Over the course of the past two years, eastAUSmilk has been involved in delivering workshops and assistance to dairy farmers in completing farm resilience plans and subsequent Drought Preparedness Grant applications.
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Since November 2022, we have completed 12 resilience plans in preparation for DPG applications and held five workshops across Queensland and northern NSW.
We are happy to report that this means we have met the milestone for the project and exceeded all goals for the past six months, and plan to continue in this fashion over the next two reporting periods.
Challenges faced during this milestone were mainly timing of workshops, as many farms were already busy with planting when the workshops were planned. This was combated in the last workshop by holding it at night as a dinner, and although this limited available speakers, we had a good turnout of 14 attendees on the night.
Heading into the new financial year we anticipate more grant applications from farms who have already completed their resilience plans, which not only allows them to refer to a plan in writing for events such as droughts, but also means that they can put through their applications much quicker as it only needs to be reviewed and updated rather than completing a new plan.
eastAUSmilk has had an excellent acceptance rate for the grant applications and we look forward to continuing to provide this service to our members over the coming financial year. We also plan to hold additional workshops which in future will be held as dinners to accommodate the busy schedules of our dairy farmers.
