South-West WA Hub Update

The South-West WA Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub (SW WA Hub) has had a productive month engaging with Partners and stakeholders and making significant progress with our priority setting process.

The Australian Government's Future Drought Fund, which funds the SW WA Hub and other initiatives, also continues to provide grant opportunities. The latest are Community Impact Program grants worth up to $500,000 each. Scroll down to find out more.

In other news, we are pleased that Julianne Hill, who is well known in Western Australian agricultural circles, will soon join our team. See the full story below.

Please feel free to forward this monthly newsletter to colleagues, friends or clients.

Caption: SW WA Hub staff and South West Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) members discussing drought resilience priorities.

South West committee prioritises projects

The SW WA Hub’s Regional Advisory Committee for the South West agro-ecological region met recently to prioritise drought resilience projects that had been identified by a situational analysis.

Regional Node Leads are now also seeking feedback on these projects from farmers.

Draft situational analyses documents and priority project lists for all four of the Hub's four agro-ecological zones are now available on the SW WA Hub webpage.

Hub and GGA represented at Dowerin

GGA and SW WA Hub staff collected feedback on drought resilience priorities at the Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days.

Team members have also engaged with farmers and stakeholders at a number of other events including Grains Research and Development Corporation Regional Grains Research Updates and the Wheatbelt NRM Talkin' Soil Health event.

Accompanying Hub staff at Dowerin were Climate Services for Agriculture developers who demonstrated the tool (and DR.SAT tool) as part of a WA visit facilitated by the Hub and Regional Node Leads.

Please see below other locally-relevant news from the Future Drought Fund

Community grants available

Grants of up to $500,000 are available for eligible community organisations as part of the Community Impact Program supported by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund (FDF).

Leadership development support is also available. Expressions of interest close on September 26.

Drought resilience webinars

A webinar series has been produced looking at what it takes to make Australian rural communities more drought and climate resilient.

The Australian Rural Leadership Foundation (ARLF) has hosted these webinars which feature panels of producers, industry professionals and scientists.

Drought tool delivers solutions to farmers

The Drought Resilience Self-Assessment Tool – DR.SAT, launched in 2021 by the Future Drought Fund, gives WA farmers information and ideas to thrive in a changing climate.

All farmers can get free personalised details about their farm with satellite images of historic and current climate conditions (updated roughly every six days) as well as climate projections of rainfall and temperature for their property up to 2050.

The tool is being updated throughout 2022 with specific information for regions and commodities, arming farmers with practical solutions to challenges they face.

Learn about Future Drought Fund

The $5 billion Future Drought Fund (FDF) is providing secure, continuous funding for drought resilience initiatives and will help Australian farmers and communities prepare for the impacts of drought.

From July 2020, $100 million has been made available each year to support Australian farmers and communities to prepare for and become more resilient to the effects of future drought. This will:

• Make agriculture more productive and profitable
• Enhance the wellbeing of our farming communities
• Improve the sustainability and resilience of the natural resources on which agriculture depends.

To receive regular email updates directly from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, subscribe via the ‘Have your say’ webpage.