On 12 June 2024, Healthy Land & Water hosted the successful Building Grazing Resilience Forum in Gatton, followed by the launch of a new Drought Node for South East Queensland.

Ag Forum at its finest

The agricultural forum provided a valuable platform for landholders to enhance their knowledge and practices in grazing resilience and sustainability, as well as access essential information and resources on best practices in the industry.

It attracted an impressive turnout, with over 80 participants, including a host of industry experts and landholders, flocking from all over South East Queensland to the event location: the Gatton Shire Hall.

The forum featured presentations and displays from key organisations, including Meat & Livestock Australia, AgForce, QUT, Qld Department of Agriculture & Fisheries and the DESI-Long Paddock team, Healthy Land & Water, the Rural Financial Counselling Service, QRIDA and the SQNNSW Drought Innovation Hub.

Attendees thoroughly enjoyed the informative lineup of presentations, ending with a lively panel discussion about the strategies and practices to improve drought resilience and build natural capital. It was great to see the active participation with each of the guest presenters taking questions from the floor which helped build on learnings.

A hit of the day was the screening of grazing resilience case study videos featuring several local landholders, which were interspersed throughout the day’s packed agenda. Anyone who couldn’t make it on the day can watch these videos which have now been uploaded to the Healthy Land & Water YouTube channel.

Bruce Lord, Healthy Land & Water’s Sustainable Agriculture Principal Scientist, says that the knowledge, tools, information shared and networking with fellow attendees at events like these is invaluable.

"The shared learnings from industry bodies, researchers and local graziers are crucial for advancing our collective understanding of sustainability frameworks and emerging natural capital markets and helping landholders develop plans and adopt land management practices which improve sustainable production and resilience" he says.

Taking strides towards drought resilience with the Drought Node

The day concluded with the launch of the new Drought Node for South East Queensland, part of the broader Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales (SQNNSW) Drought Innovation & Adoption Hub.

The new Drought Node aims to build on existing partnerships and initiatives to support farmers and communities across South East Queensland (SEQ) in building resilience to manage climate variability by focusing on innovation, collaboration, and enhancing capacity and capability.

Through the SEQ node, local landowners and land managers will be able to receive advice in relation to Future Drought Fund opportunities, learn about existing drought management and decision support tools, receive climate outlook information targeted to the location, and access training opportunities and extension services in various topics related to drought resilience, and sustainable agricultural production. 

Healthy Land & Water would like to thank all the attendees and partner organisations that contributed to the success of the Building Grazing Resilience Forum and supported the launch of the new Drought Node.
We look forward to continuing our collective work in promoting sustainable agriculture and resilience across the region.

This event was supported by Healthy Land & Water and funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.

Partners include the Queensland Government Department of Environment, Science and Innovation, the Queensland Government Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Southern Queensland and Northern New Wales (SQNNSW) Innovation Hub, Queensland University of Technology, Rural Financial Counselling Services Southern Queensland, Meat & Livestock Australia and Agforce.