Fish and Chips Awards 2019 - development of long term strategy
In 2017-18 the FRDC undertook a new approach to the Bi-Annual Seafood Awards. The goal was to create debate around seafood, raise its profile and use this as a vehicle to promote information about sustainability, fisheries management and the R&D being undertaken to underpin it. The approach worked very well generating over 90,000 votes, hundreds of media articles and millions of consumer views of that media coverage.
There is a need to ensure that the base that developed in the first two years is not lost and that the FRDC build on it further.
The initial trial delivered positive results, however their is a great deal of opportunity to still capitalise upon. Delivering content to the 60,000 subscribers and showcase to consumers how sustainable the Australian seafood industry has become.
In 2019 the other driver is the Biennial Seafood Directions conference and National Seafood Awards are on again - with fish and chips again a category.
There is also a need for FRDC to demonstrate how an activity such as the Awards can deliver tangible results - to do this the FRDC are looking to drive opinion with consumers and behaviour with shops.
Developing FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan
Section 19 of PIRD Act requires R&D corporations to prepare R&D Plans for each consecutive 5-year period. Each plan is to include (at a minimum):
· a statement of the Corporation’s objectives and priorities for the period to which the plan is expressed to relate; and
· an outline of the strategies that the Corporation intends to adopt in order to achieve those objectives.
Under section 10 of the Funding Agreement between FRDC and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR), FRDC is required to develop a consultation plan, which seeks to:
• explain the purpose and objectives of consultation to inform the 2020-2025 RD&E Plan;
• describe who will be consulted;
• outline methods proposed; and,
• explain how input provided will be used.
FRDC is to obtain DAWR approval for the consultation plan prior to commencement of activities.
In order to develop an RD&E Plan which accurately interprets and responds to RD&E needs for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community it is important to understand the aspirations, pain points, risks and opportunities of each sector over the intended life of the plan through undertaking broad consultation. It is also important to understand the current situation of the fishing and aquaculture (F&A) community (including indigenous, wild catch, aquaculture and recreational, and post-harvest sectors). The situational analysis should provide an updated understanding of what fishing and aquaculture looks like in Australia today, who is involved, what drives them, how they are performing, how the product (if retained) is used, what are the main dominant risks and trends. An earlier situational analysis delivered as an output of FRDC Project 2014/503.20 provides a useful template.
Finally, it is for any RD&E plan to be informed by an understanding of likely future trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia’s F&A community in the future. This requires:
· compilation of evidence to enable consideration of likely future geopolitical, social, economic, environmental and/or technical changes likely to occur in the future, and drivers of those changes;
· generation of projections relating to supply and demand for seafood products as well as cultural and/or recreational time use
Final report
that ran in parallel to the CSIRO contribution. This process involved a series of stakeholder workshops and follow-up discussions, to which CSIRO staff were occasional observers.
The models were then tested to see how well they compared to the dynamics described in the future scenarios, and here model predictions were found to be highly consistent with the dynamics played out in the two future scenarios – that is, both worlds are likely.