Abstract

The horticultural industry in Queensland is under intense pressure to demonstrate good environmental practices. In coastal north Queensland, this is largely due to the location of most production in the coastal catchments adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. In coastal south Queensland, the pressure is largely due to the location of major horticultural production in close proximity to large peri-urban areas in the fastest growing regional area of Australia.

It is widely accepted that voluntary practice change is the most cost-effective means of reducing the environmental impacts of farming. However, farmers have valid reasons for their reluctance to voluntarily make significant changes. These include lack of immediate or readily observable benefits, increased complexity and risk to farming operations, and associated financial and opportunity costs.

Two similar but different approaches have recently demonstrated success as extension tools in achieving significant attitude change and a degree of early voluntary practice change in the Queensland horticultural industry. The first involves the use of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) principles with banana and vegetable farmers in the coastal wet and dry tropics regions of north Queensland. The second involves the use of a Landcare group approach, on an industry rather than traditional community basis, with subtropical fruit and pineapple farmers in coastal southeast Queensland. In both cases, the focus has been on participatory learning and capacity building to facilitate voluntary adoption of good environmental practices.

Key learning points:

• Despite inherent differences in the approaches and the relative independence of the project teams, both approaches have produced worthy outcomes. This shows that success is not necessarily related to the tools or approaches, but the extension principles that underpin them.
• An analysis of the key extension principles behind the success demonstrates the importance of engaging with farmers on their terms and addressing their identified key concerns about environmental issues.
• Despite there being nothing really new in the principles, both projects have still been significant learning processes for the experienced extension personnel involved, with the significance perhaps being in the mix of principles involved and the ethos of ‘learning with others in equal partnerships’.

Media summary

Voluntary practice change and improvements in environmental outcomes by farmers can be achieved if the basic principles of adult education, action learning and participation are followed.

Keywords

Natural resource management, extension principles, community groups

Setting the scene

The agricultural industries of coastal Queensland are under increasing pressure to demonstrate good environmental practices to the community and regulators. Nowhere is this more evident than in the horticultural industry, where intensive farming practices, often-sloping land and the highest rainfall in Australia combine to present a significant potential environmental risk. In coastal north Queensland, this pressure is increased by concerns about the impact of land-based pollutants, particularly sediments, nutrients and pesticides, on the Great Barrier Reef and adjacent World Heritage areas. In coastal south Queensland, the pressure is increased by the close proximity of major horticultural production to large peri-urban areas in the fastest growing regional area of Australia.

In both cases, the environmental risk posed by the horticultural industry is offset by its major contribution to the economic, social and amenity values of regional communities. Significant amongst these are its generation of major regional income, its major role as a regional employer and its provision of open space and landscape amenity services for both the broader community and other major industries such as tourism. The balancing of these interests against the environmental concerns leads to continuing tension between rural industries, regulators and the community. It is clear that reduction in the environmental impact of the horticultural industry is fundamental to reducing this tension and thereby ensuring the long-term survival of the industry.

In recent years, there has been heightened debate and some action at both the extension and broader policy levels about reducing the impact of horticultural farming on the environment. At the extension level, commendable initiatives have included Queensland Fruit & Vegetable Growers (QFVG) Farmcare Code of Practice and the joint QFVG-Queensland Government Rural Water Use Efficiency program. These have increased farmer awareness of the issues and problems and achieved some practice change in specific areas. These programs have been supplemented by a range of other farmer and government led initiatives. However, impact on practice change at the broader whole farm, industry and landscape levels remains limited.

At the policy level, the main focus has been on the emerging National Action Plan for Water Quality and Salinity (NAPWQS) and the Natural Heritage Trust Mark II (NHT2) programs, which are re-defining the processes for investment of public funds in natural resource management with a stronger community focus. In north Queensland, the debate has also been dominated by the draft Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (RWQPP) (Anon 2003). This is the culmination of several scientific studies documenting deterioration of inshore reef areas, linking this deterioration to land-based pollutants and identifying potential actions and solutions to prevent further deterioration. The focus to address this is to improve decision making about land use planning, encourage adoption of sustainable production systems and rehabilitate and conserve wetlands and riparian areas. The RWQPP lists a number of broad and wide-ranging strategies for achieving these goals, including self-managed approaches, education and extension, economic incentives, regulation and government/community planning.

