The devastation wreaked by Cyclone Gabrielle illustrated failings in the resilience of not just our physical infrastructure, our land management systems, and communications systems, but also illustrated how many of our key primary industries are less resilient than they may need to be in future. This forum will address the resilience of our agricultural and horticultural production systems, with emphasis on not just the systems themselves, but also on the resilience of their supporting infrastructure, science, and financial systems.

Invited speakers to identify solutions, not just problems. We want to see current examples of resilient primary production systems.

Topics to be covered will include:

– How do we build resilience to adverse weather events such as Cyclone Gabrielle?

– How do we build resilience to deal with rapid market change that desires more ecologically and ethically responsible production systems?

– How can we protect against major seismic or volcanic events?

– How do we increase agricultural and horticultural processing and export infrastructure security?

– How do we improve financial resilience to protect from inflation, rapid interest rate change and exchange rate fluctuation.

– How do we protect against the loss of agrichemical solutions to managing pests and disease, and in the face of new incursions from biosecurity breeches?

– How do we improve labour supply, including producing a skilled scientific workforce and technical capability?

To Register or for more information please contact

Jenny Taylor

secretariat@agscience.org.nz

0274 779821

LINK TO FORUM PROGRAMME