Rethinking Investments in Agri-Food Innovation Globally

Rethinking Investments in Agri-Food Innovation Globally
Please join the Crawford Fund for Food Security’s ACT Committee for an in-depth look at the rapidly shifting global agri-food investment landscape. 

📅 Date: Wednesday 05 November 2025
🕓 Time: 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
📍 Location: CSIRO Discovery Centre, Canberra 

Numbers are limited – registration is free but required for catering purposes so please register by COB 03 November 2025.

The USA Government’s pause on foreign aid has sent shockwaves through the global development community, and combined with climate change and global conflicts, this decision is the latest blow in a slow but pervasive decline in investment that is putting food security across the entire region at risk.

Learn how the broader region is already mobilising to keep food security high on the agenda, the implications for Australia, and the opportunities available as the world looks for credible, capable leaders to shape the next generation of food systems.

Over the past several decades the global investment landscape for agri-food R&D has changed big time. Drawing on newly developed data, Phil Pardey will describe some of the profound changes in the global pattern of public and private agri-food R&D spending, including the rise of the middle-income countries (and especially the large agricultural economies in that group), the dramatic geographical shift in terms of where R&D actually occurs, the expanding private sector role, and, of significant concern, the more recent and spreading slowdown (and also cutting back) in R&D spending around the world.

These dramatic developments have significant implications for Australia and the world, in terms of tapping into the opportunities afforded by new technological possibilities while also addressing the growing challenges arising from increasing natural resource (including water) scarcity and rising regulatory pressures on agri-food operators in the face of continued, if not exacerbated, climate and market risks in the decades ahead.

Registration is free but is required for catering purposes. 

Reserve your spot now!

Spaces are limited. RSVP today to secure your place at this thought-provoking event.

🌟  About Professor Pardy

Philip Pardey has been at the University of Minnesota since 2002. He is a Distinguished Global Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Department of Applied Economics, and Director of the GEMS Informatics Center. GEMS brings together the University’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute to develop and deploy computational systems that address complex problems to unlock innovation in the agri-food sector and foster data-driven public-private partnerships.

Previously he was a senior research fellow at IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), Washington D.C. and ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research), The Hague, Netherlands.

Philip hails from South Australia. His career has focused on informing agricultural R&D policies and practices and enabling data-driven innovation that promotes sustainable productivity growth in the food and agricultural sectors worldwide.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Distinguished Fellow and Past President of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Distinguished Life Member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, and winner of the Siehl Prize for Excellence in Agriculture. He has authored more than 430 books, articles, and papers (https://gems.umn.edu/gems-team/philip-pardey).