Building farmer resilience
Building business resilience for young farmers through farm and industry tours.
Capacity to Deliver - LP021-004
The issue
Local community group Young Country Networkers, identified the need for a three part series of events/workshops to better equip young farmers in the area with the skills and knowledge needed to contribute to farm business resilience through changing climate and commodity prices. The Mallee Tour was part 2 of 3 of the resilience building project funded by the NSW DPI Young Farmer Business Program.
The solution
The specific purpose of the Mallee Tour was to showcase best practice agronomic services available with the assistance of a well respected and sought after agronomic service provider Crop-Rite. The Mallee Tour also included a walk through of the Mallee Hay facility to hear about export hay opportunities and understand the processing requirements.
The Mallee Tour farm visit enabled an open dialogue between attendee's, the specialist agronomists and farmer host. Detailed farm records, soil, yield and profit mapping were openly shared with attendee’s along with a discussion and insight into the results from year to year and between the commodity types. Technology used on farm was also heavily discussed along with the pro’s and con’s of each. This included soil sampling equipment, GPS and different machinery. The importance of data collection in precision agriculture was clearly demonstrated.
The tour of the Mallee Hay facility provided an opportunity for attendees to see the process of receiving, preparing and processing hay for export markets. There was also discussion around specifications for different overseas markets and future opportunities. The Mallee Hay tour gave attendees an understanding of opportunities that may exist for their own businesses in the export hay market as well as providing a source of contact to the local industry.
The impact
The Mallee Tour enabled participants to better understand the extent of agronomic services, data collection and technology that are available to make better informed farming decisions as well as understanding the opportunities that exist within the export hay industry.
Key facts
- Farm, climate and rainfall data can be comprehensively collated to create detailed records and projections to better inform decision making.
- Importance of data collection in a precision agriculture system.
- Many different opportunities exist for cropping farmers in the local export hay industry.