In south Queensland, the debate also involves the major SEQ2021 initiative, a planning process involving government at all three levels in managing regional growth for the benefit of the broader community. Although processes for implementation of strategies at the farm level are not specified, the initiative implicitly places emphasis on self -managed approaches to achieve its aims.

As a result of these policy initiatives, there is presently a flurry of activity by governments, catchment groups, and the new regional Natural Resource Management bodies to develop NRM plans for all major catchments. This planning is critical to ensure the limited resources are applied to the most pressing environmental issues in the regions. Once these plans have been completed, implementation must follow to ensure there is some impact in improving environmental management in these catchments.

Obviously, the critical players in both the planning and implementation processes are the farmers. This is also identified by Pannell (2001) in his statement concerning salinity policy that “...real decisions about farm management are made by individual farmers, not by catchment groups or regional NRM bodies”. If farmers are not going to improve their NRM practices, then all the catchment plans for farm land (and resources that went into developing them) will have come to nought. This means that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the issues surrounding voluntary practice change. Priority needs to be given to strategies that combine voluntary approaches with true partnerships between stakeholders, that promote greater understanding and appreciation of the drivers for change from the farmer’s perspective and that respond to the farmer’s need for balancing economic imperatives and social aspects with environmental sustainability.

Allen (2000) observed that when stakeholders are positively motivated and open to change, they then respond more positively to a mix of policy instruments. He also suggests that voluntary practice change strategies are best combined with policy and market-based incentives to encourage land managers to achieve improved environmental management. Approaches also need to pay greater attention to the contextually valid reasons for farmer reluctance to voluntarily make significant changes to improve their environmental performance. These include a lack of immediate or readily observable benefits, increased complexity and risk to farming operations, and associated financial and opportunity costs. The issue of increasing risk is often seen only in a financial context but Allen and Kilvington (1999) and Vanclay and Lawrence (1995, identify the potential personal risk, the diminution of self-esteem or sense of self-identity, by risking failure. This personal risk can be strong enough to reduce motivation for change in farmers.

It is within this broader context that we have been working with farmers to assess, prioritise, discuss, document and think through environmental issues and current on farm practices to enable voluntary change to occur. Two similar but different approaches were used at three regional sites in coastal Queensland. In north Queensland, EMS principles guided the activities with a group of banana farmers at South Johnstone in the wet tropics, and with a group of vegetable farmers at Bowen in the dry tropics. In south Queensland, a Landcare approach guided the activities of a group of sub-tropical fruit farmers and a group of pineapple farmers located in the Caboolture to Nambour region of southeast Queensland. In both approaches, the main focus has been on extension processes with an emphasis on participatory learning and capacity building.

Our paper explores the two different approaches in the context of current thinking in NRM, discusses processes and outcomes, and reflects on the differences and commonalities between the two different models.

Environmental Management Systems (EMS)

Australia’s National Framework for Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in Agriculture defines EMS as “a systematic approach that can be used by any enterprise or organisation to continuously improve its business management to achieve efficiencies and better environmental outcomes” (Anon 2002). In the framework’s documentation, EMS is described as a voluntary, flexible ‘systems approach’ that is based on a ‘plan, do, check, review’ cycle.

The most recognised auditable international EMS standard is ISO 14001. This standard sets guidelines for the process of managing an environmental program. It “does not establish absolute requirements for environmental performance” (AS/NZS ISO 14001, 1996). A tiered approach to EMS is increasingly seen as a mechanism to provide varying levels of entry for different businesses. ISO 14001 is the top tier and options of decreasing complexity tier down to a simple self-assessment environmental best practice list. A variety of these EMS tools are being developed for different industries and groups.

