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More than 650 producers attended our National Beef Industry Forum in
Rockhampton gaining insights into key production issues.
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ENGAGING RESEARCH
Increase adoption of R&D outcomes
Our collaborative approach to facilitate on-farm adoption of industry research and development outcomes, through the development of publications, events, workshops and online communication initiatives, saw 15,000 producers engage with us during the year in MLA funded or co-funded learning activities.
A highlight was the launch of Making More From Sheep – a joint initiative of MLA and Australian Wool Innovation – in January 2008. Two years of rigorous development, consultation and testing involving 250 producers, technical and extension specialists, farm consultants, state departments of agriculture and agribusiness delivered the core of the program – the manual. This manual has been ordered by over 2,000 Australian sheep producers and a further 10,108 have visited the website. To support and extend the program, a network of national coordinators delivered 63 different workshops to over 1,100 producers. Of these, 98 per cent rated them as either useful or very useful, and 85 per cent reported that they would change practices as a result of what they learned. The reach of these activities relative to the national flock shows that attendees had an average flock size of 4,000 sheep, and/or an annual turn-off of 1,100 lambs for slaughter.
We also continued to deliver Beef Up forums with over 720 producers who collectively manage 1.28 million head of cattle and 25 million hectares of land, across Queensland, the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia. Coordinated in collaboration with local producers and industry, the forums provide producers with options for improving reproductive performance and liveweight gain, as well as grazing land management and succession planning. Over 90 per cent of participants indicated they learned something at these forums, over 60 per cent indicated they would attend further training, and over 50 per cent indicated they would make changes in management from what they learned.
Over 4,500 producers were involved in various More Beef from Pastures workshops and forums, bringing the total to over 15,000 since this program’s launch in 2004. To date, 2,700 people have participated in various activities associated with Evergraze research and demonstration sites supported by MLA and around 6,000 producers were directly engaged with the five-year collaboration of Grain & Graze. For more details on this program and its outcomes see the Review of Operations and Protecting the Environment.
Other key initiatives during the year included:
- 50 producer initiated research and development groups
- the delivery of 38 Stockwise drought workshops
- 50 Cost of Production and 92 EDGEnetwork training workshops
- the establishment of 11 producer demonstration sites in northern Australia
- the support of over 1,200 producers in Bestwool/Bestlamb and Bestprac groups
More than 1,300 producers also attended three Meat Profit Days in Kyneton, Perth and Rockhampton, organised in conjunction with a local committee to provide insights into key production issues and how to better manage them.
In addition, our tools and publications are an effective platform for delivering the practical application of R&D to producers. We distributed 116,000 publications throughout the year and an additional 1,750 per month were downloaded from our website.
Our quarterly magazines – mlaPrograzier and Frontier – reached 20,455 subscribers in southern Australia and 9,651 in northern Australia respectively. An independent survey conducted during the year by Taverner Research showed that 45 per cent of Frontier readers had either changed the direction of their property plans, directly applied their learning to their property or sought more information or training as a result of reading the magazine.
