The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) has consulted with WA farmers and industry to co-design the Agriculture Climate Resilience Fund (ACRF) to ensure:
- we understand all of the challenges farmers and industry face, and
- investments are targeted to achieve maximum benefits.
The fund has supported Research, Development and Extension (RD&E) activities to support WA farmers to become climate resilient.
In 2021/2022 the Carbon Neutral Grains Pilot – a research partnership with CBH Group and Wide Open Agriculture was undertaken with the funds.
Current projects:
- Southern Rangelands Revitalisation - Drought Resilience program - supports pastoralists to investigate and design long-term solutions for on-station improvements. The project is jointly funded through the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund and the ACRF.
- Net emissions performance at Tolga Farm - a longitudinal research project on a farm in Kulin, where DPIRD investigated from an economic, pastural, livestock and soils perspective the outcomes of traditional and alternative farming systems.
- Water Smart Dams - investigating solutions including renovating existing dams, building new dams, and implementing evaporation suppression and runoff technologies in a Grower Group Alliance project through the South-West WA Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub in collaboration with DPIRD and UWA.
- Small Water Cycle research project - reviewing the impacts of different climatic drivers,including land clearing, natural climate variability, and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, on the climate of southwest WA in a research project at Murdoch University funded by ACRF
- DPIRD Climate Resilience workshops, training, activities and events are organised and funded through the auspices of the ACRF. This includes intensive carbon neutral agriculture training for DPIRD staff and stakeholders.
- Climate and Carbon Science Unit: established to build research and development capacity and enable further funding to be generated and leveraged to contribute and actively lead WA Climate Policy outcomes by establishing specialised carbon science capability
- The Zero Net Emissions Agricultural Cooperative Research Centre (ZNE-Ag CRC) initiative is a consortium of 73 partners across industry, education and government. This includes 16 major industry groups, all six state governments and the Northern Territory, 10 universities, 3 Indigenous organisations and many SMEs and grower groups. DPIRD has become a Tier One partner in the consortium, ensuring Western Australia will be actively engaged in the co-design of national research and develop our state's research capacity.