EMS as an extension tool

In Australia horticultural farmers have just been through a period when their customers imposed quality assurance (QA) systems on them to address quality and food safety requirements. These systems were usually implemented at the farmer’s own expense of cash, time and increased management complexity, with little or no financial reward. QA systems and EMSs are similar, so many of these farmers are suspicious of EMS. Also many horticultural farmers to date have purchased a QA product rather than participating in the process of system development, and they were therefore only minimally exposed to a learning experience. Our experiences with fruit and vegetable farmers in north Queensland has shown that they were uncertain about the true nature of an EMS, and remain concerned that policy-makers may use EMS as a prescriptive, regulatory tool.

These experiences with QA mean that some effort may be needed to deal with negative perceptions of EMS when engaging with horticultural farmers. In theory EMS is a useful tool to manage and monitor NRM issues, and improve practices at a farm or sub-catchment scale, however in our experience using EMS to achieve this relies on the application of sound adult education and extension principles to conduct the EMS development. By this we mean an approach that is:

• Participant-centred;
• Experience-based;
• Problem-oriented; and
• Collaborative

(adapted from Knowles 1990; Brookfield 1986).

Most EMSs have as a fundamental principle the ‘plan, do, check, review’ continuous improvement cycle. This cycle parallels the experiential or action learning cycle (McGill and Beaty 1992; Kolb 1984) and, viewed in this context, EMSs can provide a good platform for people-centred, participatory action learning with farmers. Participatory processes are widely regarded as providing the best approach to improving sustainability in agriculture (Van de Fliert 2003; Marsh 1998; Allen et al. 1995).

If participatory action learning is applied in EMS development, then an EMS can potentially:

• Be a voluntary process led by landholders and/or a community;
• Provide a systematic and structured approach to scoping the environmental issues and the currently available knowledge and information;
• Provide a rigorous continuous improvement or action learning process that aims for cumulative and incremental improvement in the farming systems; and
• Provide a very effective learning and capacity building tool that includes aspects of the group facilitation/empowerment and technology development models of extension as described by Coutts (2003).

Our EMS approach

Our approach was borne out of a desire to help farmers improve their environmental practices and to trial EMS as a management tool to achieve this. We designed a process that valued farmer’s motives, knowledge and experience, was highly participative and facilitated them to identify environmental issues and ways to reduce environmental impacts from their operations within an economic context.

Initially regional extension staff talked with farmers, one to one, and promoted a meeting about environmental issues to garner interest in environmental management. This stage was critical to convince farmers to attend a meeting in the first instance. The initial meeting was held with the growers that expressed interest to discuss environmental initiatives in horticulture in other regions, to provide information about local environmental issues, drivers and initiatives, then to negotiate commitment for an ongoing process to discuss and develop environmental plans and practices.

We conducted a series of workshops with two groups of farmers; a group of seven banana businesses near Innisfail in the Wet Tropics, and a group of nine vegetable and fruit businesses at Bowen in the Dry Tropics. Our emphasis was to use EMS principles and facilitate a high level of interaction and participation such that farmers provided most of the content.

Our workshop process included the following components:

• An environmental risk assessment based on identifying key farm processes, identifying existing and potential environmental impacts and their causes for these farm processes, then prioritising environmental impacts using significance analysis and regional community NRM issues.
• Developing and documenting group environmental best practice guidelines to address priority potential environmental impacts.
• Identifying performance indicators and possible monitoring activities.
• Developing and documenting individual farm action plans and monitoring plans.

Each participant then set about implementing their planned practices and monitoring activities, and developing their EMS farm documentation. The banana farmer group meets regularly to review implementation progress and discuss problems and issues. Due to harvest pressures, the members of the vegetable farmer group have been less active, but have made a commitment to come together at the start of next season to review progress. Through each stage of our process, but particularly in the implementation phase, we have attempted to provide support in the form of facilitation, training, technical knowledge input, on-farm visits, monitoring equipment and documentation development.

