WA farmers build resilience: six characteristics of resilient farming businesses. David Maxwell Gray
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Presentation from the WCCA 2011 conference in Brisbane, Australia.
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WA farmers build resilience: six characteristics of resilient farming businesses. David Maxwell Gray
- 2. WA Farmers Build Resilience: Six Characteristics of Resilient Farming Businesses David Maxwell GRAY Development Officer, Katanning 5th World Congress of Conservation Agriculture, Brisbane September 26, 2011
- 3. Conflict between legitimate goals: 1. Managing for performance and growth 2.Managing for adaptation Adaptability to changes in the business, natural and regulatory environments
- 4. Different Goals Require Somewhat Different Things Performance requires: • Consistency • Efficiency • Minimisation of redundant activities and costs. Adaptation requires: • Foresight • Innovation and experimentation • Built-in redundancies in activities or infrastructure • An orientation to possible futures.
- 5. Six Characteristics of a Resilient Farming Business 1. Scanning of the business, natural, regulatory and social environments for prospective changes 2. Planning for ongoing contingencies - disruptive events 3. Designing flexible farming systems - where a switch of enterprises is relatively easy 4. Maintaining excellent networks of communication 5. Innovating and experimenting incrementally 6. Ensuring goals and values are shared
- 6. Behind the Six Characteristics 1. Scanning – information flows, intellectual capital 2. Contingency Planning – preparedness, intellectual capital, financial capital 3. Operational Flexibility – Physical capital, infrastructure, deliberate redundancy 4. Networks – information flows, social capital, personal resilience, mental health 5. Innovation – knowhow, intellectual capital 6. Shared Goals – consistency of purpose, social capital
- 7. Case Studies • Preliminary to NAMI project • National Adaptation & Mitigation Initiative • Sponsors: GRDC, DAFF, DAFWA
- 8. Examples: Brad & Tracy Wooldridge Scanning • Wide set of sources • Pastures from Space leads to SR=(DMP- 1000)/500 • For every week the season breaks before or after May 20, the Stocking rate is increased or decreased by 1DSE, subject to a maximum of 19 DSE/ha.
- 10. MacGregors
- 11. Macgregors: Scanning, technology awareness, networking, innovating: • Holistic farming, rotational grazing • Soil Biology, role of soil organisms • Performance breeding technologies • Pasture species & establishment especially perennials
- 12. Contingency Planning Wooldridges: • Pastures from Space and relationships enable contingency planning. • Computes weekly pasture growth & feed requirements • Benefits from responding decisively • Consider the costs if a bad season “ambushes” them
- 13. Flexibility • Switching of enterprises at the start of each season • Dependent upon the timing of the break • Cropping programme responds to expected changes in prices, costs and season • Meat sheep may be extended
- 14. Shared Goals & Values
- 15. Shared Goals & Values
- 16. Networks • Actively developed networks with fellow farmers, suppliers, consultants and other service providers • Also researchers, from CSIRO, from DAFWA and many others. • Assist planning and knowledge base for decision-making
- 17. Letters:
- 18. LETTERS: • Innovation, Flexibility - Define farm beyond their property boundaries: perform contract operations for neighbours (seeding, spreading, harvesting, trucking), lease additional cropping land • Shared Goals: three sons all good mechanics, all equipment modifiers, teamwork • Experimentation, innovation - Lucerne
- 19. Lucerne November 2010 following 32mm rains
- 20. Experimentation & Innovation • Techniques from Pastures from Space projects with CSIRO to do paddock level estimates of pasture growth from the application of liquid N during August. • This led to his adoption of a practice of spraying when conditions suit to assist weaner growth in spring • Dorper/Suffolk flock
- 21. Experimentation & Innovation: Afrinos
- 22. Afrino ewes & lambs
- 23. Experimentation & Innovation Contingency Planning
- 24. Is Resilience a Strategy? Resilient behaviours constitute a managerial strategy
- 25. Is Resilience a Strategy? Many strategies embody explicit action plans
- 26. Is Resilience a Strategy? Other components of a resilience strategy: – frugality – high equity ratios – Careful machinery expenditure strategies – Biological & agronomic – Non-farm income
Editor's Notes
- Profit, Yield, Grain quality, Carcase quality, Food conversion efficiency Land acquisition, Growth in net equityMajor currency shiftsOutput price and/or input cost changesJapanese ban on imported beef Invasion by a herbicide resistant weedProhibition of mulesing
- Active scanning of the business, natural, regulatory and social environments for new information of relevanceActive, ongoing contingency planning for possible disruptive eventsFlexible farming systems in which a switch or modification of activities and enterprises is readily undertakenExcellent networks of communication for rich, relevant information and supportContinuing small-scale innovation and experimentation with new techniques or methods, or perspectives on old issuesGoals and values within the farm business which are worked through to become shared.
- Wide set of sources, watching for things that would affect his farming businessFor instance, Brad, together with experts from CSIRO, DAFWA and his consultant, have developed for his farm an empirical relationship between the timing and extent of the break and annual Dry Matter Production (kg of DM/ha) from which he computes the possible Stocking Rate in DSE for that season. This is SR=(DMP-1000)/500For every week the season breaks before or after May 20, the Stocking rate to be adopted is increased or decreased by 1DSE, subject to a maximum of 19 DSE/ha.
- Pastures from Space and relationships enables him to plan how to respond to each season. This is contingency planning.During the season, Brad computes each week on a spread sheet the feed intake required for his flock(s) per head per day and compares this against the Pasture Growth Rate (PGR) in kg DM/ha/day derived from Pastures from Space estimates as they come forthBenefits arise because he responds decisively, before the market uses up agistment opportunities Considering what would otherwise be the costs if he were to let a bad season “ambush” him: the extra feed costs, the lost production from the flock and so on
- His switching of enterprises at the start of each season exemplifies building flexibility into the farming system. Also, the adjustment between canola cropping and the number of sheep grazing dependent upon the timing of the break When determining his annual cropping programme, he responds to expected changes in prices, costs and climatic changes. His meat sheep operation may be extended
- Resilient behaviours constitute a managerial strategy to respond to change when it comesThis is akin to corporate strategising
- Many strategies embody explicit action plans, responding to a particular future scenario – a contingency planThese are often at the functional area level; production, marketing, finance.
- Other components of a resilience strategy for a farming business: frugal approach to expenditure high equity ratios through limiting borrowings careful strategies concerning expenditures upon machinerycropping and perhaps soil modification strategies which enhance soil structure, water-holding capacity and fertility.