The National Table
> Tuesday, 18 August 2026
> Gandel Hall, National Gallery of Australia> Cocktail reception to follow, Parliament House
The conditions that have underpinned agriculture’s growth over the past decade are shifting, and the implications are starting to play out across the sector.
Australian agriculture has reached the $100 billion farmgate milestone in what has, in hindsight, been a relatively stable operating environment. That is not to say it has been easy. The sector has weathered drought and flood, biosecurity threats, input cost pressures and price volatility. While significant, they are largely domestic or cyclical in nature, supported by a system that has remained predictable enough to support Australia’s steady farm growth.
What we are now seeing is a different kind of challenge. We are operating in a more uncertain and contested environment, where the drivers of change are increasingly global or are being driven from outside the sector.
Energy, housing, trade, infrastructure and supply chains are becoming more connected, and decisions in one area are now having direct and immediate consequences in another. Most recently, disruptions to fuel, fertiliser and key inputs have flowed directly through to farm businesses and supply chains, highlighting how exposed the sector is to events well beyond Australia’s control.
More worrying is that there is a growing sense that this wave of uncertainty is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
In that context, agriculture is showing up differently in national conversations. Food and fibre production are increasingly being recognised as key parts of the systems that underpin Australia’s resilience and national security. As global pressures have intensified, food security is no longer assured and, as a result, agriculture has been drawn more directly into discussions about national priorities.
We’ve seen that play out in recent crises, where agriculture has found itself sitting in conversations alongside critical sectors as national policy is being shaped. That has, in a very practical way, brought the “national table” into clearer focus. It is where decisions are being made about supply chains and national security, and where agriculture now has a clearer and more established place at the table.
This creates an opportunity, but the question is what we do with it. How do we keep our place, how do we grow our influence, and how do we ensure the sector is ready to engage in conversations about national whole-of-economy priorities in a practical and informed way.
This year’s NFF Leaders’ Summit, called The National Table, is a deliberate step in working through those questions. It is designed as a space for industry leaders to come together and take a clearer look at the environment we are moving into and what it means in practice.
A key part of this is bringing in perspectives from outside the sector to test our thinking and better understand how the broader system is shifting, and importantly, how agriculture shifts with it. These are not issues that can be worked through in isolation, and the Summit is designed to reflect that.
We are also conscious that we do not know exactly what the operating environment will look like at the time of the Summit. Conditions may shift again, or new pressures may emerge. That is part of the point. This is an opportunity to build the sector’s capacity to respond, whether to what is in front of us now or what comes next. In doing so, we aim to:
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