Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt will meet with leaders of Victoria's agriculture sector in Melbourne on Thursday during a discussion organised by the Victorian Farmers Federation.
The newly-appointed minister visited Victoria this week after being sown into the portfolio in June.
The Queensland-based senator toured primary production and processing operations on Wednesday, including Australian Sustainable Hardwoods at Heyfield and a robotic dairy at Athlone near Warragul.
READ MORE:
The meeting with VFF representatives, including president Emma Germano, will be the first meeting of its kind ahead of the federal government's Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra on September 1 and 2.
"The thing that I'm hoping to do both in the summit and in the round tables I'm going to be holding with unions and industry in the lead up to that summit is actually try to foster a bit more cooperation," he said.
"Labour shortages are undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges agriculture faces in our country right now."
Gippsland Nationals MP Darren Chester, a former veterans' affairs and defence personnel minster under the Turbull and Morrision governments, joined his Labor counterpart during the day-long tour.
Mr Watt said his visit to Gippsland was to understand the challenges the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors faced, as well as discussions around emergency management as the relevant minister.
"Gippsland is known around the country as one of the great agricultural regions of our country," Mr Watt said.
"Each of those industries is performing pretty well at the moment but they each have challenges as well.
"There's issues around input costs that people are dealing with, labour shortages, biosecurity issues and people are very interested in what we've been doing around foot and mouth disease," he said.