This half-day Pre-conference Workshop will explore new opportunities in the face of the current challenges for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) as it undertakes, in its 45th year, yet more governance reforms in 2016. During these 45 years the CGIAR has contributed to massive improvements in food security in developing countries, and OECD countries including Australia have benefited from substantial technological spill-ins. With the increasing globalization of science and the shifting landscape of research providers, the CGIAR continues to have a critical but ever-evolving leadership role to play in international agricultural research. 

Australians now chair the Boards of 4 of the 15 CGIAR Centres (IFPRI, ILRI, IWMI, WorldFish) and will also Chair CIMMYT’s Board from next October. The country is also present on the Boards of ICRISAT and IRRI; and the D-G’s of two Centres (IRRI and WorldFish) also are Australian. Australia still has much to gain from this multilateral institution, but also a great responsibility to ensure it thrives.

In February 2016 it will be 60 years since the first Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural Economics Society. It will also be 20 years since we added ‘and Resources’ to the Society’s name and Journal. A fitting way to commemorate those anniversaries is to hold a pre-Conference workshop on Tuesday, February 2nd to highlight the most significant contributions of Australian and New Zealand agricultural and resource economists over the past six decades. A large number of senior members of the Society have volunteered to review those contributions as they pertain to the workings of the economy and to public policy related to agriculture and natural resources in ANZ. The papers will not be merely historical, but will treat the progressive development of thought in a way that focuses on what remains important, and point also to a future research agenda in each of the covered fields. Revisions of those papers are expected to become a special issue of the AJARE.

The Commonwealth government’s Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper was released in 2015 and includes a commitment to strengthen policy approaches to drought and risk management.

The authors of the White Paper note that drought is one of the biggest challenges faced by farmers and note its significant impact on agricultural output, productivity and farm incomes. Regardless of the magnitude of the challenge, there is also a steadfast commitment that “The Government will always stand by farmers in drought”.

This symposium brings together experts in drought and agricultural policy to scrutinise different policy approaches to drought. The purpose is to generate a discussion about current responses and to assess the merits of alternatives.

The symposium specifically aims to bring together practitioners, policy makers and academics with aninterest in this field.

The global agriculture is in transition to a new stage where growing connectivity, food affordability and consumer awareness is driving new growth opportunities. This presents new challenges for agriculture industries to remain competitive and profitable.  The past business model where farmers produced goods to markets where price discovery was beyond farmers’ control is proving redundant and the ‘new open globalized market’ presents opportunities for discriminating producers to seek innovation and business entrepreneurship to improving profit prospects.

This symposium, sponsored by the Council of Rural R&D Corporations (TBC) brings together experts in farming systems, marketing and business strategy to scrutinise issues and identify information gaps that may present opportunities for R&D.  The purpose is to provide a forum for discussing potential inadequacies in current thinking and to assess the merits of alternatives available for profitable exploration.

Prof Kym Anderson, University of Adelaide

Organizer: Prof Craig Gundersen, University of Illinois

Improving agricultural productivity has long been considered as a critical way to increase farmers’ real income and international competitiveness of Australian agricultural commodities. Between 1949 and 2014, Australian agricultural productivity has grown at the rate of 2.0 per cent a year which has contributed to more than two thirds of gross agricultural output growth. Productivity growth has also helped to negate the adverse impact of changing climate condition, declining terms of trade and resource supply constraints, and faciliate agricultural industry releasing valuable resources.

It is widely believed that technology progress, on-farm innovation and industry structural adjustment are three pillars supporting ongoing agricultural productivity growth in Australia over the past three decades. Previous studies show that domestic public investment in agricultural RD&E has on average accounted for around one third of agricultural productivity growth since 1953 while resource reallocation between farms has contributed to more than half of efficiency improvement of input use of the industry. However, limited efforts have been made to convert these useful findings into applicable public policies. In particular when productivity growth slowed down in the recent decade, it is more important to bridge academic researchers and policy makers to develop a strategy to maintain productivity growth.

The mini-symposia is designed to host three presentations focusing on the discussion of agricultural productivity growth and its drivers in the United States, Australia and some Asian developing countries, like Indonesia and Thailand. These presentations are based on the researches either using the industry-level or farm-level data, and each provides good experiences and lessons of a particular country.

Climate change is associated with increasing frequency of weather-related disaster events (IPCC, 2012), and from the 1990s, the area affected by droughts in China has been increasing (NSBC, 2012), while the frequency of flood events has also been increasing since the 1980s (Zhao et al, 2004). These extreme weather events pose a significant threat to the agricultural production, thereby contributing to food insecurity in rural China. Maintaining a reasonable level of food security is challenging, particularly, for subsistent farmers who are heavily relying on agriculture for their livelihood.  In this context, farmers must decide how to respond to climate change. They risk poverty and food security by not responding to these climate variations appropriately. There will be costs of adjustment, which will vary between households and which will affect farmers' choices. These adaptations require a combination of agricultural management practices including technical and non-technical measures that usually depend on technologies, mechanisms and institutions available in the region.

This session aims to address some key issues in climate change and agricultural adaptation in China such as impacts of climate change on crop production in China and characteristics of farmers at risk from climate change while discussing adjustment policy options.  The research is based on a household survey of rice farmers in China, which was undertaken as a part of an ongoing project funded by Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research on ‘Assessing Farmer Responses to Climate Change –Adjustment Policy Options’(ADP/2011/039). The session will also draw evidence from US agriculture on impacts of and adaptation to climate change. 

