Light bulb moment for all in Grazing BMP

Posted on July 9th, 2014

For an industry renowned for its isolation and solitude, the new Grazing Best Management Practice (BMP) Program is working to reverse this experience bringing together graziers for information sessions, networking and discussions aimed at growing their businesses and decreasing their knowledge gaps.
Unlike other industries where networking is the norm, Grazing BMP offers one of the only organised opportunities for sharing of business practices, ideas and learning about best-practice practices in the industry.
According to Grazing BMP Project Manager Peter Long after eighteen months offering the Program in the Fitzroy and Burdekin Basins it is all about the “light bulb moment” for participants.
“From our feedback from graziers who have completed the program, we believe that every one of them is walking away from this Program with a sudden realisation about something they can do to improve their business,” Mr Long said.
“It could be wet season spelling, photo monitoring of pastures or producing their first cash flow budget. Whether this insight comes from working through the standards or from the discussion with their peers during and after, Grazing BMP is certainly assisting graziers to grow their knowledge and practices,” he said.
For husband and wife team Andrew Iwers and Rosalie Lucke of “Croyden Hills” a 3,054 hectare grazing enterprise between Springsure and Rolleston in Central Queensland, their light bulb moment in Grazing BMP was changing their practices of buying bulls from simply looking at them to doing the research via EBV’s (BreedPlan’s Estimated Breeding Values).
“What really hit home with us was the presenter on buying better bulls, who talked about saving a lot of time and effort by doing the research on EBV’s to buy better, and not scrimping on genetics,” Mr Iwers said.
“I came home from the workshop and tried to follow that path to save time and when you look at the facts you can’t be sceptical with what they put in front of you on things like 200 day growth, 400 day weight and 600 day weight gains,” he said.
“I am not a lifetime grazier, so I am quite happy to take on information however I sometimes think graziers who have had information passed down from generation to generation are a bit reluctant to make changes in their business.”
“While I’m not saying that information is wrong the Program offers the hard facts and research and quantifies the information and this is awfully hard to discredit.
“Like the hard facts from the CSIRO on groundcover, water run-off and the amount of rainfall you get. When we took over the property it was pretty bare but we’ve put in dams and have good ground cover now, and while it may take a lot of rain to fill the dams, we’re still getting the full benefit in our pastures because of the ground cover.”
For upcoming Grazing BMP modules visit www.fba.org.au/calendar or www.bmpgrazing.com.au