Regional Horizons: Farming communities leading the recovery.
At a glance
Rural and regional Australia stands at a crossroads. With our clear natural advantages, a history of world-class research and innovation, and talented people, we have a once in a generation opportunity to build a future of resilience, opportunity and sustainable growth. Regional Australia is responsible for about 40 per cent of the nation’s economic output and provides jobs for around one third of Australia’s workforce. It is the backbone of Australian agriculture, which seeks to grow from a value of around $60 billion to $100 billion over the next decade. Drawing on the power and experience of farming communities, Australia can emerge as a global leader becoming a renewable energy superpower, maintaining and improving agricultural productivity, assuring food security while exploring new opportunities. We can accelerate large-scale investment in landscape repair, build adaptable, resilient communities, and cut emissions. Enter Regional Horizons. This five-year $1.8 billion program creates new opportunities for jobs and industries, while building a climate-smart rural and regional Australia. It builds on existing successes, networks and investments and provides policy integration and certainty, making possible private, public and community led innovation. Regional Horizons is underpinned by four core areas of work:
• The development and delivery of the National Climate Change and Agriculture Work Plan, which all state and federal Agriculture Ministers have already agreed to. Done well, the plan could play an important role coordinating efforts to promote climate-smart agriculture and build regional resilience to drought, fire and other mounting risks
• A new Land and Environment Investment Fund (LEIF), working from the successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), to support innovation, attract large-scale investment, reward ecosystem services, and promote climate solutions and resilience on the land.
• A Regional Resilience Hub Network, to strengthen and diversify existing learning networks, encourage innovation, and empower regional communities with choices in a changing climate.
• A Regional Energy Transition Program, to promote and support community-based, clean energy developments, and modernise and decentralise power grids.
Are you a farmer who wants to do more to promote an economic recovery centred on regional Australia? Check out our Regional Horizons engagement toolkit.
The results
Regional Horizons will help to deliver:
• A regional boom as new industries flourish, creating tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and attracting new people and fresh talent to rural areas, with flow-on benefits for whole communities
• Prudent investment in climate-smart farms, doing more and better with less environmental impact, and regenerating natural and social capital. Resource use is highly efficient, with more and more farms having added clean energy to their portfolios
• A thriving landscape carbon industry, generating up to $10.4 billion in revenue and up to 15,750 jobs by 2030. Carbon storage in trees and soil is emerging as a significant new export industry and another income stream for many farmers.
• Greater farmer resilience, farm performance and efficiency, better enabling them to weather a changing climate
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As the new decade dawned, Australia and the world looked on as a wall of flames encircled and then engulfed the township of Mallacoota. Following severe drought, the fire season had begun shockingly early. By Christmas, large swathes of the east coast were on fire, burning until rain brought relief in February. What’s more, the challenges facing rural Australia were also felt in the major cities, as smoke from the bush suddenly shrouded Australia’s major centres. Fast forward to June 2020, and COVID-19 has led to a world in upheaval. Throughout the unfolding of this crisis our political leaders have led with prudence and conviction, listening to the science and working together. 2020 has made us sit up and really think hard on some critical questions, like:
• What is agriculture’s role in helping Australia recover from the economic fallout of COVID-19? How do we rebuild, stronger than before?
• How do we quickly create new clean, secure jobs and investment in rural and regional Australia—serving both our immediate and long-range goals for sustainable growth?
• How do we set up Australian agriculture and rural communities to take advantage of a post-pandemic world? As investors and markets, alert as never before, better price in climate and other risks, how well placed is the Australian agri-food sector?
• Are our major infrastructure investments and other taxpayer-funded subsidies geared with fairness, long-term adaptability, and sustainability in mind? Are they setting us up for a new global era reshaped by, and acutely aware of, pandemics, climate change, and other big risks and shocks?
With clear natural advantages, a healthy credit rating, a history of world-class research and innovation, a rare national unity, and talented people, this is Australia’s moment. This is a once in a generation opportunity to build a future of resilience, opportunity and sustainable growth. As with COVID-19, Australia can emerge a global leader, becoming a renewable energy superpower; maintaining and improving agricultural productivity; assuring food security while exploring new opportunities; driving large-scale investment in landscape repair; building adaptive, resilient communities; and cutting emissions.
A platform for transformation
The fires and pandemic have reminded Australians of the power of community, the value of science and a strong public service, and the importance of resilient food systems. After decades of a relentless quest for efficiency; now is the time to invest in our resilience: to ensure that our communities and essential industries stay strong and government processes are transparent, accountable and are actively addressing our critical challenges.
It’s time for Australia to step up. Time to protect our clean, green reputation and seize our natural advantage. Time to proactively integrate and manage climate risk: knowing that agricultural productivity, natural resources, health and community are all intrinsically linked. As the firies say, the best time to get ready was yesterday; the next-best time is today. Delay is not an option. Now is our moment. The Regional Horizons program combines targeted, transitional and transformational reforms with strategic investments to create new opportunities to ensure a sustainable, climate-smart rural and regional Australia. By building on existing successes, networks and investments and providing policy integration, certainty and coherence – the Regional Horizons 2030 program will enable private, public and community led innovation. Regional Horizons is underpinned by four core areas of work.
• A National Climate Change and Agriculture Work Plan already under development. Done well, the plan could play an important role coordinating efforts to promote climate-smart agriculture and build regional resilience to drought, fire and other mounting risks.
