Workshops and research helping Tasmanian farmers prepare for a dry future

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tasmanian farmers are experiencing the fourth driest year on record and there's wide acceptance the climate will be increasingly hotter, drier and more volatile.   The federal and state governments are funding workshops and research to help producers adapt to the changes.

Transcript

00:00The drought in southern Australia hasn't let Tasmania off the hook. It's in the second year

00:17of its worst drought on record. Sandra Knowles, head of the Tasmanian Farm Innovation Hub,

00:23says the stats and maps are disturbing. We watch the bomb every week and that is not

00:30lifting out of that lowest on record or you know the red, the yellow and I've never seen that before.

00:38This is one of eight drought hubs in Australia created after the Future Drought Fund was established

00:44in 2020. Their job is to drive transformational change to drought-proof farming regions.

00:53How are you doing? Nice to see you.

00:56Part of her team is Sophie Folder, the Drought Resilience Coordinator. Sophie says there's a

01:01widespread alarm that the drought has spread to the usually wet north-west.

01:06It's driest on record rainfall. Absolutely unprecedented how our weather systems are

01:13changing and those areas that would normally actually be quite wet. They'd normally be

01:17talking about how do we get water off our paddocks as opposed to how do we deal with

01:22lack of rainfall and lack of water. They're actually asking the question, is this our new normal?

01:27We've had two really failed autumns. How do we set ourselves up for the future

01:32and look at things like water security for them?

01:36We followed Sophie to Lucy and Philip Hedlum's farm at Piper's Brook in the north-east.

01:42In 30 years they've never had two successive failed autumns.

01:47They're feeling vulnerable despite an irrigation dam and a pivot irrigator.

01:52We're probably worse off this year than we were last year. Yes, it's looking green.

01:56A lot of our waterholes are probably only half full. Our irrigation dam hasn't had any real runoff yet.

02:04It might have had a little bit, but it's still half full.

02:08We haven't had huge rains in one bit, but it's just taken probably a couple of months.

02:15The Hedlums have attended several hub events. Lucy says they've been valuable, especially on

02:21containment feeding, which has helped them preserve pasture.

02:25We basically have our ewes in two mobs, which are just in sacrifice paddocks, feeding them,

02:31and they're on a ration of barley and ryegrass straw. In the meantime, resting the rest of the property

02:37to allow to get a feed bank up for lambing.

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