This session is sponsored by the Australian Bureau of Statistics

Session description:  The session will focus on the Environmental Accounts program at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), with a focus on the framework (the United Nation's System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, or SEEA) on which it is based, as well as specific components of the program, namely Water Accounts, Land Accounts and Agriculture Accounts (SEEA-Agriculture). The set of ABS Environmental-Economic Accounts measures the interactions between the economy and the environment (in both physical and monetary terms), and the stocks, and changes in stocks, of environmental assets. The ABS accounts cover environmental assets, water, energy products, waste, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon, environmental taxes, environmental expenditures and land cover. They include physical supply and use tables, functional accounts (such as environmental taxation accounts and environmental expenditure accounts), and asset accounts for natural resources. Our accounts are generally produced at a national level, often with state/territory splits.

Individual presentations:

1. System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) - Ross Alexander
2. Water Accounts - Steve May
3. Land Accounts - Tom Walter
4. SEEA Agriculture - Lisa Green

This session sponsored by the Murray Darling Basin Authority includes a number of presentations drawing in different aspects of the water policy puzzle including information, incentives, institutions and infrastructure. The session will conclude with a panel discussion led by Prof Lin Crase which will allow ample opportunities for audience participation.

This session is sponsored by CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship

Renewable energy sources including hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel, are used in many countries to provide power (typically electricity), fuel and heat. Very many countries have policies targeting increased renewable energy capacity and consumption. The merits of renewable energy, of targeted renewable energy policies, and appropriate evaluation methods, are each hotly contested at various levels including national politics and in energy policy literature. I briefly review the range of renewable energy goals sought and the policies directed at achieving those goals. Secondly, the arguments advanced to support use of renewable energy policies in many nations are critiqued. Third, some principles are proposed for design of renewable energy policies. Context often matters, and it is essential to consider energy, economic, and geography opportunities and constraints before developing renewable energy policies. To ensure renewable energy policies contribute towards attainment of high level national goals, a decision support approach is outlined that considers the energy context, and asks a series of evaluation questions to aid identification of first best policy measures. Barriers to and benefits from implementation of appropriate renewable energy policies are briefly reviewed.

Prof Jayson Lusk, Oklahoma State University

The aim of this Mini-symposia is to provide a forum to engage interested delegates in a guided session in examining key challenges we are facing in the years ahead and how we as a profession can meet those challenges.  

Tim Capon (CSIRO) and Thilak Mallawaarachchi (University of Queensland) will provide a short background presentation and Will Martin (IFPRI) Ian Coxhead (University of Wisconsin-Madison) will open the Panel discussion with two presentations covering key issues. Jammie Penm (ABARES) and Adam Jaffe (MOTU) will join the Panel in a Q&A session that follows. John Dixon will moderate the Q&A session.

We aim is to prepare a paper drawing on the deliberations at the session, for wider circulation, afterwards.

The session would build upon the material contained in a book on transformational environmental policy reforms that is being edited by Mike Young and Chrissy Esau.  The book builds upon a course that taught at Harvard University during 2013/14 and conference held under Australia Chair sponsorship on the same topic.  Publication is scheduled for early 2015.  The most likely date is in mid-March.

This session was organized by Regina Betz, University of New South Wales

The Paris Climate Summit will give more clarity about what the international community is willing to commit to in terms of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This session features analysis and perspectives from Australian and international academics undertaking applied research. It will cover topics such as comparison of climate change targets, Australia's options to cut emissions, prospects for international emissions markets, and comparative studies.

The Asian region is made up of economies at different stages of development, including within their agriculture sectors.  Drivers of change include on the demand side population growth, income growth, urbanization, consumption patterns and non-food demand (e.g., biofuels, ecological services) (Gulati et al., 2007; Reardon and Timmer, 2007; Bai et al., 2010) and, on the supply side, constraints on access to land and water, falling yield growth rate, climate change and slower growth in agricultural investment (World Bank, 2008).  Various economies find themselves at different points in a series of stages of transitions but the expectation is that those various stages have features in common.  Overall, the outcome, if the process is successful, is a transition from a grain economy to a food economy which will be a contribution to important development objectives, including higher levels of income in rural areas, higher degrees of equality of incomes, lower poverty rates, greater levels of environmental amenity and degrees of efficiency of resource use and greater degrees of food security, dietary diversity, nutrition and health (Huang, 2015).  

The issue is that some countries are not successful and become caught in the food transition trap.   They fail to make the transition between the stages, they become stuck in one of them and they therefore fail to achieve the development objectives just listed. 

The goal of this session is to report on a model of the transition and its application to a useful specification of the stages of the transition.    Questions for discussion then include

1.              How can developing economies in Asia use policy reform and good investment decisions to avoid the food transition trap in order to capture the development benefits that a successful transition offers? 

2.              How can cooperation among developing countries contribute to the escape from the food transition trap? 

3.              What actions including policy reforms and investments can be taken within countries to share more widely the benefits of a successful food transition? 

4.    What are the institutional gaps in the discussion of policy reform and investment decisions in this field?