Talking Australian agriculture on the world stage and finding out how much we have in common

Not every work trip involves a folk village, a baseball game and a biodegradable jacket made from fruit peel, but the APEC Food Security Ministerial Meeting in Incheon, South Korea, was not a typical week.

Our COO Will Onus joined the Australian delegation last week for the suite of events surrounding the APEC meeting, alongside representatives from DAFF, Tim Healey and Jeremy Collies from Artesian, and Katie McRobert from the Australian Farm Institute. The focus for the week was innovation in agri-food systems and what regional cooperation looks like in practice: sharing expertise, learning from different approaches, and finding solutions that work across very different agricultural contexts.

Will presented in the Agricultural Technical Cooperation Working Group Workshop on unlocking the value of emissions technology in agriculture: specifically how on-farm data can deliver sustainability outcomes and genuine business benefits at the same time. It's a message that translates well across contexts, and the conversations that followed made clear that producers across the Asia-Pacific are grappling with similar pressures: how to demonstrate sustainability credentials to global markets while keeping farm businesses commercially viable.

"Australia's got a great agricultural story to share," Will reflected after the week. "But the real progress comes from learning together. By collaborating closely with other APEC economies, we can keep improving outcomes across the region."

The side trips didn't hurt either. A visit to the National Agricultural Museum of Korea offered some perspective on how different cultures have approached food production and land management over centuries, and the baseball was apparently excellent!

Thanks to everyone who made the week a success. The more these conversations happen across borders, the better placed the industry is for what's coming.