Sigrid Tijs and Annette McCaffery

Affiliation: Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd.

Contact email: tijss@mirrigation.com.au

Key words: Community engagement, Water Use Efficiency, Marketing, Communication

Using basic principles of business management, marketing, community engagement and extension and communication, an innovative extension program to change the focus of water use efficiency (WUE) in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) of New South Wales has been developed. The program promoted under the ”More Crop Per Drop” logo was developed to raise awareness and extend issues related to WUE to the local irrigation community. Its primary objective was to engage the community in changing the focus of improving WUE from using less water to becoming more profitable.

A traditional approach of using focus groups and surveys was used to identify barriers that impede the improvement of WUE. Through this process, client feedback indicated that irrigators would resist implementing new information collection systems on-farm and they also had an unsatisfactory understanding of the current regional institutional arrangements such as the water ordering process.

Integrating this market intelligence with sound business and extension principles resulted in the extension of WUE in the MIA, focussing on the review and modification of existing institutional arrangements irrigators were currently familiar with and the improvement of stakeholder communication.

The critical components of the program are: an education campaign to help irrigators and the Company best utilise the existing institutional arrangements; a strategic communication program to build on the brand awareness of the “More Crop Per Drop” banner and clarify the links between this program and other complementary regional initiatives; and improvements in internal company communication and staff training regarding regional WUE initiatives aimed at maximising the extension effort.

These initiatives will result in a more integrated and cost effective approach to improving the WUE of our region.

Key learning points:

• Use business principles to empower staff to become ambassadors for the project.
• Use marketing principles to empower key stakeholders to become ambassadors for the project.
• Use community engagement principles to achieve inclusive community ownership of the project.
• Use extension & communication principles to continue to develop and improve the project.