BOWNA producer Lucinda Corrigan will highlight the need for agriculture to explore how other industries are addressing innovation in Canberra next week.
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Mrs Corrigan, an Australian Rural Leadership Foundation fellow, has been invited to speak at the annual Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics and Sciences Outlook conference at the National Convention Centre.
The Rennylea Pastoral Company director will speak on the second day of the conference as part of a panel discussing the future of farming.
Mrs Corrigan said she had just six minutes to put forward her points on the future of the livestock industry.
“I guess I’m going to talk quickly about what is transformational research and development,” she said.
“I’ll give a synopsis on R and D in four key areas and then where innovation is going in other areas and the need for agriculture to look outside, in terms of an innovation framework.”
A connection she has made through her position on the board of Meat and Livestock Australia Donor Company has led Mrs Corrigan to examine how other industries are approaching innovation and what lessons agriculture can learn.
She said the trend for agricultural businesses to grow and develop bigger teams of people meant the industry had to deal with issues such as human resources.
“From some of the reading I’ve been doing ... successful companies have a lot of commonality in their leadership of people and in driving innovation,” she said.
“That’s something we’ve got plenty of room to move on.”
Mrs Corrigan’s fellow panellists include the Minerals Council of Australia’s Melanie Stutsel; Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation chairwoman Professor Daniela Stehlik; producer Robert Egerton-Warburton from Kojonup in Western Australia; producer John Hamparsum from Breeza in north-west NSW; and producer and viticultural consultant Liz Riley from the Hunter Valley.
David Cussons, a producer from the Great Southern region of Western Australia, will chair the session.
All the producers are either Nuffield scholars or Australian Rural Leadership Foundation fellows.
Mrs Corrigan is also looking forward to conference sessions, including the opening session on world economic recovery.
“I’m interested in world recovery, the high Australian dollar and trying to get where that’s going,” she said.