L.SFP.1006 - Environmental credentials for Australian beef - Drought Resilience theme
The Environmental Credentials Platform contains learning modules on drought resilience and enables red meat producers to assess how prepared they are to withstand the impacts of drought on their business and their wellbeing.
| Project start date: | 18 August 2021 |
| Project end date: | 30 December 2023 |
| Publication date: | 03 May 2024 |
| Project status: | Completed |
| Livestock species: | Grass-fed Cattle |
| Relevant regions: | National, Cold wet, Dry, Mediterranean, Tropical warm season wet, Sub-tropical moist, Sub-tropical sub-humid, Temperate, Temperate sub-humid, Tropical Moist, Tropical wet |
|
Download Report
(0.9 MB)
|
|
Summary
This project contributes the drought resilience theme for the Environmental Credentials for Australian Beef project, which is developing a single online platform for grassfed beef producers to demonstrate sustainability to their markets using remote sensing and additional information. The methodology comprised a desk review for background scoping research, a series of co-design working groups, and synthesis of their deliberations and team investigations into a design brief.
The producers defined drought resilience in an integrated way, as involving the resilience of their land, their business and themselves and family. Building resilience includes a cyclical approach of planning in good times, through to coping with a drought, recovery and learning from it. The producers seek a planning and awareness tool, associated with learning resources, designed to enhance practice. Further, there is opportunity to present evidence to banks, and to government departments that require demonstration of a drought plan among eligibility criteria for access to drought relief programs. Industry benefits include the opportunity to participate intensively in designing technology to suit their own needs, the resilience focus, and the prospect of a tool and learning resources to enhance their management.
Objectives
The project objectives are to:
• Develop the design brief for the drought resilience theme for the Environmental Credentials for Australian Beef (Smart Farms) project ready for translation into an online platform. Theme design will include indicators, measuring tools/approaches, benchmarks and learning resources. The platform design must be suitable for producer self-assessment of environmental performance.
• Support the environmental credentials platform developer in integrating the drought resilience theme into the online platform.
Key findings
The project produced a design brief, informed by co-design, for a user-friendly drought theme that enables producers to query information about their property; to assess their drought risks with respect to their land, their enterprise and themselves; and key indicators of how well their land use management is positioned to provide resilience to those risks.
Producers seek an online tool that will help them to:
• Understand what resilience involves, and what planning is required of them in order to become more resilient to droughts.
• understand the different facets of drought
• Understand and work in an integrated way towards building the resilience of their land, their business and themselves and family. This includes a cyclical approach of planning in good times, through to coping with a drought, recovery and learning from it.
• Use indicators and measures for land condition, land management, enterprise management and individual/family resilience to assess drought readiness and monitor progress at all stages in the cycle.
• Demonstrate their drought planning and management performance to relevant organisations, should they so wish.
Benefits to industry
The drought resilience theme, within the platform is valuable to the Australian beef producers for improving their drought resilience and sustainability outcomes. The platform is a useful tool for assessing, planning and improving drought management by the producers. It helps the producers as a tool to present their drought resilience status to relevant government departments as well as to the banks for assessing the drought risk management of their clients.
MLA action
MLA will continue to maintain and improve the Environmental Credentials platform for the immediate future. This will help build a user base and demonstrate the value of the platform for producers and end users of sustainability data. MLA plan to continue to make improvements to the platform to enhance the user experience, value, and utility of the platform.
Future research
Further research will be useful on:
• evaluation of the platform some time after release
• research on market demand
• research on verification and certification
• expansion to other agricultural industries
More information
| Project manager: | Margaret Jewell |
| Contact email: | reports@mla.com.au |
| Primary researcher: | University of Queensland |
