Tarun Richards was in high school when she heard a classmate talking about her dad's barramundi business.

The boy said his father was also working on the farm on the banks of the Adelaide River in Humpty Doo, at the top of the Northern Territory.

"So that's how I met my husband," Ms Richards told AAP, with a laugh.

"He was the boy sitting behind me, and we've been together for 30 years now."

Ms Richards and her husband Dan lead Humpty Doo Barramundi, which was founded in the early 1990s by a group of farmers and scientists, including their fathers Max Williams and Bob Richards.

Starting by selling about six kilos a week, the business is now Australia's largest barramundi farm and supplies 120 tonnes a week to exporters and major Australian supermarkets.

The farm has long been recognised for its sustainable wetland system that uses native grasses to cleanse and cycle water to protect the river and surrounding environment.

With consumer supply chains requiring farms to prove environmental and social standards, Ms Richards wondered if the costs and benefits of that mandatory reporting could be shared.

One idea, which Ms Richards explored in research through a Nuffield scholarship, was whether retailers could collaborate with the farm's program to help First Nations producers enter the market.

The farm works with the people of Wadeye, a remote community 400km southwest of Humpty Doo, to help expose First Nations farmers to the industry.

In turn, staff from Humpty Doo spend time in Wadeye to understand how things are done on country.

The program, a collaboration with Thamarrurr Development Corporation, has so far helped producers sell their mud crabs at Darwin markets.

"We've got a third of our population who live in very, very remote areas, who don't have that connection to economic opportunities," Ms Richards said.

"You can't have these two completely separate worlds in Australia.

"People need to have that opportunity if they want it ... and if someone's aspiration is farming, then we want to be able to assist them."

Ms Richards' research as a Nuffield scholar, a prominent accolade in the agriculture sector, took her to six countries to see how similar programs were assisting small producers.

She spoke to a distributor helping a marigold seed farmer scale-up her business in Zimbabwe, along with a coffee distributor directing profits back to producers in East Timor.

"It's about a lot of good things that we can all do together," Ms Richards said.

"How we can empower each other, work with communities and that's the goal we're getting to."

Ms Richards will speak about her research at the Nuffield conference in Darwin in September.

Australian Associated Press