Back to Business Program Impact Assessment

Summary

The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, known as Black Summer, was a period of unusually intense bushfires which impacted heavily on livestock producers across New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, South Australia (SA), Western Australia (WA) and Tasmania. The major fires peaked during December 2019 and January 2020, with around 18 million hectares impacted nationally. In response to the devastating impact of Black Summer on Australian red meat producers, Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) launched the Back to Business Program (B2B) in January 2020 to provide support to producers for the journey to recovery. The program provided a range of support activities for fire affected farm businesses, which included information sessions and a series of webinars and podcasts, an MLA website portal to provide easy access to information, and up to three free one-on-one specialist farm management consulting sessions.

Objectives

MLA engaged Beattie Consulting Services, Inspiring Excellence and Warren Straw Consulting to conduct an evaluation of the B2B program to assess the effectiveness of program delivery, and to quantify the triple bottom line benefits attributable to producers who made practice changes due to participation in the program.

Key findings

In total, 132 producers and 35 consultants participated in the B2B program between January and December 2020. Overall, B2B was widely acknowledged by stakeholders as a worthwhile program that delivered triple bottom line benefits to industry. The review found that the B2B program increased the capacity and capability of producers to not only recover from the impacts of the bushfire, but also to manage and improve their businesses into the future. While the program was developed at very short notice in response to the impact of the Black Summer bushfires on red meat producers across Australia, the concept of B2B was soundly based and fit for purpose. Producers and other stakeholders were very appreciative of MLA making the program available.

Benefits to industry

Eighty-two percent of producers interviewed have implemented or intend to implement their B2B action plan, either in part or in full, with 18% not intending to implement their plan. The average net benefit for those producers who received an economic benefit as a result of participating in the B2B one-on-one sessions was $6.21 per hectare across 52,284 hectares. Further key findings from the evaluation are summarised in Appendix A of the final report.

Future research

A total of 34 recommendations have been made based on the assumption that MLA intends to deploy the B2B program again in the future. These recommendations are summarised as seven key recommendations below. The recommendations for program planning are considered to be the highest priority, and can be actioned immediately in preparation for a future disaster event. Further detail on individual recommendations is provided in Section 4.0 of this report.

Key Recommendation one: MLA to review and clarify the intended purpose of the program, the project objectives and intended outcomes and the target audience.

Key Recommendation two: MLA to implement planning strategies that allow for the B2B program to be made available within two weeks of a natural disaster.

Key Recommendation three: MLA to investigate opportunities to seek project funding partners and explore and seek out opportunities to engage with national and state disaster recovery organisations

Key Recommendation four: MLA to develop a project communication and marketing plan and a monitoring and evaluation plan.

Key Recommendation five: MLA to retain the four key elements of the B2B project and to investigate improvements such as offering a further review session and/or phone support to some or all B2B producers, providing better support for the mental health of participating producers and engaging and working more closely with the RFCS as part of the B2B delivery model.

Key Recommendation six: MLA to explore opportunities for improving program delivery via review and clarification of state-coordinator roles and responsibilities, improving consultant awareness of their roles and responsibilities and improving producers’ ability to maximise their value from their participation in the program.

Key Recommendation seven: MLA to explore and implement strategies for improved data collection and collation for monitoring and evaluation purposes.