Evaluation of the project to date has identified the following outcomes:

• Participants now have increased confidence in their ability to meet external pressures to improve their environmental performance.
• Participants have broadened awareness of environmental issues and the impacts of their businesses on the environment.
• The groups are showing greater willingness to interact with the community and regulators about environmental issues.
• Participants have made some changes in farm practices to address key environmental issues, including adoption of new practices to better manage nutrients (Figure 1), irrigation and soil health.
• Testing of simple on-farm monitoring tools.

Figure 1. A fertiliser best management practices field day with a difference. The activity was initiated by a farmer from the north Queensland Better Banana Businesses sustainability group. The EMS facilitator provided support but the farmer is up the front doing the talking – sharing his learnings.

Tangible outputs developed by the participants during the planning phase of the project were:

• Documented environmental risk assessments.
• Documented environmental priorities.
• Documented best environmental practice guidelines.
• Documented individual action plans (practices and monitoring).
• Individual business document and recording systems.

Landcare

Landcare has been defined in various ways but is best summarised as a partnership between local communities (predominantly farmers), conservationists, government and scientists working together to change and improve land management practices (Lloyd 1998; Campbell 1994). Since its inception in the late 1980’s, over 4,500 Landcare groups have formed within Australia, involving over one-third of farmers, with over 7,000 projects initiated. The broad concept is that by people from different sectors working together at the farm, project or group level, ideas and initiatives are shared and disseminated, and learning facilitated to achieve on-ground change. Landcare developed largely as a result of the failure of other approaches to significantly impact on the complex, multi-perspective issues of change in land management. It recognised the importance of incorporating farmer needs, priorities and involvement as an integral part of the research and extension process (Pretty and Chambers 1993).

In broad terms, the Landcare approach can be described around the following features:

• Farmer/community ownership – action focused at the grass-roots farmer level based on their needs and priorities;
• True partnership between farmers, community, and government institutions – no one person or institution owns the process;
• Group focus – action and learning through the dynamics of groups;
• Facilitation role – trained facilitators are an important part of the process, but they must not lead or manipulate the process;
• Priority on building individual capacity for change;
• Technical support and innovation is important but needs to be balanced against the need and importance of good process.

Our Landcare approach

Our experience of applying a Landcare group approach within the horticultural industry was gained through a major project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), with components in the Philippines and southeast Queensland. In both components, the objective was to test a Landcare approach for its impact on adoption of conservation practices, its impact on resource degradation, and its relevance as an extension model. In southeast Queensland, the focus of the testing was selected intensive horticultural industries.

The project brought together a unique partnership for horticulture, involving two government departments (Department of Primary Industries and Department of Natural Resources & Mines), a large local Landcare group (Barung Landcare), and a horticultural farmers’ organisation (QFVG). The project has been in operation from 1999 to 2003.

The rationale for the project was briefly as follows:

• Some major environmental management problems exist in intensive horticulture in the region;
• Technology exists that can limit the problems;
• To be adopted, technology must be simple and practical and have perceived benefits;
• Participatory group processes offer potential to improve adoption;
• Landcare is a good model of a participatory group process.

However, in the intensive horticultural industries, Landcare has historically had a low level of farmer participation. Surveys have shown that only 11% of Queensland horticultural farmers are involved in Landcare groups, compared to 28% of farmers in all Queensland agricultural industries and 38% of all farmers nationally (Geno 2002). The reasons for this are unclear but appear to be related to the fact that horticultural industries are smaller, more diverse and more segmented than other agricultural industries, and are less dominant in their respective rural communities. Additionally, individual farmer competition for market share is stronger, thereby inhibiting a general culture of cooperation evident in other industries. Because of this, the project proposed to test the Landcare process through industry-based Landcare groups rather than the traditional community-based Landcare groups.

The general approach adopted was as follows:

• Identify existing industry based horticultural farmer groups within targeted industries that may be interested in being involved in testing the Landcare process;
• Establish contact and introduce them to project and objectives;
• Facilitate groups in issue analysis and identification of needs;
• Facilitate groups to develop activities to address needs and then support them with these activities;
• Monitor and evaluate processes and outcomes.

