Tasmanian Government Media Release - 6 June 2008
The Minister for Primary Industries and Water, David Llewellyn; the president of Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, Roger Swain; and Andrew Colvin from Natural Resource Management North, jointly announced today the development of a Property Management Systems Framework for Tasmania.
In a sign of collaboration and cooperation, the Tasmanian Government, the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association and the three regional Natural Resource Management bodies joined forces to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to develop and implement the new framework.
The Tasmanian agricultural sector is facing a range of challenges and significant stresses, with the effects of prolonged drought, and increasing demands from the market for product traceability and assurance systems relating to food safety, environment, animal welfare and worker safety. In a global market, farmers are under increasing pressure to become better business managers and more efficient producers.
This is happening at a time when the community expects greater and greater accountability, which has led to increasing rigour and complexity in legaslative requirements on farmers.
Property Management Systems provide a means of assisting primary producers to meet these challenges through an integrated and whole-of-farm business mangement approach. The Property Management System should also assist primary producers to demonstrate compliance with some regulatory processes, including aspects of the new protection of agricultural land policy, some local government planning schemes, water development planning and vegetation management.
The Property Management systems Framework will support the integration of natural resorce management from the property through to both regional and State levels. This will provide consistent messages and more opportunity for resources to go where they are needed.
The Minister, Mr Swain and Mr Colvin agree that a more systematic approach is needed, and that the approach needs to be supported by all the key players, in order to avoid duplication of effort or misdirected funding.
The parties came together today at Benham estate in Tasmania's Fingal Valley to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to achieve these objectives. By signing this MoU, all the parties are committing to work together to ensure that their policies and programs to property management systems are implemented in a coordinated way. It is being done in a way that supports the integrity of the Tasmanian agricultural industry, and enhances its contribution to Tasmania's economic, social and environmental well-being.
Mr Llewellyn indicated that the combined efforts and resources of all parties are expected to:
- Develop a shared understanding of PMS's;
- Extend Tasmanain primary industry's business management capacity;
- Improve Tasmanian primary industry's competitive position;
- Assist in simplifying, rationalising and stremlining Government regulation and planning processes for farmers;
- Strengthen the tasmanian primary industry's ability to contribute to the achievement of natural resource management outcomes; and
- Improve efficiency and effectiveness of investments in NRM by Governments, business and the community.
All parties acknowledged the funding provided from the Australian Government under the Natural Heritage Trust and delivered via the NRM regions. The funding, which has brought the project to this point, will enable work to continue on the framework for a further 12 months.
The Government's own SMART Farming program is also contributing to the framework development and will particularly assist delivery of the framework, through mechanisms such as the new website for farmers, called 'FarmPoint', and a new web-based property mapping tool called 'MyFarm'.
