Project – Drought (specifically related to northern Victoria)

Emergency Management is a significant program for DEC because the government recognises the important role it plays for the community as a whole.  It fulfils service needs to ensure dairy farmers are proactive in preparing for, responding to and recovering from these conditions.  Drought has been a significant component of the working environment since 2002, particularly for northern Victoria.

The Project

Drought activities in northern Victoria were designed in consultation with the industry to support service providers and support farmers with technical information that addressed farm management issues.  The details of events and attendance are noted below.

Over the 2006-09 period service providers attended various activities specifically designed to cater for their needs – providing technical information, up dates, forecasts and the discussion of “what if” scenarios.  These sessions also helped to bring service providers together who would otherwise be working on their own supporting their own clients.  A very powerful informal support network was established as a result.

Over the 2006-09 period 220 activities were organised and attended by 7173 farmers and 3124 service providers.  These focused on providing up to date information for decision making.  They took the form of public farm walks, forums, seminars and Discussion Groups.  During these meetings lunch or supper was provided to give farmers the space away from their farm and talk over social issues if they needed to.  It was also a way of helping farmers realise that they weren’t tackling this on their own. 

Farmers were also supported with information that was timely and in an accessible manner– such as the DPI weather forecasts – “The Break”; Hay and Grain price and availability tables and other articles in the local newspapers.

During a 21 month period July 2007 – June 2009, almost 500 farmers had been visited with a 1:1 meeting or participated in a phone conversation. 

From one farmer -

“We originally asked for a one-on-one farm visit to do a feed budget.  As a direct result, we not only got confirmation of where we stood with the feed we had, a lot of other issues emerged and therefore we became better equipped to deal with the continuing drought”.

It should be noted that the majority of the DEC’s agreed program deliverables were met throughout this period as well as the additional drought related activities that were subsequently undertaken.

Impact

From an initial drought response from 2002/03 it was recognised that supporting service providers was just as critical as supporting farmers.  They were the ones on the front line dealing with stressed farmers and not only needed technical background to make better decisions but the camaraderie that they were “not doing it on their own”.  Many events were organised to give them the space to talk and debrief.  A very powerful informal support network was established as a result.  Collaborating with service providers provided opportunities to get information to more farmers via different channels.  DPI’s well established service provider network allowed simple and effective amplification of drought response messages.

While strong networks provided an excellent vehicle for industry-wide collaboration, it was the critical mass of DEC staff who took the lead role in co-ordinating the development and delivery of many of the drought response activities that added to the success of the program.  Initiatives derived by industry were fed into smaller working groups led by an Extension Officer and developed into a drought response activity.   Each activity was planned with the industry-based working group and relied on a well thought out formula:

• identifying the issue,
• determining what were the technically 'right' answers,
• what the key messages were and,
• how best get these messages and answers across.

The feedback from Maurice Incerti (CEO Murray Dairy) was that

"If we didn't have the DPI/DEC leadership and extension team in place,
I don't think we would have pulled it off (the response to drought for the dairy industry)".

We were able to develop consistent messages and resources that were delivered across the whole industry by a variety of different means.  The design of the drought activities provided farmers with the skills to tackle issues that they had never had to deal with before.

Drought activities in northern Victoria from 2006 - 2009

* some of these events were delivered in multiple locations (eg “Pasture Recover” Farm Walk 1at -7th March 2007 was included as one event but held on 12 different farms across the region).  There were multiples of up to 25 locations of each event.

** to March 2008

*** during 2008-09 another 35 drought related events were delivered by other Dairy Extension Centre (DEC) teams.  It should be noted that the majority of the DEC’s agreed program deliverables were met throughout 2006-09 as well as the additional drought related activities that were subsequently undertaken.