Three industries were initially targeted (subtropical tree fruits, beans and pineapples), and groups from four other industries subsequently expressed interest in the concept. Available resources and in some cases, external industry problems, meant that only two groups (subtropical tree fruits and pineapples) were accommodated through the complete process.

Important elements of our Landcare approach were initially defined as follows:

• Focus on farmer identified environmental problems – no set project environmental agenda;
• Engagement with farmers on their terms and on their ‘turf’ so that they control the agenda;
• Process based on true facilitation – not on leading, managing or manipulating the process;
• Emphasis on process issues rather than technical issues;
• Encouragement of as much farmer participation as possible;
• Emphasis on the unique partnership that shows broad government, industry and community support and interest in the process and outcomes.

Initially, the farmer groups found it difficult to clearly identify their major environmental issues, or to fully admit ownership. Instead, they became pre-occupied with the larger and broader issues of sustainability, most of which were perceived to be beyond the immediate influence of the groups. As a result, in keeping with the concept of farmer ownership of the process, the Landcare approach was modified and re-defined to accommodate a more holistic view of farmer sustainability, rather than focussing simply on the environmental issues alone. In addition, the re-definition accepted that change would be slow and possibly about small details and important trends rather than large impacts and outcomes as proposed in the project objectives.

Outcomes were achieved at both the industry/farmer level and the partner/organisational level. Major outcomes at the industry/farmer level included:

• Increased knowledge/awareness/ownership of NRM issues, problems and approaches;
• Involvement of subtropical tree fruit farmers in a non-threatening environmental auditing process;
• Conduct of a number of environmentally-focussed field days and farm walks on subtropical tree fruit farmer properties, where there was cross-cultural sharing of knowledge with other farmers, scientists and environmental specialists (Figure 2);
• Conduct of a pilot on-farm Waterwatch monitoring program with subtropical tree fruit growers – one of the first on-farm point-source water monitoring programs in Australia (funding resources shared between the Envirofund, industry, state government, Maroochy Waterwatch (community group) and the local authority);
• Support in the development and implementation of five locally based pineapple grower discussion groups (in conjunction with Golden Circle);
• Early indications of practice change, including increasing interest in the practical application of new practices across a range of soil, water and pest management technologies;
• Networking of farmer groups across horticultural industries through farmer cross-visits;
• Networking of key farmer leaders on environmental issues from across the industry groups;
• Broader recognition of farmers for their environmental efforts through nomination for awards and fellowships;
• Increased engagement of farmers with the broader community – from becoming members of Landcare and environmental groups to the major partnership between subtropical fruit growers and Maroochy Waterwatch.

Figure 2. A farmer from the Sunshine Coast Subtropical Fruits group demonstrates some of his land management innovations during one of the environmentally-focused field days held as part of the Landcare project. With the emphasis on sharing experiences and learning in a collaborative non-threatening environment, the group includes fellow farmers, the Landcare facilitator, an extension officer, a researcher, a member of community Waterwatch and a university lecturer.

Major outcomes at the partner/organisational level included:

• Significant institutional strengthening around the Landcare ethic;
• Significant new synergy and better appreciation of benefits of collaboration between government/community/industry;
• Significant increase in knowledge and skills of partner staff;
• Cross learning outcomes between Australian and Philippines participants;
• Broad survey of horticultural industry attitudes (in conjunction with Sunshine Coast University).

Our analysis of our new experiences

In reflecting on the two approaches we have used, our analysis is developed around three themes:

• Comparing our EMS and Landcare approaches;
• Establishing the common extension principles of both approaches; and
• Analysing what’s new.

