FOLLOWING 18 months of consultation The Mallee Regional Innovation Centre has launched its Regional Drought Consultation Summary Report.
The Centre engaged with farmers, service providers, councils, banks, statutory organisations, the tourism and environmental sectors, government departments and individuals, to identify opportunities to improve drought resilience in the Mallee.
One of the report’s findings was that drought is first felt in the farming communities, in the transport sector and in retail industries and recovery takes a minimum of two years for dryland agriculture and four years for irrigated horticulture.
“After much work, we are very pleased to be able to produce this piece of critical information for our region,” Mallee Regional Innovation Centre Strategic Advisory panel chair, Leonie Burrows OAM said.
“The outputs of this consultation process are not only building up the institutional memory of how we have adapted to the changing face of drought, but they will guide projects and activities that will have lasting impacts for the regions.
‘We’ve heard that the next drought will be different, but we can prepare ourselves and be better placed to continue to adapt next time.”
Drought was seen as a constant feature of life in north-west Victoria and building drought preparedness was a key goal of the Centre’s work.
“Decision making during in times of drought is critical,” Mallee Regional Innovation Centre chief executive officer Rebecca Wells said.
“The importance of preparing a drought plan during the good times was highlighted in many discussions.
“Ideally this would involve farmers sitting down jointly with their agronomists, accountants and bankers so that they could think about the business as a whole.
“All droughts are different, so the plan would inevitably have to change. But changing a plan is much easier than wrestling with uncertainty and having a plan is good for mental health
“The information gathered through this ground up approach has already led to the development of projects, including one on water allocation forecasting.
“We look forward to continuing the consultation process and working on developing new projects and activities to support drought preparedness for our region.”
This project received funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.
