Food Futures Company has just embarked on an AgriFutures Australia funded project to help the native agriculture and food sector realise its potential to deliver economic, social, cultural, health and environmental outcomes. We will be taking a whole value chain approach to identify sector challenges where the application of technology could make a difference.
Citrus glauca, Desert Lime
The research project will collaborate with industry by focussing on three key species, which have been chosen to demonstrate the diversity of native foods. Species selected include Bush tomatoes, which have historically been wild harvested; finger limes as a well-developed species; and Native Pepper, because of its cosmeceutical applications. We will focus on these as each provides a different window into the industry. This will provide a breadth of learnings that can be applied more generally and result in boosting the sector by identifying new opportunities.
So, how will we be doing this?
To ensure we capture insights to drive the sector we will be reviewing whole value chains to observe where the value is created and captured, and where the challenges exist. We will further develop these insights through industry workshops to refine our understanding.
Various intervention programs will be proposed to increase industry access to enabling technology and to drive capability building as required. Opportunities considered include building the entrepreneurial capability within the industry through start up programs like the current Native Ag+Food Ideas2Business program.
The approach we are applying through this project and all work in the native agriculture and food sector will have relevance to other emerging agricultural sectors.