South eastern Australians are more than familiar with our regions’ ever-changing climate; good old fashioned climate variability bringing drought one year and floods the next! Farmers and businesses do an amazing job of adapting their farming practices to fit our variable climate, making the most of 'good rainfall' years and managing risks to limit losses in poor years.
Climate has a particularly huge impact on Australia’s grains growers. With rainfall patterns becoming more erratic and temperatures more extreme, growers, advisors and supply chains need to be prepared for what mother nature throws at them, now more than ever.
This publication includes:
* Case studies of growers and how they use seasonal forecasts
* Our key climate drivers - A guide for farmers in using seasonal forecasts in South Eastern Australia
* Wetter vs drier weather patterns explained
* The latest insights and tips
As with many on-farm decisions, slowing down and thinking through the potential outcomes (or ‘imagining the future with rigour’) can support the decision-making process. However, before we can attempt to pull Seasonal Climate Forecasts into some sort of decision making process, we need to understand the implications of climate on the potential outcomes of the decisions. One way of providing a level of rigour to this process is to describe the decision problems in terms of a graph; an idea developed and demonstrated in this GRDC article by Dr. Peter Hayman (SARDI), Barry Mudge (low rainfall farmer from Port Germein, SA) and Mark Stanley (Regional Connections, Eyre Peninsula).
The 'Using Seasonal Forecasts' project is brought to you by GRDC and partners.
