Assessing the Impact of MLA’s Southern Majority Market Program

Summary

​The ‘Assessing the Impact of MLA’s Southern Majority Market Program’ project was undertaken to measure the impact of the Majority Market Programs, More Beef from Pastures (MBfP)(southern beef) and Making More from Sheep (MMfS) (sheepmeat/lamb).
This report presents the results from 554 farmer phone surveys and 111 case study evaluations for farmers across Southern Australia that attended MLA funded MBfP and MMfS events.  The results from the phone survey evaluations have been utilised to identify and present the proportion of farmers adopting intended and unintended practice changes as a result of attendance at MBfP and MMfS events.  The data also provided insight into factors that have supported and hindered practice change adoption, reasons for non-adoption of intended changes, farm level scale of adoption, types of benefits expected, and social benefits gained from event attendance.  The farm case study evaluations have quantified the productivity and profitability impacts of practice change adoption, in addition to identifying and rating likely impacts of practice change adoption on a range of environmental, management and animal welfare factors.  
The results from this study have revealed that MLA’s investment in the MBfP and MMfS programs is having a very positive impact on increasing farmer’s skills, knowledge and confidence required to adopt new management practices to improve farm productivity and profitability.  This study also generated a series of key learnings that have been presented as recommendations for improvements of practice change adoption from MBfP and MMfS events, and improvements in the process of collecting and evaluating of data to measure the impacts of practice change on farm.