WA farmers build resilience: six characteristics of resilient farming businesses. David Maxwell Gray
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Transcript of WA farmers build resilience: six characteristics of resilient farming businesses. David Maxwell Gray
WA Farmers Build Resilience: Six Characteristics of Resilient Farming Businesses
David Maxwell GRAYDevelopment Officer, Katanning5th World Congress of Conservation Agriculture, BrisbaneSeptember 26, 2011
Conflict between legitimate goals:
1. Managing for performance and growth
2.Managing for adaptationAdaptability to changes in the business,
natural and regulatory environments
Different Goals Require Somewhat Different Things
Performance requires:• Consistency• Efficiency• Minimisation of redundant activities and costs. Adaptation requires: • Foresight• Innovation and experimentation• Built-in redundancies in activities or infrastructure• An orientation to possible futures.
Six Characteristics of a Resilient Farming Business
1. Scanning of the business, natural, regulatory and social environments for prospective changes
2. Planning for ongoing contingencies - disruptive events
3. Designing flexible farming systems - where a switch of enterprises is relatively easy
4. Maintaining excellent networks of communication5. Innovating and experimenting incrementally6. Ensuring goals and values are shared
Behind the Six Characteristics 1. Scanning – information flows, intellectual capital2. Contingency Planning – preparedness, intellectual
capital, financial capital3. Operational Flexibility – Physical capital,
infrastructure, deliberate redundancy4. Networks – information flows, social capital,
personal resilience, mental health5. Innovation – knowhow, intellectual capital6. Shared Goals – consistency of purpose, social
capital
Case Studies
• Preliminary to NAMI project• National Adaptation & Mitigation Initiative• Sponsors: GRDC, DAFF, DAFWA
Examples:Brad & Tracy Wooldridge
Scanning• Wide set of sources • Pastures from Space leads to SR=(DMP-
1000)/500• For every week the season breaks before or
after May 20, the Stocking rate is increased or decreased by 1DSE, subject to a maximum of 19 DSE/ha.
Brad Wooldridge
MacGregors
Macgregors:Scanning, technology awareness, networking,
innovating:• Holistic farming, rotational grazing• Soil Biology, role of soil organisms• Performance breeding technologies• Pasture species & establishment especially
perennials
Contingency Planning
Wooldridges:• Pastures from Space and relationships enable
contingency planning. • Computes weekly pasture growth & feed
requirements• Benefits from responding decisively• Consider the costs if a bad season “ambushes” them
Flexibility
• Switching of enterprises at the start of each season
• Dependent upon the timing of the break • Cropping programme responds to expected
changes in prices, costs and season • Meat sheep may be extended
Shared Goals & Values
Shared Goals & Values
Networks
• Actively developed networks with fellow farmers, suppliers, consultants and other service providers
• Also researchers, from CSIRO, from DAFWA and many others.
• Assist planning and knowledge base for decision-making
Letters:
LETTERS:
• Innovation, Flexibility - Define farm beyond their property boundaries: perform contract operations for neighbours (seeding, spreading, harvesting, trucking), lease additional cropping land
• Shared Goals: three sons all good mechanics, all equipment modifiers, teamwork
• Experimentation, innovation - Lucerne
Lucerne November 2010 following 32mm rains
Experimentation & Innovation
• Techniques from Pastures from Space projects with CSIRO to do paddock level estimates of pasture growth from the application of liquid N during August.
• This led to his adoption of a practice of spraying when conditions suit to assist weaner growth in spring
• Dorper/Suffolk flock
Experimentation & Innovation:Afrinos
Afrino ewes & lambs
Experimentation & InnovationContingency Planning
Is Resilience a Strategy?
Resilient behaviours constitute a managerial strategy
Is Resilience a Strategy?
Many strategies embody explicit action plans
Is Resilience a Strategy?
Other components of a resilience strategy:– frugality– high equity ratios– Careful machinery expenditure strategies– Biological & agronomic– Non-farm income