• A new Land and Environment Investment Fund (LEIF), working from the successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), to support innovation, attract large-scale investment, reward ecosystem services, and promote climate solutions and resilience on the land.
• A Regional Resilience Hub Network to strengthen and diversify existing learning networks, encourage innovation, and empower regional communities with choices in a changing climate.
• A Regional Energy Transition Program, to promote and support community-based, clean energy developments, and modernise and decentralise power grids.
”The Farmers for Climate Action Regional Horizons plan provides me with hope. As someone who has lived in regional Australia for most of my life, I see it as a document which provides the broad outlook that is needed to make the changes that will enable us to develop the resilient society we need: one which is filled with hope, opportunity, equity and justice. It fosters the creation of truly sustainable communities that will be able to deal with the impact of climate change. They will thrive if they are able to access knowledge, technology, wisdom and opportunity. Dorothy Henderson, Esperance farmer and Farmers for Climate Action supporter
2030: Two possible futures
Our climate change trajectory to 2030 is already locked in. Our capacity to cope and adapt, and the extent of the challenges we face in the following decades will be determined by the actions we take today. Below we consider two possible futures—one where we fully grasp the opportunity we face now, and one which we fall back on old ways of doing things.
Scenario 1: An opportunity lost
Global CO2 concentrations have just passed 448 ppm and Australia’s average temperature is now on average 1.5°C hotter than at Federation. The trillions of dollars spent on the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic are rapidly eclipsed by the rising costs of climate volatility. Property values alone have been reduced by $571 billion as a result of climate change and increasing extreme weather. There is growing concern for agriculture, as cumulative damages to agriculture and labor productivity are on track to reach $4.2trillion by 2100. Looking back, it seems bizarre that Australia emerged from COVID-19 a global leader, yet the Federal Government sought to use the pandemic crisis to obstruct our transition to a low carbon future. Our global leadership and extraordinary shared sense of purpose dissipated as we descended into politicking for short-term gain. Through a post COVID-19 program to relax environmental regulations for extractive industries, we have accelerated the degradation of some of our prime agricultural land and ignored the critical challenges facing our communities. Australia squandered our moment to reinvigorate our economy for long term health and prosperity. Teenagers coming of age in Moranbah marvel at automation while wondering where the jobs have gone. Out at Broken Hill—even goats are struggling in the heat. While Australia dithered in 2020, others seized opportunities, using clean energy to cut costs and re-invest in homegrown manufacturing. Our agricultural sector and our farmers, renowned for clean, green produce are increasingly exposed to climate risk, and far from achieving our $100 billion growth target are struggling simply to remain viable. Beef production across Northern Australia has declined by 19 per cent. Insurance is increasingly a crippling burden and recurrent drought has led to seemingly intractable conflicts over water.
Scenario 2: An opportunity grasped
The COVID-19 pandemic laid the foundations for a bridge across the rural-urban divide Finally, we were on the same page—recognising that a shared understanding of productivity and landscape health was essential for mutual prosperity. We used this moment to communicate honestly about the challenges, rebuild our adaptive capacity and positive social networks, and sustainably intensify our farming systems: doing more with less, healing our landscapes and revitalising communities. After years of drought and the summer bushfires, our regional communities were hurting, but as a nation we were up to the challenge. Widespread support for the Regional Horizons program led to:
• A regional boom as new industries flourished, creating tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and attracting new people and fresh talent to rural areas, with flow-on benefits for whole communities.
• Smart investment in climate-smart farms: doing more and better with less environmental impact, and even regenerating natural and social capital. Resource use is highly efficient, with more and more farms having added clean energy to their portfolios.
• A thriving landscape carbon industry: generating up to $10.4 billion in revenue and up to 15,750 jobs by 2030. Carbon storage in trees and soil, and natural capital are emerging as significant new growth industries and another income stream for many farmers and other carbon-savvy land managers, with a swag of added benefits for crop and pasture health, wildlife habitat, and the wellbeing of farming families.
• Improved adaptive capacity. Farmers now focus on strategy, adaptability, flexibility and overall farm performance, as well as efficiency, including the happiness and connectedness of families—enabling them to weather a changing, even more capricious climate.
• Rural communities have diversified economic interests and strong local, national and global connectivity – enabling them manage risks and seize opportunities.
The state of play
Farming is the foundation of Australians’ shared prosperity and our food security, with our food and farming systems forming an indispensable thread in our economy. The agricultural supply chain totals 12 per cent of Australia’s GDP with agriculture alone employing 250,700 Australians. Farming and allied industries are integral to the fabric of thousands of local communities, and with about 85,000 farm businesses managing more than half the continent, our environmental, social and economic future depends a great deal on the strength and sustainability of Australian agriculture. Despite this, the inequities facing rural Australians are complex and compounding. Already challenged by digital connectivity, health, infrastructure, migration to urban areas, socio-economic disadvantage, vulnerability to extreme weather events and climate risk, many regional communities have the capability (skills and know-how), but not the capacity (tools and resources) to proactively manage emerging risks. The land of drought and flooding rains is already seeing more and worse droughts, and heavier, more dangerous downpours, not to mention megafires. Faced with an increasingly capricious climate most Australian farmers are already being forced to do things differently. The past is no longer a good guide to the future. Business as usual is simply no longer an option.