Initial steps were taken to create a five-year strategy for the institute and the way it engaged the community on agricultural matters.

Held at Inveresk, near the site where the University of Tasmania’s Newnham campus will relocate, the event looked at opportunities and challenges the state faced as it scaled up its agricultural sector.

This year’s focus was the university itself, institute director Professor Holger Meinke said.

“It’s particularly important and relevant here in Launceston, where the university’s new campus is being developed. We want to be part of the organisation to shape how the campus will be so that we can build in the best benefits for the community,” Professor Meinke said.

“TIA is the only university in Australia that has such an arrangement with the state government, where we actually conduct the research and do extension for agriculture, together with the state government in the university setting.”

Anyone who has an interest in agriculture within Tasmania was invited to attend the Future Forum, with all listening to the university’s plans and helping formulate long-term goals for a research cluster to benefit the entire state.

“We recognised that TIA alone cannot achieve the outcomes. We increasingly realised at the heart of our economy, particularly in Tasmania, sits everything to do with agriculture: food, biological processes, aquaculture,” Professor Meinke said.

“Agriculture drives our economy. This is desperately needed, particularly because Tasmania is in a period of intensification, which is good, but also has risks.”

Besides the obvious growing pains of dealing with an expanding sector, Professor Meinke said the institute was also looking at more specific issues like soil erosion, nutrient run off and animal welfare.

“TIA sees itself very much as a broad facilitator that grows a sustainable state, but that will need the help of everybody in the state,” he said.

“Today is really a way for us to reach out to the entire community and show what the university can offer in terms of knowledge and intellectual capital to help build that really vibrant society.”