Overview
This collaborative project with the dairy industry (Dairy Australia and Murray Dairy) explored the challenges and opportunities of managing regional transformation (as represented by water policy change and irrigation modernisation in the Murray Darling Basin and the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District respectively) and co-developed a practical tool (Workbook for Assessing Change Challenges in Dairy Regions) for supporting adaptive governance responses to such transformation.
Project summary
Current regional challenges for sustainable dairy production represent a form of change quite different from the past. Dairy Australia requires an understanding of the regional change process to best lead, plan and support desirable changes to counter adverse market responses such as large-scale, rapid exits from dairying impacting regional confidence, workforce sustainability and services.
This project aims to:
- understand transformative processes in the dairy industry at a regional level; and
- develop tools to support the industry in current and future transformation.
“Transformation” is considered as the process by which farmers, communities, regions and institutions re-organise in the face of shocks or challenges in order to be more resilient in the future. Transformation is distinguished as a particular type of change – different from adaptations geared to “bouncing back” or “preservation” where the focus is on returning to pre-crisis or pre-challenge conditions. Transformation concerns significant change or re-design to how things are or how they have been done in the past. In resilience studies, “transformation” is considered the least well-understood and most resisted form of change.
One example of the potential for transformation is the current challenge to the dairy industry in the form of water allocation policy in the Murray Darling Basin. Water allocation policy in the Murray Darling Basin has many cross-scale impacts including individual farm businesses (dairy and other enterprises), water infrastructure investment, regional communities, milk processing capacity and sustainability, and regional jobs. How will farms, communities, regions and institutions re-organise in the face of this challenge? How could opportunities for significant transformation be considered, planned for and acted upon?
The research questions are:
- How does change, including transformation, happen?
- How are opportunities seen and taken within regions at a farm level and through collaborative action between farming groups, their communities, the region and industry stakeholders?
- What recommendations are transferable to other dairy regions facing transformative challenges?
The research has involved an in-depth analysis of the transformative process in the Northern Victorian dairy region related to irrigation modernisation as part of the Australian Government’s Murray Darling Basin Plan. The G-MW Connections Project is a key regional change challenge for dairy industry farmers, professionals and their collaborators. In this project a regional change process for improving adaptive governance was co-developed between researchers and these governance actors (above). This took the form of a Workshop intervention in which a Workbook on Assessing Change Challenges in Dairy Regions was applied. This intervention supported participants to undertake cross-scale consideration of change pathways and opportunities particularly in relation to the needs of irrigated dairy farmers in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District.
Outcomes targeted
- Better targeted regional policies: The research assisted Dairy Australia in their regional development program policies and strategies by trialling an approach to building adaptive capacity across a range of diverse interests and stakeholders in irrigation modernisation.
- Better targeted opportunities for farmers and regions: The research provided additional opportunities for dairy farmers, dairy industry professionals and other regional change leaders and managers to engage with their community and stakeholders for exploring opportunities.
- Inform future initiatives of the dairy industry in considering regional transformative change such as irrigation modernisation. The documentation and analysis of actions and lessons from this significant period of change in regional dairy areas in Australia is significant for future industry sustainability.
Project duration
November 2012–November 2015
Research group leader/key contact
Dr Margaret Ayre
Contact details
Dr Margaret Ayre; T: 03 9035 4711; E:mayre@unimelb.edu.au
Partnership details
This research was funded by Dairy Australia and supported by Murray Dairy and a project Steering Committee of dairy and water industry, government and community leaders.
Publication
Ayre, M., and R. Nettle. 2017. Enacting resilience for adaptive water governance: a case study of irrigation modernisation in an Australian catchment, Ecology & Society. 22(3):1.
Link to online resource: Workbook for Assessing Change Challenges in Dairy Regions