A renewal for Landcare

By: David Walker, Executive Officer
April 4, 2010

As Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke admitted to the NSW Farmers Annual Conference last year, the Australian Government got it wrong when support for Landcare was reduced in the development of their Caring for Our Country program, and he undertook to reverse that direction.

Speaking late last month at the National Landcare Forum in Adelaide Minister Burke restated the central role that Landcare must play in land management and said that Landcare has so far been the ‘answer’ to the various ‘questions’ – the questions of ‘biodiversity’, of ‘productivity’, and of ‘drought’, and that community Landcare and Landcare groups are an intrinsic part of achieving landscape change and addressing the three new challenges, or questions, that he sees: ‘food security’, ‘climate change’, and the changing way that people volunteer. 

As part of the refocus towards Landcare, the Australian Government has committed to fund a nation-wide network of Landcare Facilitators through to June 2013. Their role will include:

• Working with community Landcare and production groups to promote sustainable farm and land management practices and contribute to and support the uptake of land management practices in rural and related landscapes in a changing climate.
• Establishing, linking, supporting and developing community Landcare and production groups participating in sustainable farm and land management practices, on and off-farm, in rural and related landscapes to support the adoption of practices to deliver improved ecosystem services and landscape scale conservation.
• Providing an effective interface between the regional NRM bodies and community Landcare and production groups.
• Promoting opportunities for groups and networks to access public and private funds to address public benefit sustainable farm and land management practices and contribute to and support the uptake of land management practices in rural and related landscapes including Caring for Our Country targets.
• Providing feedback to the Australian Government and the National Landcare Facilitator on emerging issues and current attitudes and activities in the NRM region which are relevant to sustainable agricultural practices and the needs of community Landcare and production-based networks.

The Government has stated that the Landcare Facilitators Initiative is targeted towards proponent organisations that are actively engaged in natural resource management and promoting the uptake of sustainable farm and land management practices and working with local community and industry groups to achieve these objectives, and that the positions will be funded under an open, competitive process to ensure broad representation across different regions and agricultural industries. 

To this end, LPLM and the other Landcare networks and groups across the region have been talking with all the stakeholders across the North West, and are working up a proposal that will include the NSW Farmers Association, the irrigators, cropping groups, cotton growers, the Cotton CRC; I&I Primary Industries, DECCW, and UNE to ensure that the Landcare Facilitators Initiative is as effective as it can possibly be, and that ‘Landcare’ is indeed the ‘answer’ to the environmental questions that we will confront in the future.

LPLM 02 6741 8375

www.lplmc.com.au

A healthy catchment for a productive future