Regional Australia is responsible for about 40 per cent of the nation’s economic output and provides jobs for around one third of Australia’s workforce. It is the backbone of Australian agriculture, which seeks to grow from a value of around $60 billion to $100 billion over the next decade.

Drawing on the power and experience of farming communities, Australia can emerge as a global leader becoming a renewable energy superpower, maintaining and improving agricultural productivity, assuring food security while exploring new opportunities. We can accelerate large-scale investment in landscape repair, build adaptable, resilient communities, and cut emissions.

Regional Horizons

This five-year $1.8 billion program creates new opportunities for jobs and industries, while building a climate-smart rural and regional Australia. It builds on existing successes, networks and investments and provides policy integration and certainty, making possible private, public and community led innovation.

Regional Horizons will help to deliver:

• A regional boom as new industries flourish, creating tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and attracting new people and fresh talent to rural areas, with flow-on benefits for whole communities

• Prudent investment in climate-smart farms, doing more and better with less environmental impact, and regenerating natural and social capital. Resource use is highly efficient, with more and more farms having added clean energy to their portfolios

• A thriving landscape carbon industry, generating up to $10.4 billion in revenue and up to 15,750 jobs by 2030. Carbon storage in trees and soil is emerging as a significant new export industry and another income stream for many farmers.

• Greater farmer resilience, farm performance and efficiency, better enabling them to weather a changing climate