L.PGS.2052 - Leadership Team Member - AH

Summary

The overarching objective of the PGS program is to encourage and support red meat producers to improve their management skills, to increase profit. It is on track in Western Australia to achieve this due to Leadership and State Coordinator activities. The leadership team’s role was to help build deliverer capacity in their state by assisting the State Coordinator to support and mentor deliverers, provide feeder and capacity building activities. This worked well in WA, with a close working relationship between the leadership team and the state coordinator.

The leadership team successfully achieved their objectives, meeting as determined by the National coordinator to supply insights into the program and identify opportunities for improvement. In addition, they worked to increase awareness and involvement in PGS, championing the project in their states.

Despite this, the PGS program has not met the overall objectives within its timeframe. Partially due to a lack of clarity, and the complexity of the project, this has also resulted in a lack of deliverer engagement and producer demand. Despite the program falling below its targets, skills and knowledge of involved producers have been successfully improved, leading to practice change through the supported learning approach.

Objectives

The engagement of the leadership team was intended to:
• address the deliverer capacity issue by championing the program,
• work closely with the national coordinator to support and mentor the deliverer network
• develop or deliver feeder activities
• deliver supported learning programs.

Key findings

• PGS leadership team reached their objectives, but despite this, the project overall has not.
• PGS’s focus may have been too broad, covering too many production systems.
• There was difficulty creating clear messaging to target the industry with, and a lack of project clarity.
• The experienced deliverers had not sufficient reward or incentives, professionally & financially, with a large amount of administration and compliance.
• The PGS concept is sound, due to relying on a proven extension model- repetition of messages in a supported learning format.

Benefits to industry

Clear industry benefits are the improvement in skills and knowledge of involved producers. There is also the availability of programs that cover a wide range of topics, and access to the under utilized but highly effective supported learning method. In addition, the knowledge and skills of the national team have been improved through the experience of developing PGS, with the experience to assist developing future projects within the red meat industry.

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.