SMART FARMS Interim National Coordination

Summary

The Australian Government has allocated $136 million to the Smart Farms program (2017-18 to 2022-23), which supports the development and uptake of best practice, tools and technologies for:

• farmers and land managers
• fishers
• foresters
• regional communities.

The Smart Farms Program will help improve the protection, resilience and productive capacity of Australia’s soils, water and vegetation, which underpin successful primary industries and regional communities.

MLA, in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF-A) and UQ School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, have successfully secured a Federal Government Grant under the Smart Farming Partnership.

In order to secure the first round of funding, this project created the Activity Work Plan for the SFP project, which:

• describes the roles of the project team, project partners and participating land managers
• provides stakeholders with clear direction on how the project is planned to be delivered over its multi-year life
• provides information on how the stated outcomes and activities will be delivered, monitored, evaluated and communicated.

Objectives

The primary objectives for this project were to:

• facilitate a workshop with MLA and Integrity Systems Company which will develop the project approach, process and direction
• complete the Activity Work Plan including communications, extension and stakeholder mapping activity and prepare the project timeline and budget in the format specified by the Government
• support MLA in establishing Smart Farms’ structure, roles and responsibilities and deliverables.

Key findings

The Activity Work Plan outlines the intended activities for the SFP project, which is focused on a collaborative, co-design process to develop an innovative, national online platform of data.

The platform will provide an opt-in solution for grassfed producers who want to demonstrate sustainability performance to various markets in five main areas:

• vegetation management
• ground cover and soil conservation
• biodiversity stewardship
• carbon balance
• drought resilience.

To access emerging markets through various value chains, an innovative, online, voluntary platform will also be designed. This will provide a user-friendly tool to enable beef producers to assess themselves against one or more sustainability areas and provide self-directed learning pathways to improve on-farm practices.

Benefits to industry

The purpose of the Smart Farming Partnerships are to:

• develop, trial and implement new and innovative tools and farm practices that support industry practice changes that will deliver more productive and profitable agriculture and protect Australia’s biodiversity
• protect and improve the condition of natural resources (in particular soils and vegetation
• Assist Australia to meet its obligations under relevant international treaties.

MLA’s involvement in the SFP project will benefit the Australian red meat industry by helping beef producers demonstrate their environmental credentials to the market. The intended approach will remove traditional auditing and reporting burdens on-farm and will enable adaptation as new knowledge and technologies emerge.

MLA action

MLA and project partners will implement the project through a series of projects in line with the activity work plan.

Future research

This project will pave the way for future expansion of sustainability credentials to:

• improve sustainability performance in the Australian grassfed beef industry
• cover other sustainability areas, such as animal welfare
• apply to other Australian livestock industries.