Hub ready to build resilience

As you may recall, the Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub was successfully launched at University of Melbourne’s Dookie Campus a couple of months ago, by Federal Member for Nicholls Damian Drum.

Our hub is one of eight established nationally under the Federal Government’s Future Drought Fund, and will focus on enhancing drought resilience on farms, in the environment and in our regional communities.

The real strength of the Victoria Drought Hub is the unique team that we have brought together to work on drought resilience for all major industries — intensive and extensive, rain-fed and irrigated — right across Victoria.

The hub team comprises five farming/industry groups as leaders of the regional nodes — Riverine Plains (north-east region), Birchip Cropping Group (north-west), Mallee Regional Innovation Centre (north-west irrigated horticulture), Southern Farming Systems (south-west) and Food and Fibre Gippsland (Gippsland).

In addition, the hub has four universities — Deakin, Federation, La Trobe and Melbourne — together with Agriculture Victoria, which collectively will provide statewide services including knowledge brokering, digital technologies, capacity building and research capability to all of the regions across Victoria.

A major event on drought resilience — the Science to Practice

Innovation Forum — is being conducted by the Federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment from June 29 to July 1, and an important feature is that this event will be run online.

This means anyone who wishes to participate can register and then access the excellent program sessions from their own premises. The online mode will also allow participation in Q & A sessions for all registrants.

The details for registration and participation can be found in this link: https://hopin.com/events/ future-drought-fund-s-science-topractice-innovation-forumbuilding-the-foundations-ofdrought-resilience

As co-director of the Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub, I will be making a presentation on our hub during the session to be held on July 1 and it would be great to have you online for this.

In the coming months, the Victoria Drought Hub is planning a comprehensive regional consultation

process with a wide range of stakeholders including farmers, landholders, community groups, catchment management authorities, Landcare, local government, health professionals and others, to help identify the key priorities for our work to better prepare for the next drought.

The best time to be working on drought is when you are not in drought and the Victoria Drought Hub will be working very hard to make some real impacts in enhancing drought resilience right across the state.

We will also be working with the drought hubs in other states

and particularly the hub in southern NSW being led by Charles Sturt University, and the hub in South Australia, to ensure effective hub-to-hub sharing and learning.