The Victorian Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub is focused on delivering innovations to enable Victorian farmers and communities to become more drought resilient and to better respond to a changing climate. It works by connecting farmers, industry and researchers to drive the development and adoption of innovative on-farm technologies and practices to improve future drought resilience.

Drought is an inevitable part of the Australian landscape, but because the timing, severity and duration of the next one is unknown, it makes sense to plan ahead. This can help reduce the economic, social and environmental impacts of future drought and climate challenges, which can otherwise massively impact the profitability and sustainability of farmers, communities and agribusiness.

To help achieve this, the Hub will tap into the knowledge gained by farmers and communities through their own experiences of drought and bring together new ideas, perspectives, research and technologies to help prepare for drought, while encouraging their adoption on-farm.

Each region of Victoria will have a different approach to managing drought depending on their geographic location and community and has been reflected in the establishment of multiple nodes across the state. Riverine Plains is leading the Northeast Victorian node of the Victorian Hub established by the University of Melbourne at Dookie, with others established at Mildura (Mallee Regional Innovation Centre), Birchip (Birchip Cropping Group), Inverleigh (Southern Farming Systems) and Warragul (Food and Fibre Gippsland).

The Victorian Drought Hub is a unique, state-wide partnership which involves an unprecedented level of co-operation between the partners to co-design and govern the project, with these connections increasing the project’s potential to make a real difference to our regional industries and communities.

A report on the Victorian Drought Hub was published in Research for the Riverine Plains, 2022 and is available here.