Landcare Conference

Westgate Bridge park. Sept 2014

The National Landcare Conference of 16 to 18 Sept 2014 gives plenty of lessons and inspiration.

The following pages give some of the highlights and lessons from the bus tours and conference.

Click here for the main presentations on YouTube

A Summary of 2 presentations are below:

NLC Global Trends and the Next 25 Years of Sustainable Agriculture.

We saw 2 crystal balls working at the National Landcare Conference!

Dr Stefan Hajkowicz, Principal Scientist at CSIRO Futures, gave us a view of the major trends of the next 25 years and how they affect Australia and the Landcare movement.

Stefan looked at the effect of 6 trends:

“More from less” (Diminishing resources),

“Going, going, gone...?” (Deteriorating environment),

“The silk highway” (Rising economies of Asia and India),

“Forever young” (Aging population),

“Virtually here” (Increased digital connectivity),

“Great expectations” (Trend to experiential purchases).

These he displayed as a “Venn diagram” of interlocked circles with Landcare sitting in the centre and relating to them all.

He suggested ways that Australians, and the Landcare movement in particular could anticipate and take advantage of these trends.

Details of a similar earlier talk by Stefan are at:

http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Partner/Futures/Our-Future-World-report.aspx

One topic that Stefan did not deal with was climate change.

Dr Mark Howden is Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, has the job of advising Australians and the UN of the effect on us of climate change. Scary stuff!

He spoke of rising temperatures, decreasing rainfall and runoff to dams, difficulty of maintaining wheat yields, and changes to risks and returns.

He felt that best future returns from the land may not be from a crop but from a field of wind turbines with solar panels which also catch water for sale.

His talk is not yet online, but he has similar presentations at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsHxThTS0g

http://www.ausgrainsconf.com/sites/default/files/files/Presentations%202013/1345%2002%20M%20Howden.pdf