The Grower Group Alliance’s (GGA) 2016 Annual Forum was a great success with over 110 attendees from grower groups and the agricultural industry.

Speakers from around Australia discussed their stories of collaboration, including Peter Cooke, Catherine Marriott and Nigel Herring who gave their perspectives on how collaboration has helped them cope with a changing environment.

A quote from Catherine’s talk sums this up: “If I collaborate with other heads, as well as other group and organisations, suddenly not only do I have access to a whole heap more information, grants available, events coming up, and research that has been done… I can also share resources with organisations that may have more than mine does.”

Other key points:

• Collaboration is incredibly valuable in improving the effectiveness of agricultural research and is fundamental to ensuring the benefits of on-farm trials are realised.
• Working together and embracing new communication tools is important in the current world of extension and influencing change.
• Funding opportunities often come from a range of different places, but you need to be proactive in looking for them and recognise the value you bring.
• Governance is important to helping your organisation manage change.
• The impact of our work is important and collaboration is vital to maximising the impact our activity is having in achieving change.

The event was a valuable forum for sharing knowledge and lessons on how collaborating across the agricultural sector can improve the value and success of our farming systems.

Wheatbelt NRM was very excited to be part of it by sharing our learnings on the use of social media and digital communication tools to help enable such collaboration.