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News from AgForward
AgForward Program.
The Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water
recently signed a Deed of Variation that extended the AgForward
program to 30 June 2009. The extension will be funded under the
program’s current funding.
AgEssentials.
AgForward’s workshops are nationally accredited through the
AgEssentials program. The AgEssentials program will enable
participants to gain a full, nationally accredited,
Certificate IV in Conservation and Land Management
qualification for successfully completing a number of workshops
and courses through AgForward and AgForce Training.
AgForests.
After conducting a very effective 3½ year pilot
project across parts of Queensland, which has produced a range
of targeted private native forest information and provided
training to 1500 producers and timber industry personnel,
AgForests is now expanding across the State.
AgForests Queensland, now part of the AgForward program was born
as a joint sustainable private forestry development venture
between AgForce Queensland and Timber Queensland (the peak
industry bodies representing the broad scale agricultural and
timber industries in Queensland).
This peak industry organisation’s lead ‘new’ project will work
with 12 Regional NRM Groups and other key organisations across
Queensland to “accelerate sustainable forest and woodland
production BMP uptake across Queensland”.
This one year project is funded via the Landcare Sustainable
Practices grant component of ‘Caring for Our Country’ from the
Australian Government’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Forestry.
It will directly deliver on ground works and improve the
sustainable private land management of 2,000 hectares, provide
assistance to 535 producers in BMP ‘forest practice’, establish
nine (9) 5 hectare regionalised BMP forest practice demo sites
and produce 12 regionalised hardcopy / digital video producer
case studies across Queensland.
For more information regarding AgForests check
out the website:
www.agforests.com.au.
Delbessie
(Leasehold) Agreement.
The appointment of a ministerial committee to
advise the Queensland Government on rural leasehold land
management and implementation of the Delbessie Agreement (State
Rural Leasehold Land Strategy) is a
welcome step forward to realising this agreement which came into
effect on January 1.
Now the expert committee has been formed, it can
move forward with advising the government on the guidelines that
will underpin the on-ground assessment of rural leasehold land
on which land management agreements and future lease renewals
will be based.
In announcing the committee, Minister for Natural
Resources Craig Wallace said the agreement was a key initiative
of the Blueprint for the Bush
and AgForce understands on-ground land condition assessments
will be conducted by specialist departmental officers funded
through the Blueprint at no cost to the leaseholder.
The 11-member committee is expected to meet at
the earliest opportunity and includes rural industry experts
AgForce deputy chief executive officer Andrew Freeman and
Kenneth (Mac) Drysdale a businessman and grazier from Augathella
as chair.
AgForce and
AgForward continue to work closely with NRW to keep up-to-date
on the progress of the details of the Delbessie Agreement and
the Land Management Agreements. At present AgForce is assisting
with identifying pilot properties to trial the Land Management
Agreements on a property basis.
AgForward Partnerships.
AgForward recently acquired a licence agreement
with Condamine Alliance to distribute their SPOT5 (2.5m)
imagery. AgForward now has licence agreements with four NRM
Groups, being SEQC, BMRG, FBA and CA.
AgForce and AgForward ‘Caring for
our Country’ (CFOC) Applications.
AgForce has secured about $764,000 for two projects under the
Federal Government's CFOC funding initiatives for environmental
and sustainable farming projects. These projects will involve
educating producers about their carbon footprint and how to
reduce it, and how to access and use spatial information to
improve farm management.
Reef Rescue.
AgForce will employ a Coordinator to support the Broadacre GBR
Wide Commodity Working Group. The working group will consist of
membership from industry, government, science, extension and NRM
specialists. It is planned that AgForward will undertake
awareness raising and extension about Reef Rescue and deliver
its current suite of workshops throughout the regions.
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