Date
- Brazil: 17 and 18 June 2025, 7:00pm (Brasilia Time – BRT)
- Australia: 18 and 19 June 2025, 8:00am (Australian Eastern Standard Time – AEST)
- Zoom platform
Background
The Australia-Brazil Virtual Research Collaboration is a networking strategy that builds on existing and growing relations and common projects between these two countries. The Virtual Research Collaboration events were established following the 2020 Memorandum of Understanding between the Brazilian National Council for State Funding Agencies (CONFAP) and the Australian Government Department of Education (DoE), which seeks to strengthen Australia and Brazil’s history of research collaboration, including through facilitating the streamlining of joint research funding applications. Previous editions covered the following research themes: COVID-19; Oceans; Food Security; Citizen Data; and Forests.
Themes for 2025 Edition on Sustainable Agriculture
As climate change continues to pose environmental and socio-economic risks, international organizations and multilateral fora are increasingly debating how to sustainably meet global food demand as global population continues to rise. The global population could increase to over 8.5 billion people in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and then peak at about 10.4 billion during the 2080s, according to recent UN projections. The agricultural production of food depends on the availability of resources such as energy, land and water. Both Australia and Brazil have seen growing research effort and investment in innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture.
The Australia-Brazil Virtual Research Collaboration event will include three separate breakout rooms covering the following research streams:
- Climate change – adapting to a changing environment. Australia and Brazil are facing impacts of climate change which include land degradation, water scarcity and increased variability. In this context, Australia and Brazil are looking for ways of implementing short, medium and long-term climate adaptation strategies, technologies and management practices to their agriculture sectors.
- Agribusiness sector – balancing growth and impact mitigation. To remain both competitive and sustainable while ensuring profitability has been a challenge in the context of food production. The challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the sector is also an issue of growing importance both nationally and internationally. The agribusiness sector is moving towards implementing innovative technologies such as precision farming and AI.
- Community engagement and access – communicating and fostering ownership. Communities worldwide, such as quilombolas and indigenous communities, have developed and kept traditional sustainable agricultural practices. At the same time many of these communities and a large portion of the global population still face food insecurity.
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Event Format
The event will be held across two ninety-minute sessions running on consecutive days.
Session 1 will be held at 7:00pm on 17 June 2025 (Brasilia Time) / 8:00am on 18 June 2025 (Australian Eastern Standard Time). There will be keynote speakers from both countries, followed by a panel session for participants to engage on the topics discussed.
Session 2 will be held at 7:00pm on 18 June 2025 (Brasilia Time) / 8:00am on 19 June 2025 (Australian Eastern Standard Time). The second session will see participants moving into breakout rooms on the three research streams to share information about their current research and connect with other participants.
Ten senior researchers, having held a PhD degree for over 7 years, from each country will be selected to participate in the event. Each senior researcher may nominate up to two early to mid-career researchers, having held a PhD degree between 2 years and 7 years, to also attend.
- Agenda (Download)
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Contacts
- For Australians: education.brasilia@dfat.gov.au
- For Brazilians: projetosconfap.dese@gmail.com
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- Booklet
Access the Booklet of event, click here.
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- Slides
Access slides of Ana Paula Turetta (Embrapa-Solos), click here.
Access slides of Flávia Cerqueira (CONFAP) and Antonella Zugliani (the Australian Embassy in Brazil), click here.
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- Session 1 recording
