As many people, many reports over the last few years have said, we must invest
more in agricultural R&D. World Bank
last year said it wanted to double investment to
$US8.3bn over the next three years. The Rural R&D
Council said in its report that on its investment
plan - doubling investment in agricultural R&D
in Australia. Royal Society of London - a report
a few years ago suggested that the UK Government should invest
two billion pounds over the next ten years in agricultural R&D and
a couple of weeks ago the UK Chief Scientist reiterated that and
said that to solve the global food
security problem we need to invest in new knowledge.
So lots of people are saying it
... and to meet all those challenges we need
to recognise that agriculture relies on smart technology.
We have to do things better, we have to do them well and we have to use
cutting edge R&D. We have to have a step
change - we really need to step change the rate of agricultural production
um, and that we need to invest more to do that.
We need to attract the best minds into agricultural R&D
- we need to identify the critical issues, apply the
outcomes of R&D faster and also foster partnerships
both locally and internationally. Well, all that sounds very well
but we have problems. This
from the Grains Research Development Corporation. They looked at
the way posts were distributed
between different aspects of the research that they fund and
the male/female ratios in various areas
and the age structure of the scientists.
And if you look down here you can see of this 454 in this particular
example, 184 of those scientists are actually molecular
biologists - molecular geneticists - underpinning research for
grain crop improvement. Many of those people
are pretty young. There's some older as well - probably the people who
established molecular biology and molecular genetics in the UK - but a reasonably healthy number
of people at a young age. Compare that to
agronomists, to breeders and basically what I'll 
call crop protection experts - most of those are male
- overwhelmingly male - and
many of them are well over 50. Less so for the agronomists
but they're all over - between 35-50.
Um, but we have overwhelmingly male
plant breeders who are approaching the end of their careers. Now
it's relatively easy to get students from
other subjects like - who've done maybe a biology
degree - to come and do molecular biology. It's very hard to
persuade them to become agronomists, breeders or plant
protection experts. And so, I believe we're facing a major crisis
in these really underpinning aspects of agricultural
R&D. These are the people who basically take knowledge
and turn it into crop varieties
er, or, um ... farm practises that will impact
on farms ...
Problem is, we need to do all this agricultural R&D -
we need to get more of those agronomists, breeders and crop protection experts
but as Tim has already shown the number of graduates emerging
from Australian universities with agricultural degrees
is actually in decline - and it's continuing to decline. Um, 
... and so we have a real crisis just of the best students
coming into university wanting to do agriculture.
What's the reason for that? Well, one reason I think is on here
- that these are the HECS fees that students have to pay
towards the cost of their courses - and agriculture
is in band 2 together with computing, health
 allied health, sciences, engineering. This year
a student will have to pay just over $7750
towards their degrees. That's actually 
only about $1200 - $1300 less than if
they go into these well recognised professional degrees.
And I think if I was a student, thinking that were no jobs in agriculture,
which we know is not reality from the earlier talk
I might be prepared to take a punt on $1300 extra for
what society considers to be top class
professional qualifications. There is a solution to this -
... the government can set national
priority subjects - and these are the ones at the moment where
they basically charge the student far less and then subsidise
the universities to get them back up to the higher bands.
It's my belief that in order to promote agriculture
as a subject that the government wants students
to go into, agriculture needs to be put into this category for a 
few years. I think that would send out a very strong signal
and make a big difference. But then we have another problem because
once they graduate we want them to do PhDs. 
This is - these are data - from Graduate Careers Australia
... from surveys of graduates about a year after they
left university and ... one of the questions
is are you in further study after your first degree?
And it doesn't differentiate - the data I've seen at least - between PhD
or further course work programmes - but nonetheless what you can see
is that agriculture has very low
rates of people going into further degrees compared to
sciences in general and geology. Only about 20%
compared to nearly 50% up here. And that's a problem.
We're not getting students coming in to do PhDs
...
And that is a long term issue
People like Mark, who want to take our graduates and take them into jobs to do
- become extension experts or whatever - our students - agriculture students haven't
no problem getting jobs and they want to go out into those jobs.
They're poached to do so. Here's the other reason - again, a
financial one ... this is
... these data are a few years old now, so these numbers may not be exactly to date but they're
about right ... An Australian post-graduate
award is equivalent - it's not taxed
but it's equivalent in its value to an after tax
er, salary of just under $20 000 at the time
we put these data together. That's subsistence levels
We're trying to attract some of the brightest minds in Australia to do research
- and this isn't just for agriculture - these are all subjects - and we're
paying them subsistence wages essentially.
Some other, um, scholarships
are far more valuable. The GRDC at this time was
paying about $5000 more. A typical CRC scholarship
was about $3000 more again.
But compare that to what a new graduate was getting
- a typical new graduate was getting at that time. Their take home pay
of these people is substantially less than they can get if they can go out into
the marketplace - and I think the
implosion of the value of APAs and other scholarships is now a major
disincentive for anybody wishing to do a PhD.
... So, this slide
... perceptions and reality. I think the perception in the
community as a whole is that agriculture is low-tech. We know it's not.
It has an exceptional record of taking up the outcomes of research
... Agriculture is an environmental vandal.
I'm sorry, um ...
It ignores the fact that farmers actually steward 60% of the land in Australia
and do so responsibly in most cases. It's a drought ravaged
industry and therefore no prospects. Um, ...
and yet the industry has shown exceptional resilience in the face of the
prolonged drought. In many farms production
has actually been possible, whereas in previous droughts
there may have been no production at all. But changes in practises
have meant that many farms have come through
resiliently through the drought. Farmers are always whinging
and demanding handouts. You get that impression a lot of the
time. Um, maybe peak bodies are partly responsible for
that but farmers are in fact self-resilient - and only ask
for support in exceptional circumstances - and a lack
of appreciation of the role of agriculture
in delivering high quality safe food to urban communities.
So, um, they don't appreciate that and they don't
realise that it's a source of health - healthy, quality and safe products.
So, all of those things - rather like Mark says - we have to
overcome societal perceptions about agriculture if we're to
get, er, young people into agricultural R&D.
What can we do? Well, we need to
promote agriculture - agricultural research - as a worthwhile
appreciated career pursuit - something that society needs
- that it's vital to the competitive - and prosperity - not just of Australia
but actually of the world. Many people now realise that agriculture
is the route to prosperity in Third World and developing countries.
Um ... we have to show that it's a
smart, modern industry and that the R&D supports that industry
and, er ... it's a world leader
in Australia in quality assurance and environmental sustainability.
And we need to encourage the development of intellectual capital
required to meet this country's agricultural innovation needs in the future
- and also, once students have graduated - whether it's
BSc, PhD, whatever - we need to
encourage them to develop their skills to become the leaders of the future.
I think what we should be doing is we should be saying the next Norman
Borlag - one of the fathers of the green revolution - should
come from Australia. Thank you.
