Peter Hayman and Paul Carberry, NSW Agriculture, Tamworth

e-mail: peter.hayman@agric.nsw.gov.au

NSW Agriculture seeks to work with farmers and those supporting farmers in NSW for productive and sustainable industries, hence the interest in climate and weather is in the application to NSW farming systems. Although there is a long history of applying climate to farming systems, the effort has recently been increased by the launch of the Agroclimatology unit at Tamworth to work with climate applications from Head Office, Orange and formal training in climate from Tocal college.

1. Introduction

Dealing with a variable climate has been part of the interaction between NSW Agriculture and farmers over the last century. The Agricultural Gazette, published by the then NSW Department of Agriculture gives some history of this interaction. For example after the droughts at the turn of the last century, a series of articles titled Lessons from the drought were published. Similar articles were published in the 1980s.

In August last year, a state-wide Agroclimatology Unit was launched by the Minister in Tamworth. The two officers based in Tamworth complement two full-time and a small number of part time positions working on climate applications at head office in Orange and the training course offered through Tocal college.

NSW Agriculture will continue to have a role in emergency management response associated with extreme climate events. This role has been through policy, advice and on the ground management for example the coordination of fodder drops during droughts.

The recent emphasis on self reliance and minimising degradation that have come as part of the National Drought Policy have changed the role of Government from a source of financial assistance to primarily a source of information. NSW Agriculture does not see itself offering seasonal climate forecasts, or even as a primary source of climatic records. Rather, we aim to work with the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Queensland Centre for Climate Applications, Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit and Universities to apply the advances in climate science to farming systems. On a monthly basis NSW Agriculture produces a regional review which combines seasonal climate outlook from a number of sources with the current crop and pasture conditions and economic factors.

Given that our emphasis is on the application of climate information to farming systems we aim to work through the 200 advisory officers in the department to integrate climate and weather information into their every day advice. In addition we aim to target the large number of agribusiness firms so that they too integrate climate risk information into their work with farmers. As the media is the main information source for climate information for most farmers we are trying to work with the media, especially in the issue of conveying probabilistic information.

In the presentation we will detail the results of a survey of NSW Agriculture staff along with what we are learning about how farmers use climate and weather information and how we can make this information useful for their decision making.