Local landholders — want a clearer picture of what environmental assets you’ve already got on your place? Join this 90-minute online working session to get a free Farm Snapshot.
Following a successful introductory event in Goulburn, the Open Woodland Restoration Project is now coming up to their next information session, designed to give a baseline understanding of the farm-level resources within the region.
A town-hall “call to action”, the interactive “give and get” style meeting will introduce attendees to Box Gum Grassy Woodlands (BGGW) and will give farmers the tools to understand what habitats lie on their properties.
The first co-design session will occur from 12.30pm to 2.00pm on Thursday, 26 March.
For more information, or to secure tickets, please visit https://events.humanitix.com/what-do-we-have-with-open-woodland-restoration
Participants will learn what areas are suitable to implement the restoration project and will explore their Biodiversity Condition Score (and how it compares locally), potential carbon sequestration and where the highest-yielding areas are.
The 90 minute online codesign session has been designed by farmers (partnered with Regen Farmers Mutual), as an active community conversation that benefits the participants themselves.
Farmer-led, the session invites farmers to run a Farm Snapshot for their own land.
Initiatives such as these run on active communication, and Regen Farmers Mutual CEO, Andrew Ward (who facilitated the successful February introductory event in Goulburn), says they are asking for feedback, so that they can better implement the program for a larger audience.
“The next few weeks is all about getting farmers to do a ‘Farm Level Feasibility’,” he says.
Farmers who participate in the co-design session will be given the opportunity to do this in a peer session, for those unable to make the online session, farmers can independently completely the report on the Open Woodland – Map Your Farm website.
Support, Andrew says, will be available during the process with a local consultant available to provide an online meeting or phone support.
Interested farmers do not have to bring anything with them to the session, and will be asked questions relating to their environmental assets, including questions such as:
• What existing Box Gum Grassy Woodland Habitat do you have?
• What areas are suitable for Open Woodland Restoration?
• What is your Biodiversity Condition Score?
• How does your Biodiversity Condition Score compare with local averages?
• What level of carbon sequestration could you achieve?
• Where on your farm are the highest yielding areas?
• How does it all help the environment?
A recording of the Goulburn session that introduces farmers to the concept of Open Woodland Restoration is available to view via the Humanitix link.
The ‘What do we have’ session is part of three co-design sessions.
The second session will occur on April 30th as a more in-depth continuation of the initial event.
“This online session enables participants to create financial modelling at farm and landscape level,” says Andrew.
Participants, he says, will learn about the ‘four pools of capital’, the feasibility characteristics of successful Open Woodland project, will establish if demand warrants a HECS-style funding mechanism to help farmers establish the project and will discovery biodiversity opportunities, BCT incentives and emerging markets.
The third and final session on May 28 will explore the value of connectivity and proximity to good production outcomes by looking at the power of collectivising at landscape-scale, grazing pastures and potential practices that complement the project, the land calculation implications of the project and how to create suitable support mechanisms to scale it further.
In the lead up to these co-design sessions, Andrew says it is important that farmers explore the Farm Level Feasibilities, as more data points will allow for more succinct and widespread information/planning.
Map Your Farm
As part of the Open Woodland Restoration project, a free report can be provided of the carbon sequestration potential and current biodiversity condition of your farm. All you need to do is identify the boundaries of your farm in the map below and we can send you the report overnight. The accompanying questions are part of the project, as we aim to understand the motivations and barriers for farmers to adopt this new farming practice.
Want to Map your Farm? Head to https://www.openwoodlandrestoration.com/map-your-farm
What do we have information session
The first co-design session will occur from 12.30pm to 2.00pm on Thursday, 26 March. For more information, or to secure tickets, please visit https://events.humanitix.com/what-do-we-have-with-open-woodland-restoration
– Elizabeth Kovacs
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