The Gardiner Dairy Foundation welcomed industry leaders from across the nation to the fifth annual Australian Dairy Leadership Alumni (ADLA) Summit, which commenced in Melbourne today.

The ADLA Summit is a joint initiative of the Gardiner Dairy Foundation, Dairy Australia and Agriculture Victoria. Alumni are graduates of executive leadership programs offered by the Australian Rural Leadership Program (ARLP), Nuffield, Rabobank Executive Development Program, IBO Australian Business School Owner Manager Program and Horizon 2020.

The two-day meeting of the minds is designed to expose alumni to the innovative ideas outside of dairy with a view to challenge thinking and bring new ideas into the dairy industry.

The year’s Summit theme is Powering Ahead: The Technology Transforming Our Lives.The focus of discussion is on renewables, technology, software, artificial intelligence, the way we produce and use energy and how these elements will alter the way we live.

Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Gardiner Dairy Foundation, Dr Clive Noble, expressed the importance of the ADLA Summit for alumni and future dairy leaders.

“The Summit provides an opportunity for dairy industry representatives to come together to discuss opportunities to revolutionise the current dairy landscape.

“The ADLA Summit provides a forum for the brightest and most innovative leaders of the Australian dairy industry to explore cutting edge ideas that will strengthen their ability to shape the future of the dairy industry,” said Dr Clive Noble.

The key note presentation, delivered today by Future Crunch, a Melbourne-based think tank specialising in disruptive technologies, shared insights into some of the cutting-edge changes taking place within the global energy sector.

The organisation’s mission is to foster intelligent, optimistic thinking about the future, and to empower people to contribute to it. Their co-founders, Dr Angus Hervey and Tané Hunter, spoke to ADLA Summit attendees about the rapid acceleration of a ‘clean energy revolution’ which is well underway, and how the pace of change is far quicker than most people realise.

Dr Angus Hervey shared some compelling insights about renewable energy.

“Thanks to an explosion in renewable energy, battery storage technologies and the rapid uptake of electric vehicles, we are in the throes of a transformation hardly anyone imagined even just a few years ago. We are already well past the point at which we’re installing more clean energy than dirty energy globally.

“The cost of solar and wind has plummeted by more than 25 per cent in 2017, shifting the global clean energy industry on its axis. Almost every major car company has publicly stated this year that they now believe the future is all electric, and as we’ve recently seen in South Australia, battery storage is now cost effective enough to power the next stage of the energy revolution,” said Dr Hervey.

The 2017 ADLA Summit also features presentations by experts in the respective fields of science, technology and agriculture including:

  • Alan Duffy, Associate Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and Lead Scientist of RiAus
  • John Rives, Director of Service Resonance
  • Brad Howarth, Author
  • Geoff Drucker, Director of Country Wide Energy
  • Scott Bocskay, CEO of Sustainable Melbourne Fund
  • Cal Foulner, Co-founder of Beanstalk AgTech
  • Ben Kranostein, Principal & Executive Director of Impact Agriculture Pty Ltd
  • ADLA facilitator Matthew Linnegar, CEO of Australian Rural Leadership Foundation