Northern Australia has a unique environment that can support the production of many crops adapted to tropical environments. Novel food crops include established options and crops that could be developed from indigenous plants. Climate change requires a reduction in the use of fossil carbon and tropical plants can uniquely capture carbon more efficiently than temperate plants and represent a major option to replace fossil carbon for uses that require a source of renewable carbon. Recent advances in plant genetics offer options to develop new biomass cops for efficient conversion to fuels and chemicals. Application to crops such as rice, sorghum and sugarcane may allow competitive industries producing sustainable aviation fuel and bio-plastics to be established in northern Australia where the unique environment allows large scale efficient production of these crops. Norther Australia and South-East Asia are the natural centres of wild diversity of these species, making this a good place to expand their utilization in agriculture and industry.