Comparing our EMS and Landcare approaches

At first glance, it would appear that EMS and Landcare sit at different ends of the spectrum when viewed as potential extension tools. First of all, they have very different origins. EMS evolved from the procedural standard ISO 14001, initially used in the manufacturing industry and developed by the International Standards Organisation. It is essentially the environmental equivalent of the organisation’s food safety and quality assurance standard ISO 9000. On the other hand, Landcare emerged in response to the failure of other approaches to significantly impact on the complex, multi-perspective issues of change in land management.

Second, the general perceptions of EMS and Landcare are different. EMS, despite being a process standard, is commonly perceived as a hard business management tool and by some as a product that can be bought off the shelf from a consultant. In our experience, horticultural farmers often see EMS as a regulatory tool, as something that is imposed from outside. In their eyes, the ‘auditable systems’ component of a standard such as ISO14001, gives EMS a flavour of food safety and quality assurance, and brings with it a history of past negative experiences of cost, complexity and confusion. On the other hand, Landcare is generally perceived as an extension/community engagement tool, which has no regulatory or business management connotations and no procedural requirements. A common view is that people in Landcare set their own directions and goals. Our experience is that many horticultural farmers view Landcare as being on the ‘green’ fringe, thereby providing a potential disincentive for involvement.

Third, EMS is focussed on implementing systems that document environmental performance with a priority to managing environmental risks at the individual business level. On the other hand, Landcare is focussed on grass-roots action and learning through group processes with a priority to building individual capacity for change. These and other differences are summarised in Table 1.

However, there are also some commonalities. Both EMS and Landcare are essentially about voluntary practice change to improve NRM outcomes. Both are predominantly concerned with process rather than technology. And both are viewed with some suspicion by horticultural farmers, as previously mentioned. These commonalities are also summarised in Table 1.

In recent years, there has been a move from some in the Landcare movement to drive EMS and Landcare together as a new NRM concept. The Australian Landcare Management System (ALMS) is one such example, although it is still very much at the conceptual stage. ALMS had its origins in a desire to build something constructive from the confrontationist situation between farmers, conservationists and government on the issue of tree clearing (Douglas et al. 2002). It proposes a third party audited environmental management system (based on ISO14001) at the farm level that:

• considers catchment level priorities and strategies;
• includes environmental measuring and monitoring;
• promotes information exchange between the farm and the catchment; and
• recognises a commitment to continuous improvement in environmental management by the public sector, the community and through market place recognition.

It has been proposed that the well-recognised Australian Landcare symbol could provide a ready made ‘brand’ for recognition by consumers. Through combining the ‘evidentiary change’ and external accountability attributes of EMS with the grass-roots action and learning of Landcare, ALMS appears to be a commendable attempt to make Landcare into a more marketable and rigorous process.

Table 1. Differences and commonalities between EMS and Landcare.

EMS	Landcare
Differences
Business management tool	Extension/community engagement tool
Based on a process standard that is audited by a third party	Based on a partnership between local communities, institutions and government
Originated in the manufacturing industry; first used in reference to the international procedural standard ISO 14001	Originated in Australia in the late 1980’s in response to failure of other approaches to significantly impact on the complex, multi-perspective issues of change in land management
Features the plan, do, check, review cycle with concepts of continuous improvement; emphasis on evidentiary change and external accountability	Features farmer/community ownership, based on their needs and priorities; farmers set their own goals
Focused on implementation of systems that document environmental performance	Focuses on grass-roots action and learning through group processes
Priority is to manage environmental risks at the individual business level	Priority is building individual capacity to change
Commonalities
Process based – no practices or absolute requirements for environmental performance established; industry codes of practice should be considered and legislative obligations must be met	Technology, information & innovation important but process based and process driven
Primarily about voluntary practice change to improve environmental outcomes	Predominantly about voluntary practice change to improve environmental outcomes
Horticulture producers often suspect EMS to be a regulatory tool, or as something that is imposed from outside; EMS has similarities to food safety and quality assurance procedures, processes and systems	Generally, horticulture producers see Landcare as being on the ’green’ fringe; in intensive horticulture, has historically had a low level of farmer participation

Because our EMS and Landcare approaches were modified from the traditional EMS and Landcare processes to suit the farmer groups we were working with, it is now worth analysing the two approaches for their specific differences and commonalities. This is set out in Table 2.

