National Food Security Preparedness in Practice

Summary

Rural Futures has been presented with an opportunity to fund the delivery of a N ational Food Security Preparedness workshop series, in partnership with Agribusiness Australia and led by AgSecure.
This proposal builds on the success of a pilot workshop funded by Rural Futures in 2025, which was underpinned by the Food Security Green Paper co-contributed to by Rural Futures in 2024. Both initiatives were considered highly successful and have informed the development of a more comprehensive, national-scale program.
The proposed work comprises a structured series of workshops with Agribusiness Australia member organisations—a critical stakeholder group with which Rural Futures has historically had limited direct engagement. These workshops will focus on co-developing insights that will inform a National Food Security Preparedness Roadmap, alongside a national summit to consolidate findings and build shared alignment.
Consistent with the results of the pilot session, each module/workshop also produces two primary outputs:

Board-Style Briefing Reports: Provided to every attendee, these briefings capture the strategic risks and failure points identified during the workshop for internal corporate use.
Confidential Headline Reports: Provided to AgriFutures Australia and Agribusiness Australia, these reports establish the operational ground-truth and evidence-based priorities needed to inform the National Food Security Strategy.

Together, this work represents a logical progression of previous Rural Futures investments, deepening engagement with the agribusiness sector and translating earlier research into practical, system-level preparedness planning.

Program

National Rural Issues

Research Organisation

The Trustee for Agsecure Trust

Objective Summary

1. Improved enabling environment for adoption of food security technologies and innovations (e.g. suitable regulation, workforce capability and knowledge sharing).
2. Elevation of food security as a national priority.
3. Increase collaboration with DAFF on Food Security issues.
4. Stronger alignment across RDCs, regulators, and government to streamline policy and regulation for national food security.
5. Better data sharing and forecasting, modelling capability for improved food security.