It is easy to assume that the public sector dominates assistance to smallholders in the developing world, including in the provision of research and development. These proceedings have illustrated that this is not always the case and that the private sector can and needs to be engaged, even in early stages of agricultural development. In Australia, private-sector investment is low relative to that in many other developed countries. However, over the past two decades we have seen an increase in that investment through a variety of means, including the growth of rural research and development corporations and more recently, in public–private partnerships in plant breeding. This increase has enabled public-sector investment to shift to tackle emerging challenges for the agricultural sector. Both domestically and internationally, these new models of collaboration between the public and private sector are reframing agricultural research.