Empowering beef producers to manage climate risk through an innovative approach to research and end user collaboration

Empowering beef producers to manage climate risk through an innovative approach to research and end user collaboration

The Northern Australian Climate Program (NACP) is a collaborative project linking research, development and extension work to “improve the capacity of the grazing industry to manage drought and climate risk across northern Australia” (J. McBride, 2019, pers. comms.). Northern Australia (north of 30S) supports around 15 million head of cattle, forming part of Australia's economically important red meat export market (supplying 3% of world's beef).
The unique framework of NACP links climate, agricultural, animal and ecology scientists from Australia and the UK, together with local extension officers called ‘Climate Mates’. The local Climate Mates are located across northern Australia and together with researchers, create a successful end-to-end program, with a local focus.
The framework includes (i) climate model development in form of convection parametrisation improvements over the tropics, (ii) developing innovative forecast/management products (e.g., flash drought, monsoon burst rainfall, green date) that help producers manage risk; and (iii) extension work where scientists and Climate Mates facilitate the education of beef producers and adoption of new forecasts into on ground planning. This is achieved through targeted education, webinars, property visits and workshops with both producers and researchers.
In this presentation, we will discuss an innovative case study of NACP's impact on the beef sector: the development of the rainfall burst forecast. We will show how the design, implementation, and ultimately, the operational release of this forecast was a result of unique collaboration between producers and researchers. The framework of NACP demonstrates the powerful outcomes that can be achieved for research and product development through collaboration of researchers and end users. NACP also demonstrates there is a growing need to shift research focus in a more practical direction for measurable on ground outcomes and practice change when addressing climate change mitigation.
(The Northern Australia Climate program is funded by Meat & Livestock Australia, Uni SQ and Queensland Governement)