L.PGS.2025 - PGS State Coordinator - Western Australia

Summary

The Profitable Grazing Systems project (PGS) aims to use supported learning methods to develop the skills of red meat producers and support implementation of these new skills into businesses, improving profitability and productivity. The focus is on achieving adoption through high quality delivery underpinned by robust monitoring evaluation and a commercial approach. State coordinators work closely with the national coordinator, being the key contact in their state. The aim is to improve recruitment of deliverers, develop and deliver strategic feeder activities and support current deliverers to deliver their SLPs and M&E materials, as well as develop new SLPs.

Western Australian activities have focused on managing current deliverers and their programs, increasing industry awareness of the PGS project, and recruiting new deliverers. This has focused heavily on local networks and knowledge of the state coordinator and leadership team, resulting in a capacity building workshop and discussions with potential new deliverers about developing SLPs. There has also been a focus on ensuring M&E was collated and submitted for deliverers to ensure consistency and quality while new processes were being developed.

Overall, this contract has resulted in three deliverers successfully delivering three different SLPs to multiple groups (eight completed, six in progress) and producers across WA.

Objectives

The main objective of the PGS program is to encourage and support red meat producers to improve their management skills, to increase profit. The state coordinator position is to be the key WA contact for deliverers.
The key responsibilities of state coordinator were to:
• identify engagement opportunities
• recruitment
• identify and run feeder and capacity building activities
• manage PGS program quality assurance.

Key findings

• This contract has been successful in continuing to work towards the main PGS objectives. There has been continual communication with the industry, and leadership team, to improve the program and its profile.
• There have not yet been any new deliverers who have completed a PGS, but there have been solid leads and potential programs developed.
• Three deliverers have successfully delivered three SLPs, and a capacity building workshop was delivered in 2021.

Benefits to industry

Despite this contract meeting its targets, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the PGS project is successful and continues to benefit red meat producers. These benefits are the skills and knowledge producers gain from the SLPS, as well as the skills of involved deliverers. The flexibility of the program means it is able to meet the needs of producers locally, which is a strength of the project.

MLA action

MLA continues to deliver the Profitable Grazing Systems (PGS) program, supporting participants to have the opportunity to develop and practice skills with small groups of like-minded producers to improve business performance.