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Research

Dairy Specific

Dairy Australia has been active in sponsoring research to assess the potential impacts of climate change on the dairy industry. Recent examples include:

- In 2007, Dairy Australia commissioned CSIRO to assess the likely climate changes and impacts across the dairying regions. The report, “Climate change in Australian dairy regions” provides the most up to date summary, and forms the basis for our region specific fact sheets  

- Confidence to Grow is a recently program established by Dairy Australia to rapidly build up industry knowledge about climate change, and bring a dairy industry focus to the debate by answering questions like:

  • How well positioned is the dairy industry to manage climate change?
  • Are current dairy systems resilient enough for what we might see in the future?
  • How can dairy be on the front foot, capture emerging opportunities and avoid pitfalls?
  • How will national targets to reduce greenhouse gas production affect the dairy industry?
  • How can all sectors of the dairy industry be assisted to make sense of the short term challenges associated with reducing carbon pollution and the longer-term challenges associated with a changing and more variable climate

Module 5 (Biophysical farm impacts) specifically explored the impacts of a range of the IPCC climate projections on pasture production across all Australian dairy regions for 2030 and 2070. For more information, please refer to the Final Report from Confidence to Grow.

 

MAADI (Mitigation and Adaptation in the Australian Dairy Industry)

The objective of the MAADI program is the on-farm demonstration of climate change mitigation and adaptation options, strategies, technologies and techniques across the supply chain of the Australian dairy industry and the validation of the next generation of technologies. The expected outcomes include:

  1. A national network of on-farm demonstration sites showing adaptation and mitigation strategies in action - These demonstration sites are selected and ‘managed’ by a Regional Reference Group in each of the 8 dairy regions.
  2. Information resources to assist understanding and implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies – to be disseminated widely through the national, State and local partners, including milk processors and landcare networks.
  3. Greenhouse gas emissions benchmarks and reporting processes for the dairy industry – using the dairy industry’s on-farm DGAS calculator (link to calculator)
  4. Validation of emerging adaptation and mitigation strategies and interactions with farming systems – testing the ‘next generation’ of technologies and strategies that are not proven sufficiently to be recommended to dairy farmers.

The activities in each of the 8 dairy regions have been rolled out under the banner “Future Ready Dairy Systems”. There is more information, and many of the information products within this Climate Toolkit (link to the regional section)

General:

Research into the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture is being coordinated through the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). NCARFF is a partnership between the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Griffith University, with a consortium of funding partners drawn from across the country. NCARFF is developing a Climate Change Adaptation Research Plan for Primary Industries that will provide the framework for future research activities across Australia.

The Australian Greenhouse Office (part of the Department of Climate Change and Energy) produced a booklet in 2005 titled “Climate change in rural and regional Australia” which is available electronically at Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency website

 

Climate Change Adaptation in the Southern Livestock Industries (CCSALI)

CCASLI is jointly funded by the Commonwealth Government (DAFF Climate Change Research Program), MLA and DA, working with CSIRO, Universities of Melbourne and Tasmania, and the State Agriculture agencies in WA, Vic, Tas and NSW, The project will deliver:

  • by 2011, a knowledge base is established to underpin ongoing engagement with producers, and facilitating further research, development and extension around the issues associated with livestock producers adapting to the challenges of climate change and understanding the options for adaptation via feedbase, animal and systems management.
  • with the result that by 2020, 20,000 livestock producers across southern Australia are equipped to adapt to climate change. A range of adaptation options and farming systems changes, (incorporating mitigation options reflecting likely constraints on emissions) will be explored.
  • In addition, the project will establish improved modelling capacity across a range of industry RD&E providers, which will in turn assist industry in evaluating adaptation options in more detail as we learn more about climate change in the medium-term.