When we think of a farmer, we still often imagine a man. But in reality, women contribute 49% to real farm income.

This isn’t just by increasingly working as farmers themselves. Keeping a farm business going usually relies on women’s off-farm work as well, particularly in times of drought.

Despite this, women often do not have ownership of farmland. And when it comes to who gets the family farm in succession planning, daughters, mothers and daughters-in-law are all likely to miss out.

There are established legal protections that women can draw on to challenge this. But our recent research finds these are often seen as a threat to the continuity of the family farm, and attempts are made to deliberately lock women out.

Australian agriculture only suffers as a result. To fix the problem, some stubborn attitudes will need to change.

When we think of an Australian farmer, we often still conjure up an image of a bloke in a hat, perhaps leaning on a fence post. If women make an appearance at all in this picture, it’s usually as a support to the male farmer.

Women’s labour has long been central to the success of Australian farming. But farming itself is still largely seen as a “masculine” job. That’s why the Australian women in agriculture movement has fought hard to change this perception.

Our research has reviewed the story and impacts of this movement over the past 40 years.

There have been some big wins for women – particularly in terms of cultural recognition. But they still do not have equal access to the economic rewards of farming.

Reimagining prisoner programs in the Northern Territory: The role of Aboriginal knowledge and agency. This research was undertaken to understand how Aboriginal perspectives could inform the redesign of prison programs in the Northern Territory, where Aboriginal people make up approximately 86% of the prisoner population. Despite this over-representation, most programs continue to reflect Western pedagogical frameworks with limited cultural relevance. Yarning was chosen as the qualitative methodology to honour the Aboriginal custom. While only a small number of participants were included in the research, the data were rich and provided a depth that was unexpected. Participants spoke about transition to the community, health, and wellbeing programs, daily support from Elders, and improved training for staff, especially on history and social determinants. Across the yarns, consistent themes emerged around mob, culture, connection to country, community obligations, and the lack of genuine opportunities for those leaving custody. The findings highlight that centralising Aboriginal culture within Northern Territory Correctional Services is not optional; it is essential for meaningful rehabilitation and reintegration outcomes.

Animal pollinators are critical to global food production, yet their populations face threats from habitat loss, landscape simplification, and changing agricultural practices. This thesis integrates field experiments, global synthesis, and open data infrastructure to quantify how animal pollinators shape agricultural production from flowers to food systems.

A review of pollinator nutrition in agricultural systems reveals that habitat enhancement initiatives have historically emphasised floral provisioning for bees while often overlooking the distinct resource requirements of non-bee pollinators. Many important crop-visiting taxa, particularly flies and beetles, require non-floral resources including larval substrates and nesting sites that extend beyond pollen and nectar. This broader perspective on pollinator resource needs provides context for understanding why generalised habitat enhancements produce inconsistent crop pollination benefits.

Experimental studies in blueberry examine how co-flowering plants, protective structures, and floral traits influence pollinator behaviour and crop outcomes. A manipulative field experiment demonstrates that attractive co-flowering basil plants reduce pollinator visitation to adjacent blueberry flowers, though berry weight remains unaffected, indicating that competitive effects on visitation may not translate to yield impacts when baseline pollination exceeds threshold levels. Cultivar-level variation in floral morphology reveals that structural accessibility, particularly corolla length-to-width ratios, shapes honeybee visitation patterns, with morphological constraints potentially limiting visitation even when nectar rewards are substantial. Protective cover experiments across two cultivars with contrasting pollination requirements show that polyethylene tunnels and anti-bird netting differentially affect insect visitation and yields depending on pollinator taxon, cultivar reproductive biology, and flowering phenology. One cultivar exhibited high pollinator dependency while the other achieved substantial parthenocarpic yields, demonstrating how cultivar selection can influence vulnerability to pollination deficits.

A global meta-analysis synthesising experimental evidence from 848 studies across 277 crop species quantifies, for the first time, pollinator dependency across both crop production quantity and quality outcomes. Approximately 16% of global crop production volume, equivalent to yields from 236 million hectares and valued at 759 billion USD annually, depends on animal pollination. Although cereals and sugar crops dominate production volumes, pollinators disproportionately sustain nutrient-dense foods critical for dietary quality, including fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and spices. The analysis reveals substantial variation in pollinator dependency both across and within crop species, with quantity metrics showing higher dependency than quality metrics, yet demonstrating that examining these dimensions in isolation substantially underestimates true dependency. Critical knowledge gaps persist, with widely cultivated crops including important staples and high-value perennials supported by little experimental pollination research, particularly in regions with limited research capacity.

To address these persistent knowledge gaps, this thesis introduces CroPolEx, the first comprehensive global dataset harmonising experimental outcomes from crop pollination and breeding system studies. Beyond quantifying pollinator dependency, CroPolEx enables assessment of pollen limitation, self-incompatibility, and parthenocarpy across diverse crops and production systems, providing an openly accessible resource supporting research, policy development, and agricultural decision-making.

Collectively, these findings position pollinators as central to food security, nutrition, and land-use policy rather than simply one agricultural input. By integrating focused experimental investigation of pollinator-plant interactions with comprehensive global synthesis and open data infrastructure, this thesis provides mechanistic insights into crop pollination alongside evidence-based tools for managing pollinator-dependent production systems in the face of global pollinator declines.