Dairying For Tomorrow

About

Dairying for Tomorrow is the national dairy industry initiative to better manage our resources and ensure that Australian dairy farmers are successfully dairying tomorrow. The program is led at a national level by Dairy Australia and Australian Dairy Farmers.

A range of industry projects fit under the Dairying for Tomorrow vision and program. All projects aim to:

Achieve efficient use of natural resources
Protect the environment
Help achieve recognition for the dairy industry's environmental care

The program, with support from the Australian Governments Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, is coordinated in Tasmania through a Regional Coordinator. DairyTas Executive Officer Mark Smith is undertaking this role.

The Tasmanian dairy industry strategic plan provides a broad framework and direction for the industry enabling it to focus on priority issues and actions for industry in natural resource management (NRM).

An NRM Regional Action Plan has been developed for Tasmania and this provides a link with the strategic priorities for the regional NRM strategies and management actions in Tasmania.

NRM Projects

The NRM components of the plan have focused on water management, irrigation efficiency, nutrient use around fertilisers and effluent, benchmarking current land and water management practices, dairy effluent and communication of environmental achievements. A number of dairy NRM projects have been developed and implemented during this time. These include:

Best practice dairy effluent management
Water quality in the Montagu River catchment
Groundwater monitoring in the Montagu
Water use efficiency and irrigation practice
Phosphorous for dairy project
Development of the Targets for Change process
Water Use and Nutrient Management project
Development and implementation of "DairySAT - The Guide" - DairySAT is a regional environmental self assessment tool and can be downloaded here
Nutrient management in the Montagu River catchment

Details on these projects are available from DairyTas.

Project Funding

Funding and support for these projects has come from a variety of sources including Dairy Australia, the University of Tasmania (TIAR), Natural Heritage Trust, National Landcare Program, the agribusiness services industry and the Department of Primary Industries as well as DairyTas. Having the strategic plan as a basis for the industries actions and priority efforts in the environmental area has helped to secure this funding and support the projects.