WALN Committee Member Mick Davis participated in discussions about drought resilience in Perth on 4 December.

The round table discussion run by Major General Day looked at the potential strategies to address drought resilience into the future, in three parts:

• providing good information to business and farming communities;
• ‘incentivising’ good practice; and
• National stewardship of land, water and vegetation.

Mick encouraged the use of the phrase ‘resilient landscapes’ in lieu of a vision statement that focused of ‘profitable farms and sustainable communities’.

The meeting included lengthy discussion about the potential for the Federal Govt to support:

• Farm Deposit Bonds, advocated strongly by Tony Seabrook from PGA
• Investment in BOM infrastructure to support better weather reporting
• farmers going through tough times by acknowledging it is often ‘situational issues’ not mental health issues that surface
• opportunities to undertake Carbon Farming at a broad scale, and
• processes by which the above can be facilitated by Government.

Mick was clearly the only ‘Community advocate’ at the meeting, and took the opportunity to talk in person the General Day and his staff about:

• landcare’s ability to deliver projects on the ground to help build drought resilience in Australian agricultural landscapes,
• the need to connect urban Aussies with the rural community, in good times as well as bad, so they know what what it is they are being asked to protect,
• the importance of adding ‘biodiversity’ to the broad list of soil, land and water assets the Federal Government should manage through the regional NRM process
• the need for more vegetation in the landscape to help drive the water cycle and retain water in the landscape, and
• opportunities for land stewardship payments for landholders looking after native vegetation, amongst other things.

There will be a chance to meet again in the new year to see what come of the round table consultation, so WALN will stay tuned for that after Christmas.