WA Farmers Build Resilience: Six Characteristics of Resilient Farming Businesses

David Maxwell GRAYDevelopment Officer, Katanning5th World Congress of Conservation Agriculture, BrisbaneSeptember 26, 2011

Conflict between legitimate goals:

1. Managing for performance and growth

2.Managing for adaptationAdaptability to changes in the business,

natural and regulatory environments

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.

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 communication5. Innovating and experimenting incrementally6. Ensuring goals and values are shared

Behind the Six Characteristics 1. Scanning – information flows, intellectual capital2. Contingency Planning – preparedness, intellectual

capital, financial capital3. Operational Flexibility – Physical capital,

infrastructure, deliberate redundancy4. Networks – information flows, social capital,

personal resilience, mental health5. Innovation – knowhow, intellectual capital6. Shared Goals – consistency of purpose, social

capital

Case Studies

• Preliminary to NAMI project• National Adaptation & Mitigation Initiative• Sponsors: GRDC, DAFF, DAFWA

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.

Brad Wooldridge

MacGregors

Macgregors:Scanning, technology awareness, networking,

innovating:• Holistic farming, rotational grazing• Soil Biology, role of soil organisms• Performance breeding technologies• Pasture species & establishment especially

perennials

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

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

Shared Goals & Values

Shared Goals & Values

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

Letters:

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

Lucerne November 2010 following 32mm rains

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

Experimentation & Innovation:Afrinos

Afrino ewes & lambs

Experimentation & InnovationContingency Planning

Is Resilience a Strategy?

Resilient behaviours constitute a managerial strategy

Is Resilience a Strategy?

Many strategies embody explicit action plans

Is Resilience a Strategy?

Other components of a resilience strategy:– frugality– high equity ratios– Careful machinery expenditure strategies– Biological & agronomic– Non-farm income