Agriculture and food researchers from around Australia, New Zealand and the United States attending the Agrifood Research Network meeting in the small NSW town of Tumbarumba this week have been told there is a research vacuum to fill as policy makers grapple with new problems.

Associate Director of Charles Sturt University's (CSU) Centre for Rural Social Research, Associate Professor Ian Gray, said current issues including rural restructuring, genetic modification and environmental decay present challenges for policy makers who find little inspiration in old sources of advice.

The eighth annual conference of the Agrifood Research Network, with the theme Agriculture, Food and Public Policy: Issues for a New Century will be held on Friday 1 and Saturday 2 December.

Leading international researchers will explore this theme in a range of addresses on genetically modified food, global food security and safety, organic food, rural restructuring, prospects for regional renewal and resource conservation.

Speakers include renowned author on globalisation, Professor Philip McMichael from Cornell University, United States, on Food for thought versus food for real: the global debate on food security; and Dr Hugh Campbell from the University of Otago, New Zealand, on What the Royal Commission on GMOs needs to know about Organic Agriculture in New Zealand.

Other topics include Social adjustment to agricultural restructuring: the impact of falling rural population densities; Neoliberalism, Individualism and Prospects for Regional Renewal; and Feeding a Growing City: Planning the provision of meat for Sydney in the new Century.

The Agrifood Research Network is a group of like-minded researchers from Australia and New Zealand working on global agriculture and food issues.

The annual conference, being held for the first time in regional NSW, is being organised by Charles Sturt University's Centre for Rural Social Research, the leading national centre for research into rural social issues in Australia.

With this year's rural focus, the organisers felt it was appropriate to meet in a rural location to experience some of these issues at a "grass roots" level.

Professor Gray said Tumbarumba, located in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, is a town facing economic and environmental problems, yet it is a community adapting to change.

The town's Mayor, Mr George Martin, has been invited to speak about Tumbarumba's experience of change and how rural restructuring looks from the local perspective at the opening dinner at 7pm Thursday 30 November.