Program Overview

Primary production, like many industries, is a knowledge-based industry increasingly reliant on the knowledge, innovation, skills and attitudes of its workforce. For many primary producers, the capacity to gain and apply relevant knowledge is complicated by factors including difficulties in accessing formal courses in post secondary and tertiary institutions and the diversity of knowledge levels between producers. In recent years short term training courses with a focus on business management have tried to fill this gap.

Australia’s Farming Future is the Australian Government’s flagship four-year initiative (until June 2012) to improve productivity and help farmers manage climate change. The initiative comprises a number of elements:

The Climate Change Research Program provides funding for research projects and on-farm demonstration activities

FarmReady helps industry and primary producers develop skills and strategies to help them deal with the impacts of climate change.

Climate Change Adjustment Program assists farmers in financial difficulty to manage the impacts of climate change.

Transitional income support is linked to the climate change adaptation program and provides short-term income support, advice and training opportunities to farmers in serious financial difficulty, while they adapt their farm to changing circumstances, including climate change

Community Networks and Capacity Building focus on increasing the leadership and representative capacity of specific target groups including women, youth, Indigenous Australians and people from culturally linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Within the Australia’s Farming Future framework, the FarmReady program provides $34.4 million over four years to improve adoption of risk management and business management skills, increase adoption of new technologies and best practice management to enable primary producers and industries to adapt and respond to the impacts of climate change.

The program consists of two separate elements:

FarmReady Reimbursement Grants to individual primary producers and Indigenous land managers to attend registered climate change training activities, and

FarmReady Industry Grants to industry organisations, farming groups and natural resource management groups to undertake projects that will enable their members to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Purpose of Program

The FarmReady Reimbursement Grants component focuses on:

improving the capacity of eligible participants to adapt to the impacts of climate change through targeted risk management and business management training activities, and

enabling participants to reappraise their business prospects and options in light of changing climate conditions and make appropriate on-farm operational decisions, including the potential to capture commercial opportunities.

Objective

FarmReady aims to improve the capacity of primary producers to increase their self reliance and preparedness to adapt to climate change through participation in targeted training activities.