Sydney
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Chris Bowen, today opened the new University of Sydney Centre for Carbon, Water and Food at Camden - worth more than $20 million and built with Gillard Government support.
The state-of-the-art teaching and research facility, which received $4.69 million from the Gillard Government, will help Australian agriculture meet the challenges of producing more food, of better quality while using less water and putting less carbon into the atmosphere.
The Centre for Carbon, Water and Food will help tackle some of the country's largest environmental challenges, including those in the Murray-Darling Basin, issues around interaction between agriculture and mining, and the sustainable management of public and private rural land.
The new Centre will also house an interdisciplinary team of world leading researchers, working to face the challenge of feeding a growing world population, and strengthening Australia's potential as the food bowl of Asia.
As the ‘Australia In The Asian Century White Paper' notes, the growth of the Asian middle class - to 3 billion people by 2030 - will provide opportunities for Australian businesses including those in the food technology and production industries.
The Centre also announced a new milestone in Australian-Chinese collaboration with the signing of agreements with two leading Chinese agricultural research institutions, in the presence of the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China in Australia, His Excellency Yuming Chen.
An agreement with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science will result in a Sino-Australia Joint Laboratory for Sustainable Agro-Ecosystems housed at the centre, with a mirror facility in Beijing.
The Centre will establish a Sino-Australian Laboratory for Food Security, at the centre and in Nanjing in collaboration with Nanjing Agricultural University.
The Centre builds on Sydney University's 100-year history of agricultural research and education, by strengthening evidence-based teaching in global change biology, sustainable ecosystems and sustainable agriculture. It is co-located with other university faculties in related agricultural and primary production areas.