THE agriculture industry needs to form business clusters to drive global competitiveness, growth and create jobs.
That was the take-home message from Regional Development and Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan to more than 100 people at a high-level Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia summit last week.
The aim of the Cluster Summit was to encourage a wide section of industries to look at new ways of doing business.
“We already have layers of planning, now we have to move into the implementation stage,” Ms MacTiernan said.
“We have spent a tonne of money already on it – we need to start seeing results.”
The minister’s call for action was backed by WA Regional Development Trust chairman Tim Shanahan.
“If we don’t change anything, we will be 20,000 jobs short in the next 10 years,” Mr Shanahan said.
Ms MacTiernan said forming clusters, such as the Australian Marine Complex Common User Facility in Henderson that includes the oil and gas, resources, marine and defences industries, was difficult to get off the ground, but necessary.
“We have to get beyond the nice words – this stuff is hard,” she said.
Ms MacTiernan said it was time for industry to transform.
She said the government wants to build a stronger, more resilient WA economy and believed there were plenty of opportunities in the regions.
“There has been work done on focusing on these larger regional centres,” she said.
“We know we have to work together to get this right and be focused on working with the private sector to ensure we can establish realistic goals.
“One of the goals, which is not a new notion, but one that has been dusted off – is industry clustering.
“It provides an inroad to identify and work with entrepreneurs, foster collaboration between business and develop opportunities for innovation and value creation.”
Ms MacTiernan said there was a lot of innovation within agriculture that would help drive regional growth.
Cluster development proponent Ifor Ffowcs-Williams, chief executive officer of economic development consultancy Cluster Navigators, said clusters were a great opportunity for businesses to work closely together to innovate, promote and build scale that was required to compete in global markets, including the agricultural sector.
“What I see as I travel around the world is the places that have become good at growing a particular crop or activity or reputation that goes beyond the region, Margaret River wine for example,” Mr Ffowcs-Williams said.
“I have seen places such as Linn County in Oregon, in the United States, that has arable land and is producing grass seed,” he said.
“Two thirds of the world’s grass-seed trade internationally comes from this place in Oregon.
“New Zealand’s Ashburton region grows half of the world’s radish seeds and other crops.
“I see places around the world that stand out.”
Mr Ffowcs-Williams said there were many places around the world that had become the go-to place for agriculture.
“Part of the benefits to WA is its low cost structure, producing a wide range of commodities, including wheat,” he said.
“So part of clusters is how do we move past commodities and move into different types of wheat for markets?
“It could be the way we grow, add trace minerals to the soil, irrigate or package to differentiate our products to move forward.”
Mr Ffowcs-Williams said it’s about “drilling down on what we are good at”.
“It’s about capturing attention,” he said.
“Maybe its irrigation know-how or irrigation systems, packaging technology or different techniques or adding value.
“We need to add value here.”
Mr Ffowcs-Williams said clusters were about team work and including technology suppliers, universities and education partners to create “an ecosystem”.
“We need to become very good at something,” he said.
