EXCLUSIVE
JAKARTA: Australia has been told to open its doors to foreign investment in agriculture, as a new report urges a "second green revolution" in the region that will allow technological advances to meet the forecast doubling of Asian food consumption in coming decades.
The report, launched at the In The Zone forum in Jakarta at the weekend, says Asian food security can only be achieved through innovation and investment in "wasteful" supply chains that will radically boost production, supplemented by food imports from countries such as Australia. 
But the conference was told that Australia was not doing enough in welcoming investment or driving regional trade co-operation that would reduce agricultural subsidies.
The Turnbull government this month put the brakes on a Chinese-led consortium's $371 million bid for S. Kidman and Co cattle stations, sparking concerns about the message that is sent to foreign investors.
Former Labor foreign minister Stephen Smith said at the conference that Indonesia was on track to become the world's fourth biggest economy after the US, China and India, and Australia should welcome Indonesian investment into Australian supply chains and infrastructure.
"A modest investment by Indonesia now, from Australia's perspective, opens up a great opportunity for collaboration in a whole range of areas, not just for a one-off project but for decades to come," he said.
The Australian is the media partner of the high-level In The Zone conference series, which attracted 1000 people from around the region on Saturday.
A food security expert, John Edwards from Murdoch University, said although there was concern about foreign ownership of Australian agricultural assets, he believed it was essential.
"I would much prefer to see adequate investment in Australian agriculture, particularly where that investment is aligned with the supply chain - everything from production at the Australian end through to the market and consumption at the other end done by an integrated supply chain involving investments from both sides," Professor Edwards said.
Perth USAsia Centre chief executive Gordon Flake said the region should co-operate more closely on agricultural research to create more efficient supply chain networks. He said Australian universities had a strong tradition of investing in cutting-edge agricultural research, while countries such as Japan had expertise in different types of farming and yield improvements.
Former South Korean trade minister Bark Taeho said Australia was a key player in regional trade settings but was seen as too "complacent" and should work to re-energise multilateral settings following the stalling of the Doha Development Round.
"Australia should be playing a more important role in promoting multilateral settings, especially in the area of agricultural subsidy reduction," he said.
The conference report noted that Asia's food consumption was forecast to double between 2007 and 2050 as rising population and growing affluence combine to drive demand for more and higher-quality food. But constraints on arable land and current yields would make it a challenge to meet the rising consumption.
The report calls for a second green revolution in Asia to achieve for the rest of the region what the first green revolution achieved in India and Pakistan in the 1960s: food security through new technologies that created new wheat and rice varieties.
"Asia faces a tougher challenge than the progenitors of the first green revolution did, because it must solve these problems while grappling with new issues like climate change, water shortages, soil degradation and arable land shortages," the report said "Supply chains in the Asian region are in many cases inefficient and wasteful," it said.
"Significant amounts of food, exceeding 50 per cent for some categories of produce, are wasted during production and transit because of underinvestment in storage and logistics systems." "Addressing the issue of food loss requires investment in upgraded logistics and storage infrastructure and stronger and more integrated supply-chain management." The report, Horizons, was written by the Perth USAsia Centre and Perth-based consultancy Knowledge Society.MORE REPORTS P20