Beef Systems Innovation Tour to Tasmania

Summary

​Producer group facilitator Chris Mirams was approached by members of two beef producer groups in North East Victoria to lead a study tour to visit innovative producers in the Launceston area of Tasmania.

The groups are the BCLG Mentor Farm Group and the Mudgegonga Better Beef Group. Both groups have studied grazing management, pasture improvement, fodder conservation, production feeding, soil fertility, breeding and genetics, decision making, understanding profit drivers and cost of production benchmarking. All of the members have made substantial changes to their operations and are now at a stage where they are thinking and planning in a farming systems context.

Given the individual members high rates of adoption of known and proven technologies and the fact that their operations are now approaching current best practice the question arises, where to from here?

Durring this project the seventeen producers were taken to different regions over three days, to visit the farms and businsses of five highly innovative and creative large scale farmers who have demonstrated the ability to solve complex problems, think outside the square and expand their businesses in non-traditional ways.

On tour and discussions were framed around exploring the businesses and creative minds of the hosts and challenging our farmers to think beyond solving problems with known technologies.

As the tour progressed it became apparent to group members that the learning was not going to be about new farming practices or practical innovation.  To the groups credit, they began to focus upon the personalities of the innovative farmer hosts and the components of their business structures that created the resilient and innovative businesses they managed.

An ORID evaluation was used to develop and capture the participants thoughts at the end of each visit, and two workshops were held at the end of the tour to create a summary of observations, rank them in order of importance, rate themselves against the list and consider what changes can be made in their businesses.