“I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,” goes the first few lines of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem most. Australian kids might learn in primary school.
However, to farming communities, droughts are catastrophe. The land is parched, there is no feed for animal, livestock either starve or are sold off and the impact on communities can be overwhelming.
You would have thought that after so many years of European settlement we might have learned how to deal with drought but we haven’t. The drought over the past decade has put Australian agriculture on the backfoot, slightly appeased by the break in the long dry with plentiful summer rains this year.
In order to help understand the process and interconnection on the impact of drought between the agriculture sector and the broader regional community, a new Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub, to be based Dookie, is set to transform the way Victorian farmers and communities prepare for and respond to drought.
Funded by the Federal Government with $8M and a further $22M contributed by Hub members, the hub will be led by Melbourne University.
Federal Member for Nicholls, Damian Drum, said the Hub would oversee the co-design and delivery of innovative projects and practices aimed at boosting drought resilience and agricultural productivity.
“This Victorian Hub will be based at the University of Melbourne’s regional campus in Dookie, north- east of Shepparton, with five nodes in Birchip, Mulwala, Warragul, Inverleigh and Mildura,” Mr Drum said.
