THE new chairperson of the South Coast Natural Resource Management (NRM) group has a strong background in farming.
Carolyn Daniel, who is a partner in a 6000 hectare mixed farming operation in Jerramungup, is the first female to have been elected as chairperson and replaces Bill Hollingworth.
“I’m excited at the outlook of our region as we increase our understanding of how we can best care for our rich ecosystems and farmlands to ensure they continue for future generations,” Ms Daniel said.
The South Coast NRM is one of seven not-for-profit organisations in WA that manages the State’s natural resources.
South Coast NRM chief executive officer Justin Bellanger said the biggest challenge for the local farmers would be seasonal variability and in the long-term, managing soil acidity.
“Managing things like soil acidity is going to be a real emerging issue and we are doing some work with the Goldfields-Esperance Development Commission to identify future lime resources to deal with soil acidity and also alternatives to lime,” Mr Bellanger said.
The organisation is also looking at how farmers can holistically manage water on their properties to cope with high rainfall events, which the region commonly experiences.
A current project is looking at this issue from an engineering perspective for prevention and effective management when high rainfall occurs, as well as implementing traffic control to reduce erosion and try to slow the velocity of water flow across paddocks, minimising lost top soil.
In the past financial year Mr Bellanger said the group delivered a number of soil health and demonstration sites and extension activities to help farmers understand the latest in soil health, water repellency, erosion, soil acidity, salinity and water logging.
“These are a big part of the things that impact farmers on the South Coast so we are really keen to help them understand – and understand the solution so that they can be more effective with their farms and use more best practice techniques and I think they ultimately end up farming for themselves and future generations,” Mr Bellanger said.
South Coast NRM, in collaboration with the Australian Wheat Growers Association, has also looked at improving the awareness and understanding of climate variability predictions.
This involved conducting farm audits to test the existing practices that they had and measure the emissions.
From there the group could identify ways for farmers to reduce their own carbon footprint, delivering some unexpected, but positive results.
The test showed that many broadacre farmers from the region were carbon positive – meaning they absorbed more carbon through their farming practices than they released.
Mr Bellanger said Ms Daniel’s background in agriculture, landcare and natural resource management would be extremely valuable for the group’s work with farmers as they worked on projects over the next year.
“She’s got that really pragmatic knowledge of what needs to be done and what is of value to farmers,” Mr Bellanger said.
Ms Daniel will be supported by award-winning local farmer, Stephen Frost, who specialises in combining productive farming with biodiversity and conservation, new board member and local farmer Andrew Bathgate, who has a focus on producing food environmentally-friendly practices and ongoing directors Jo Gilbert, Helen Tasker and Alex Gavranich.
