Little River - big picture

Started by a handful of dedicated people in the Little River catchment in 1997, the Little River Landcare Group has made swift progress. Its membership now numbers 380 people and 175 businesses, but more importantly it is well on the way to achieving significant environmental goals, says Group member Fergus Job.

Key points

• The Group is currently running 14 different enterprises, and has facilitated projects to the total value of $6,752, 076 since its inception
• A growth in science being trialled directly on-farm, has resulted in major long-term improvements in the health of the Little River catchment
• On member's farms, annual pasture and fertiliser regimes have been replaced by perennial pastures and these are grazed on a rotational basis, while conservation practices, such as minimum tillage, are protecting soil health

Striving for the 'wow' factor

Fergus Job of the Little River Landcare Group has a small goal in mind to show his 380 members are hitting their target of farming sustainably.

"There's a sign at each entry point to our valley welcoming visitors to the home of the Little River Landcare Group, so they know to expect improvements in the countryside," he says.

"One day I want to take the sign away and have strangers just drive over the hill and think 'wow!' when they look at our farming landscape."

It's not only the 'wow' factor of a thriving farming community that the Little River Landcare Group is

working on - it's also a change in attitudes and minds of the 380 people and 175 businesses that the Group counts as active members, and those beyond.

The push started in late 1997. A handful of dedicated people in the Little River catchment of the Macquarie River valley in central western New South Wales decided there was a need to drastically improve the management of their natural resources.

It looked a tall order. The Little River drains an area of 260,000 hectares from more than 300 farms around the small townships of Yeoval and

Cumnock; an area that at the time was contributing up to nine per cent of the salt load into the Macquarie River system. Sixty per cent of local soil types were highly acidic, and in 2003 the discharge

quality was so poor that for 70 per cent of the year, the water quality fell below World Health Organisation standards, making it similar to that of a third world country.

There were already 14 Landcare groups in the catchment, but the instigators realised they needed a more sophisticated and wide-reaching approach than just planting

trees.

They tagged their group 'Little River, Big Picture', and set about adopting a corporate business model, engaging staff and involving the community in teaching simple skills such as how to conduct a meeting and manage publicity.

There was one clear criterion - no whingeing. The aim was to change the way people thought, as well as the way they managed their farms on a daily basis.

"The Group was very much built on social capital," says Little River Landcare Group manager, Fergus Job.

"We can focus on ways to improve the environment but if we don't change or alter the adaptive capacity of the people at the same time, it soon reverts to its degraded state."

Community engagement

The focus on engaging the wider community had quick

results. The Group's membership expanded from 30 to 300 in a few years, and in the past 12 months has jumped to almost 400 members covering an area of 340,000 hectares. The budget, too, has grown from $20,000 to $1 million, and that's allowed the organisation to expand its reach into commercial activities such as education.

The Group is currently running 14 different enterprises, ranging from field days and bus trips to a series of forums for women and men that have attracted $200,000 in funding from the Federal Government and $10,000 from QANTAS. The forums cover issues such as time management, mental and physical health and how to deal with stress.

A pilot program, 'Positive Farming Footprint', has delivered basic extension skills to five businesses, and the Group has recently applied for funding for a program titled 'Farmers Teaching Farmers', to share the accumulated knowledge members have gathered over a lifetime of e

xperience.

Fergus Job says the recent introduction of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument profile (HBDI), an assessment tool to reveal thinking preferences, was taken up with relish by participants and has resulted in subtle changes to the ways in which they communicate.

The Little River Landcare Group has a small shopfront in Yeoval and mails out a monthly newsletter to 700 mailboxes. Face-to-face contact is important, and whenever there is a social event in the catchment area, be it a school fete or local show, members of the Group are quick to get involved.

Shifting thinking and closing gaps

The aim is to spark a shift in thinking about traditional farming.

"For the last 100 years success in agriculture has been based on achieving the optimum - optimum rainfall, optimum farm management skills and optimum marketing of commodities - but that is not achievable," says Fergus.

"There has also been a view that if we drag the leaders forward, others will follow, but that's not happening either. The gap between the top farmers and the bottom is getting wider."

A similar gap in research is being closed, he says.

A decade ago there was a long delay between what was being done in laboratories and how that was applied on the farm. These days, a commitment to more 'action research', where science is trialled directly on-farm, has resulted in major long-term improvements in the health of the Little River catchment and others.

The intensive and costly annual pasture and fertiliser regime of the past has been replaced by perennial pastures like native grasses and legumes, and these are grazed on a rotational basis. Conservation farming practices s

uch as minimum tillage mean farmers aren't exporting their most valuable resource - soil - and water quality has improved as a result of more on-ground cover and less run-off.

He's reluctant to use the buzzword of the moment, but Fergus Job admits it's all about 'holistic' management.

"The biggest thing in the Little River Landcare Group has been to realise it's not your problem or my problem, it's our problem," he says.

 Find out more about Little River Landcare Group.