LABOR has pledged $20 million for a specialist Agri-tech and Protected Cropping Research Facility at Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Campus.
The Acting Leader of the Federal Labor Opposition, the Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, visited the campus on Tuesday (September 25) to make the announcement.
The facility would be established adjacent to the university’s $7 million glasshouse which opened in 2017.
Labor said the new facility would enable the world-leading gains in intensive food production and technology made in the glasshouse, to be harnessed through vastly upscaled research.
Vice-Chancellor of Western Sydney University, Professor Barney Glover, said the university had focussed on agribusiness teaching, research and industry collaboration at its Hawkesbury campus for a decade.
“With Labor’s industry-boosting investment, the Hawkesbury is set to become the ‘World’s Food Bowl’ through global supply chains,” he said.
“Western Sydney University welcomes this strong support for its proven research strengths, which in turn will underpin significant growth in a multi billion-dollar knowledge-job industry.”
Identified as a ‘priority industry’ under the Western Sydney City Deal, agri-technology has the potential to value-add $20 billion to the agriculture sector, the university said in a statement.
Combined with the opportunities presented by Western Sydney's Badgerys Creek airport, the glasshouse and new Labor funded research facility will have access to markets around the world allowing 36 hours from production to consumption, the statement said.
The new research facility would focus on food production and biosafety, and would have the potential to commercialise locally-developed food technology, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region.
“It’s about using technology to produce higher yields of a superior quality on a smaller footprint and in a quicker timeframe,” said Assistant Vice-Chancellor Dr Andy Marks.
Labor Member for Macquarie Susan Templeman MP said the Glasshouse is a “great example of what [Hawkesbury] campus does; wonderful, agricultural research.”
“Research that employs people from right across Western Sydney,” she said.
