Locally relevant innovation generated through GRDC’s National Grower Network has been found to deliver a high return on investment, generating $8.40 per dollar invested
Australia’s grains industry and its market competitiveness have been built on a solid foundation of research coupled with grower adoption and/or adaptation of that research.
This has led to significant industry growth. Wheat production alone has increased from 20 million tonnes in the mid-late 1990s to more than 36 million tonnes today.
With the emergence of new crops, particularly pulses, overall grain production ranges from 35 to 50 million tonnes depending on seasonal variation. This generates $9 billion to $25 billion within a highly export-oriented value chain.
But despite this overarching success, GRDC research investments that draw on grower levies continue to be analysed for relevance, impact, uptake and value.
One way that GRDC establishes locally relevant research priorities is through engagement strategies – particularly the National Grower Network (NGN). This provides growers with a mechanism to raise local issues and guide regionally relevant investments.
Since 2021, GRDC has invested around $29 million in more than 120 NGN-brokered investments. Of these, 54 projects are now completed. A benefit-cost analysis has found that these 54 projects produced $81.6 million in total net benefits from an investment base of $11 million.
That amounts to $8.40 of benefits for every $1 invested.
The challenge
Revenue from the grain growing industry has grown at an annualised rate of 8.6 per cent over the five years to 2025. A key factor in this growth is the adoption of technology and techniques that drive productivity and sustainability.
The core research challenge is to produce more grain from the same area of land, while using inputs in ways that maximise returns. Highly variable climatic conditions and poor soils make this a particularly challenging proposition.
In 2023-24, GRDC invested over $220 million into research, development and extension (RD&E) to benefit Australian grain growers. Targeting these investments so they are effective is essential to ensuring farm businesses remain sustainably profitable and productive.
Within GRDC, achieving this outcome is a process that highly values stakeholder engagement.
The response
In 2021, GRDC recognised an opportunity to evolve how it invests through innovations to its stakeholder engagement processes. This resulted in a shift towards a network approach to understanding and responding to grower issues. The ethos embraces listening, learning and responding.
Engagement is via forums that are open to all growers, advisers, researchers and industry parties. The aim is to capture ideas, issues, constraints and opportunities for research in a timely manner. Attendee feedback also informs investment across GRDC's national portfolio.
Another function of the NGN is to help GRDC scope and implement local and regionally focused investments.
This often results in activities that are concerned with knowledge transfer and adoption challenges. As such, these projects validate, demonstrate, modify and extend the findings of other R&D investments under local and regional conditions.
Since 2021, a portfolio of 54 completed NGN projects ran activities across investment categories including:
- knowledge transfer and adoption – 44 investments totalling $8.2 million
- biosecurity, weed, pest and disease control – two investments totalling $0.8 million
- optimise crop nutrition and improve soils – two investments totalling $0.5 million
- right crop and cultivar – one investment totalling $0.2 million
- systems integration for reliable profit – five investments totalling $1.1 million.
Locally relevant research impacts generated through GRDC’s National Grower Network has been found to deliver a high return on investment to grain growers, generating $8.40 per dollar invested. Photo: Evan Collis
The outcome
In November 2024, Marsden Jacob Associates released an ex-post analysis of the 54 completed NGN-driven projects.
To estimate benefits for this group of investments, a sample of 17 was selected that provided representation across strategic outcome areas, regions and size of investment.
Grower benefits were estimated for these 17 investments. The benefit-cost ratio of a subset of 15 investments was extrapolated to estimate a benefit of the total NGN investment (54 projects).
The 15 investments represent 38 per cent of the total investment.
Some examples of benefits valued across these 15 investments include:
- adjusting nitrogen or phosphorus levels to increase grain yields and/or reduce input costs
- investing in infrastructure or strategies (such as late sowing) to address waterlogging issues
- measuring losses from harvest machinery and taking actions to reduce these losses
- adopting alternative sowing strategies to manage risks and/or increase yield
- adopting weed management strategies to increase grain yield
- adopting strategies to better manage plant diseases.
Based on the sampled projects, the total net benefit across the 54 investments was estimated at $81.6 million, with a benefit-cost ratio of 8.4.
This means that $8.40 of benefit was generated for every $1 invested.
The net benefits and benefit-cost ratios did vary significantly across the 15 investments – from 0.0 to 34.0. This reflected both the impact of the research on farm financial returns and the level of assumed adoption moving forward.
This level of overall return from the portfolio of NGN investments is as good or better than the broader GRDC RD&E portfolio, with a strong return overall.
One of the key reasons for the variability in the benefit-cost ratios across investments is the greater focus on more local or regionally relevant investments.
Unsurprisingly, some of these investments have low benefit-cost ratios given that they are in response to grower identified issues, which may have limited scope for large-scale adoption. However, given NGN’s purpose in complementing the traditional investment pathway, producing benefit-cost ratios greater than 1.0 is considered enough to justify the value proposition.
Overall, the cost-benefit analysis validated GRDC’s commitment to responsive and nimble engagement with stakeholders through the NGN. This mechanism provides a pathway to solve local problems and adoption challenges in ways that significantly boost farm productivity and sustainability.
More information: Delivering impact case studies.
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