
This gap between potential and realisation is where opportunities are lost, and with them, the chance to set a global standard in drought resilience.
This is why Beanstalk is launching Drought Venture Studio. In partnership with the Commonwealth Governments $5b Future Drought Fund, we are dedicated to commercialising our world leading drought expertise and capabilities.
We are looking for drought resilience solutions that area locally impactful and globally scalable, and we want to fast track them out to Australian farmers and the world.
As the world grapples with the reality of climate change, there is an urgency to adapt.
The Drought Venture Studio is a step towards ensuring that Australia's agricultural sector not only survives but thrives. It's about acknowledging our homegrown technology smarts - particularly in the Ag sector - and combining it with generations of first-hand experience with drought.
We believe that Australia, despite being the driest inhabited continent on earth, can yield the most fertile ideas for combating drought and can continue to yield the world's best produce for decades to come.
- Cal Archibald is the director of Beanstalk AgTech.
