Building livestock drought resilience by discovering stock containment innovations

WHY THIS PROJECT WAS NEEDED

The Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption & Innovation Hub identified the use of stock containment areas as a cornerstone to building drought resilience before, during and when exiting drought.

Meat and Livestock Australia and state and federal agencies have invested millions of dollars in RD&E to increase adoption of stock containment as a drought management tool. Despite these efforts, uptake is consistently low across Australia. Without understanding the reason behind the low uptake, there is a risk that future investment to support adoption of stock containment areas may fail or will not address critical knowledge gaps. This would leave farmers unable to capitalise on the full suite of benefits for building social, economic, and environmental drought resilience.

In short: This project investigated the low uptake of stock containment areas in drought management. Through engagement, gap analysis, and farmer focus groups, the project discovered barriers to uptake and developed a plan for future investment in this area.

Stock containment, as a whole-of-system drought management tool, involves farmers making complex decisions regarding resources, finances and risk strategies and hence there can be many financial, technical, or social barriers to adoption.

This project engaged with farmers to produce a gap analysis and a comprehensive plan for future investment in a larger cross-hub, national initiative which will specifically address barriers to investment and adoption of stock containment strategies.

Project focus

This project involved a review of all previous investment in stock containment RD&E. The project also used a series of farmer focus groups in regions facing significant drought exposure, to understand the current barriers to, and levels of adoption for stock containment in the pre, during and post drought phases.

Following this process, a plan identifying the stock containment strategies of most interest to each region and likely economic, social and environment benefits (including barriers to adoption) was completed. This provided recommendations on the investment required to address gaps in knowledge, barriers to adoption and potential innovations to trial in the next stage of a larger cross-hub national initiative using demonstration on commercial farms. 

Project outcomes

Read the business case for investment in the adoption of stock containment feeding areas business plan.