Facilitating industry practice change via service provider EDGENetwork training

Summary

​MLA's EDGEnetwork® (EDGE) offers professional and practical learning opportunities to help beef, sheep and goat producers gain knowledge and develop skills necessary to improve their livestock enterprises. 

The EDGE workshops were developed by industry specialists and tested by producers to guarantee their quality and relevance. They are the main avenue for the delivery of R&D in northern Australia. The educational and informative format encourages producers to expand their current expertise learn new skills, be motivated by other producers and access the latest information that will contribute to effective practice change in their business. To ensure professional workshop delivery, MLA approves workshop deliverers with exceptional technical expertise and adult learning skills. 

Three 2–3 day EDGE workshops applicable to northern Australia (Nutrition EDGE, Breeding EDGE, Grazing land management EDGE), were recently reviewed and updated (E.IFL.1302 Review and update of FutureBeef extension training packages). The new one-day workshop, Grazing fundamentals, was developed to address the overlap between the Grazing land management EDGE and Nutrition EDGE workshops with regards core grazing land management principles. Grazing fundamentals gives deliverers the option of presenting it as a stand-alone workshop or as a modular component of the EDGE workshop suite and to complement the DAF Stocktake: balancing supply and demand workshop.

This project addressed:

1. The urgent need to update current MLA-approved deliverers in the revised EDGE workshops and the new Grazing fundamentals workshop. 
2. The lack of deliverers for specific EDGE packages and to service priority regional gaps in northern Australia by identifying and training up to six new EDGE deliverers. 
3. The need to continuously develop the professional capacity of private and public service extension providers to the northern red meat industry in the understanding of core ‘EDGE principles’, promotion of the EDGEnetwork to clients, and use the core ‘EDGE principles’ in their own work. Up to sixty early to mid-career public, private and NGO extension officers from across northern Australia will be trained in grazing land management, nutrition, breeding and business principles using EDGE workshops. 

This training will greatly extend the reach of MLA’s EDGEnetwork investment, as the early to mid-career extension officers will be able to:

• apply the core ‘EDGE principles’ in their extension roles, e.g. explain key concepts to clients to help support practice change,
• for a number of skilled extension officers begin on a training pathway towards future delivery of EDGE workshops, and
• promote EDGE workshops and the Profitable Grazing Systems (PGS) program to producers.