VG20000 Annual Vegetable Industry Seminar 2021 commenced in February 2021 and resulted in the successful delivery of three webinars and the physical Annual Vegetable Industry Seminar, held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on Wednesday June 9 as part of Hort Connections 2021.

Two of the project’s webinars focused on the draft refresh of the vegetable industry’s Strategic Investment Plan (SIP) to inform growers and industry stakeholders of the strategy for the next iteration of the plan and provide an opportunity for industry to provide feedback and nominate their priority areas for investment.

This project aimed to showcase the five outcome areas of the SIP by providing a general overview of this process from Hort Innovation in the first webinar held on Wednesday 28 April 2021. The second webinar, held on Tuesday 24 August, reinforced the draft SIP and allowed for grower and industry stakeholder input to assist Hort Innovation in the process of finalising the SIP.

The third webinar was held on Wednesday 22 September and focused on the recently-identified exotic pest American Serpentine leafminer to raise awareness in the industry of this important pest and highlight the issues – and potential solutions – to industry to deal with the pest.

The AVIS at Hort Connections was attended by over 300 growers and industry members who learned from the expert speakers and panels on a wide range of topics. It showcased investments in several major levy-funded areas, including VegKIT, VegNET, export development and horticulture industry marketing to highlight the impact of these major projects for the vegetable and wider horticulture industry.

While COVID-19 restrictions caused some logistical issues for speakers and attendees, AUSVEG was able to pivot the content to find suitable alternative speakers where required to ensure a high-quality event was still delivered for those able to attend Hort Connections 2021. Attendees in Victoria and other locations that were not able to attend were able to watch the live-streamed sessions, which were also recorded for use post-event.

VG20000 was the latest instalment to a series of successful seminars held in previous years – namely, the 2016- 2018 Global Innovations in Horticulture Seminars, and Export Opportunities for Carrots, Sweet Corn, Bean, Broccoli and Baby Leaf – Symposia and the previously-run AVIS seminar in 2019. The project team arranged for key presenters to address the Australian horticulture industry and introduce new information that can help growers – and the broader industry – increase the profitability, efficiency and productivity of their farming operations. The seminars and webinar speaker list were developed by AUSVEG in consultation with Hort Innovation to ensure thorough coverage of key projects and investments.

It is recommended that the AVIS is continued as a longer-term, 3-year project that focuses on the core delivery of a physical seminar to align with the Hort Connections conference. Based on feedback from participants, it is also highly recommended that funding for vegetable levy payers is reinstated to assist them and new attendees to participate in the seminar and learn the valuable levy-funded content that is on offer at the event.