Better ways to engage with WMG in 2024

By Nathan Craig, WMG Chief Executive Officer

WMG continues to innovate in the way it supports it farming community to profitably grow farming businesses in the region. Read on to find out how to access timely and relevant information through on-farm trials and events, the WMG website, and our streamlined newsletters.

The learning preferences and the way that farmers engage in learning about new practices has changed significantly in the past few years. In response, WMG has developed a new model for delivering timely and relevant information based on the research that we have completed in the past year on how farmers want to engage and receive information. You can read about this here.

On-farm events

The primary way that we support farming businesses to evaluate new practices and technologies is now through small, on-farm group discussion style events that are based on our highly successful ‘Pasture Drive’ series held in 2022/23. This informal style of event encourages farmers to share and learn in a supportive environment without being ‘talked at’ by industry peers. Researchers and industry are invited to attend these meetings, but this participatory approach to extension everyone means that everyone is equal in the conversation.

In the coming years, WMG will support many groups of farmers to come together to explore a range of issues and opportunities for the region and to identify the best path forward that helps to achieve the sustainable growth of agriculture. Best of all, it is done while having a sticky beak at a member property!

Through our research, small group engagement that is focused on a specific topic are considered to be a better use of farmers time and also allows farmers to come and learn, share knowledge, and leave each group meeting with something that they can implement in their business or investigate further.

Working with farmers

The second way that WMG supports our members is through helping farmers to evaluate new practices and technologies that could improve the profitability of their farming business. Our members are encouraged to identify an issue or opportunity for their farm business and work with the WMG Team to conduct a trial, collect data, and collate this into a useable format for review. This model has been successful in ensuring that farmers have the information at hand to make well-informed decisions on whether or not to adopt a new farming practice or technology into their business.

The challenges and opportunities that we tackle in this approach are ones that are likely to provide a step change in agricultural practices to ensure that our members are still profitable, sustainable, and confident in running their business in 5 years time.

Online access to local information

The WMG website has recently had an upgrade in our quest to facilitate knowledge sharing for the region. In the past, our activities were blasted across the website, social media, local and state newspapers, e-newsletters, and the WMG Quarterly. This made it difficult to show how the full body of work that has been completed for a project, but not any more!

The new website will house all our content for projects and allow greater searchability of projects, posts, and events. Each project page has a range of interactive content and the latest updates, podcasts, reports, and background information to learn more about each farming practice that could help to improve the bottom line of farming businesses in the region.

All of the latest updates to the information will be communicated by social media in real time as they go live on the website, and at the end of the month, the WMG ‘What You Missed’ email summarises all of the month’s activities so that our farming community are fully across the new information for the region.

A bit more about us

WMG supports the sustainable growth of agriculture in the West Midlands region of Western Australia. As changes to farming practices becomes increasingly complex and harder to implement, our goal it is to demystify, simplify, and reduce the friction for farmers to adopt new practices and technologies. Our farming members will feel confident and supported when responding to the many future challenges and ensure they don’t feel the pressure of social license, regulation, and legislative impacts of changes to the agricultural industry.