CEO Report - Farmer discussion groups going gangbusters!

By Nathan Craig, WMG Chief Executive Officer

This month has seen the successful delivery of three more farmer discussion groups, bringing the total delivered this year to five for our farming members.

The latest round of discussion groups was focused on risk management with support from the GRDC funded Riskwise project. This National project aims to reach 80% of farmers across Australia and to achieve this, WMG are working with the Mingenew Irwin Group to cover the Northern Agricultural Region of WA.

To expand the area that the project covers, WMG engaged with the Three Springs Farm Improvement Network (3FIN) and joined their recent committee meeting to discuss the project, gain their ideas and feedback, and to look for potential areas where we can support their members over the next few years as part of the project.

WMG also met with farmers in the Yerecoin region in conjunction with Yerecoin Traders who are the local merchandise store servicing the region. They were able to reach out to their contacts and bring together a few people for the first meeting for this project. This event was much harder to deliver as these growers were coming together on this topic for the first time, but we were able to engage them successfully and have an open discussion on how risk is managed in the Yerecoin region.

Following these discussion group meetings, a range of activities across the broader region can now start to be planned that help to inform us on how to improve risk management in farming.

Discussion group meetings are now the preferred way of connecting with farmers across our region as it allows for peer group discussion that provides learning opportunities for the attending farmers, and for WMG to learn in detail about the issues and opportunities across the region. Farmers can come along and talk about the issues that they are facing and compare notes with other farmers. Nearly all of these meetings are held on farm, and this allows us all to have a little sticky beak at each other’s farms as well.

WMG currently has discussion groups established at present on the topics of risk management, soil testing and soil health, and pasture (annual/perennial) management and will be adding more topics during this year.

Group discussion is based on a specific topic of interest that can be discussed in a couple of hours and is open to all interested in the topic, including farmers, industry, and researchers that can add value to the discussion. This mix of attendees has led to some extremely interesting and engaging discussion among farmers at the 5 group meetings that have been held this year. Most importantly, these groups are designed to be less than 20 people to allow everyone to participate in the discussion.

The twist is that farmers, industry, and researchers are invited to attend each meeting from our list of people that are interested in the specific topic. WMG notify the list of interested people via text message and email of an upcoming event to make it simple and painless to attend. This change to the way we communicate with our members aims to reduce the clutter that farmers experience in their mailbox and means that only the most relevant information is being sent to our members. By knowing your topics of interest, we can understand what information to send and how much so that you feel less overwhelm from all the information that WMG can provide.

There are three simple steps for you to become involved in the WMG farmer discussion groups:

• Let us know your topics of interest by completing this questionnaire
• We suggest which group(s) are potentially good to join – each group has its own topic footprint.
• Your name is added to the list to be notified of the next discussion group meeting.

By connecting farmers with other like-minded people in the region, WMG aims to support farmers to make confident, informed decisions when managing the day-to-day farm operations, and when considering whether to adopt new practices or technologies. This is our role in supporting the sustainable growth of agriculture in the region, and we encourage farmers across the region to register your interest in the discussion group meetings.