The Future of Australia’s Dairy Industry
Following on from the highly rated ‘Skimming the Cream’ forum in Brisbane on the 9th of February, members of the Young Dairy Network and SubTropical Dairy groups reconvened to consider the impacts of Climate Change on the dairy sector in Australia using the high-impact ‘Accelerated Scenarios process’. The ‘2030 Dairy Scenarios’ brought together the members of the YDN and SubTropical groups using the core issues raised by the almost 100 farmers and industry representatives at the Skimming the Cream forum to consider what changes might emerge in the sector in coming years.
More importantly, the dairy industry representatives building the scenarios were tasked to not only consider what the future might look like given a whole range of competing demands, they also had to generate some key strategic initiatives open to the industry as it adapts to change.
Process facilitator, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber stated from the outset that ‘…the purpose of exploring the potential futures in more detail and with greater depth is so that we can identify what actions we can take to both mitigate our risks and capture opportunities we can see in the Dairy Industry. Generating these scenarios is tied explicitly to a series of pragmatic ‘robust’ actions that can be undertaken on farms across Australia’.
From over 120 concerns and issues raised at the ‘Skimming the Cream’ forum, members at the two day scenario workshop selected a dozen or so key issues, with two core issues identified: The degree of industry regulation emerging from Government attention to Climate Change; and the level of consumer engagement with traditional dairy products.
These two core ‘drivers of change’ enabled the groups to create four connected though differing views of a potential future dairying landscapes: ‘a world in which there is high government regulation with high consumer engagement with dairy products; a world in which there is minimal government regulation with low consumer engagement with dairy products; a world in which there is high government regulation with low consumer engagement with dairy products; and a world in which there was low government regulation with high engagement with dairy products.
These four ‘potential futures’ provided the opportunity for farmers and industry people to answer the question ‘If this was ‘your lot’ in life as a dairy farmer, what actions would be available to you in order for you to ‘succeed’ at some level?’ The four scenarios and various actions provided some great insights into both the emerging challenges within the industry as well as the options for action available to various parts of the sector.
The results of the scenarios are being rolled out across dairy farming communities from the mid coast of NSW to the upper reaches of QLD. For further information contact Viv McCollum, program coordinator.
For questions related to the Accelerated Scenarios process, contact Marcus Barber
For those of you that follow me on other platforms, you’ll have seen, heard or read some of my thoughts on the lab grown proteins from firms like #ImpossibleFoods or #BeyondMeat. I’m a fan of those lab grown protein concepts arriving at that position whilst undertaking a Master of Science in 2004 in which…
Read More >Trying to understand something you’ve never experienced before can be a real challenge. In this post the #Covid19 #pandemic is explained using cars and traveling Your body is your car – it’s your mode of transport in this life. We want to treat it well and insure it and ideally we want to be able…
Read More >There’s a significant disconnect with a number of articles on ‘Hybrid Workplaces’ and it’s really disappointing to see SO MANY large consultants pump out articles that ignore reality. So this is a short take to offer an additional perspective. 1) Hybrid workplaces have existed for centuries, they are not new, though the sudden interest is…
Read More >Hi everyone – though a focus on particular those of you in Victoria, Australia who have an idea related to sports, active living or recreation that they might like to convert into a business. Sportstech & Active Living Pre-Accelerator program is being run by the Australian Sport Technologies Network (ASTN) and the Global Sports…
Read More >Old normal, new normal, normal normal. As some businesses aim to rush back to ‘old normal’ they’re likely missing a key opportunity to define, perhaps for the first time, what a new normal should look like for themselves. This Workforce Planning framework should help As a CEO or senior manager, here’s questions I’d want…
Read More >As Covid19 variants continue to emerge, the cause of which can be fairly placed at a lack of social distancing and slow vaccine rates that allow ‘mixing’ of viral strains in social settings, India is on the brink of a healthcare collapse and the implications for Australian companies, especially in the tech sector, are huge.…
Read More >What does the future hold for Australia in the next 3 months, to 3 years? Travel, work, living… Recording to the one hour session inc a Q&A Here’s the Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/pBJqFvN_yZVrktNsN2xWRE7heUTpr226GtyjJpiChG8yZA2D3qEHpACjm8TpMfxd.67Jj1DNSPserOvpZ Passcode: 1DPi*.$Z
Read More >Sometimes the words come to you readily and this small piece has me thinking about what I’d like to say at a time when maybe I’ve lost the cognitive ability to do so Before I was Me Before I was Me I used to be fit, and even quite smart; We’d chat about love,…
Read More >I was doing it well before then and there’s clips of me online going back as far as 2010 or so, railing against the idea of human resources as a label and the insistence by HR managers or CEOs that only people who work ‘in the office’ are going to be productive. It Is A…
Read More >Like lab grown meats, Vertical Farming is going to be part of the future of food. For now it might be best to compare them to small scale battery storage on the electrical grid that can help balance out spikes of demand in the system and provide an output directly where needed. Eventually (like…
Read More >