Vital bridging organisations

THIS diagram illustrates the typical agriculture providers and users, as well as bridging organisations that facilitate interaction among them, and their potential interactions with each other.

They are all influenced by the agricultural policy context and the informal institutions, attitudes and practices that either support or hinder innovative processes.

Promoting innovations in agriculture requires coordinated support to agricultural research, extension and education, fostering partnerships and linkages along and beyond agricultural value chains, and creating an enabling environment for agricultural innovation.

NRMs are vital bridging organisations – their strength is the interface between the science community, government and key community stakeholders.

NQ Dry Tropics’ Magor Integrated Project, renamed locally as Landholders Driving Change, funded by the Queensland Government through the Queensland Reef Water Quality Program, is exploring and testing the efficacy of a strategic integrated and comprehensive engagement and behavioural change process.  As a pilot program, it will evaluate and communicate the environmental, economic and social benefits and corresponding costs, in terms of investment required.

The project recognises the importance of scale, and the need to align physical and social catchments.

It has been designed from the ‘ground up’ with actions and support targeted to landholder needs in a flexible, tailored way, to improve the productivity of grazing enterprises, reduce the loss of sediment and particulate nutrients, and decrease the impacts on important wetlands, coastal aquatic habitats and ecosystems, and the Great Barrier Reef.