Table 2. Differences and commonalities between our adapted EMS and Landcare approaches

EMS in north Queensland	Landcare in southeast Queensland
Differences
Participating farmers wanted to find ways to manage negative media saturation, complex legislation and provide evidence of sound environmental management	Initially, farmers found it difficult to clearly identify environmental issues or to take ownership of them
Process placed within context of farm business management and broader farm sustainability issues	Process modified to accommodate a more holistic view of farmer sustainability; project outcomes re-defined in response
Access to short-term, limited resources; prime funding source Department of Primary Industries Queensland (through staff salaries)	Well resourced through ACIAR project funding with a full-time project officer and support personnel
Process quite tight and systematic – based on quality assurance experiences, principles and processes to focus on environmental aspects of farm management	Process quite flexible – based on facilitating groups to analyse issues, identify needs, develop activities and provide support for these activities
Commonalities
No set environmental agenda, goal was to assist farmers identify priority environmental issues, assess their current practices and explore ways to improve	No set environmental agenda, open goals and flexible expectations, allowed focus on farmer identified problems
Terms of engagement clearly negotiated with farmers at the outset, including agreement on process and possible outcomes, some flexibility to accommodate changing needs	Terms of engagement negotiated with farmers at the outset and throughout process, but flexible to accommodate changing needs
EMS appeared a natural progression from Quality Assurance, positive response from farmers during earlier testing, facilitators experienced and skilled in Quality Assurance approach	Project progressed from a previous systems-based NRM project where the value of farmer participation in practice change was highlighted; Landcare seen to be an appropriate tool; local Landcare group and skills willing and available
Emphasis on people and process rather than technology; best practice guidelines and monitoring plans with strong technology content	Emphasis on people and process rather than technology, but environmentally focused field days with a strong technology content
Technically trained extension officers with good facilitation and process skills	Community Landcare facilitator and technically trained extension officer with good facilitation and process skills
Content provided by farmers, invited guest speakers, challenged by facilitators as needed	Cross-cultural sharing of knowledge and experience, but driven by farmers
Good links with government (researchers, regulators) and community (regional NRM groups), mainly through invitation	Close links between community (farmers, community groups) and government with an emphasis on the unique project partnership, although implicit in project design
Within constraints of the negotiated process, true facilitation used – final decisions always rested with the farmer participants	True facilitation through use of a community-based Landcare facilitator with emphasis on maximum farmer participation; steps taken to ensure facilitator was not leading, managing or manipulating the process
Good outcomes – increased confidence in ability to meet environmental challenges ahead, openness to increased involvement with community and regulators, some practice change evident	Good outcomes – increased awareness of environmental issues, farmers confident in increasing involvement with community and regulators, openness to scrutiny

Table 2 shows that despite some expected differences between the approaches, there are many commonalities. Of interest is the fact that, despite their inherent differences and the relative independence of the two project teams, both approaches have produced worthy outcomes. These outcomes have occurred at several levels:

• Sustained participation by farmers and involvement of community NRM organisations and regulatory agencies in the process;
• Major changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes and aspirations with regard to improved NRM resulting in greater confidence and willingness of farmers to engage proactively and constructively with the community and regulators on NRM issues; and
• Our evaluations show early signs of practice change although this was unexpected within the short time frame of both the Landcare and EMS work. For example, in the Landcare project, participating farmers have begun to seek assistance on the practical implementation of improved soil and water management practices. In north Queensland, one farmer participant has trialed a reduced fertiliser program on 5 hectares of bananas and intends to have 50% of his farm under this program by the end of the year. Another farmer has employed an extra staff member to do more frequent soil and leaf sampling to increase fertiliser use efficiency in tomatoes. Both these practices aim to reduce the risk of nutrients leaching into waterways and polluting the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

We propose that success in our endeavours is not necessarily about the nature of the tools or approaches, but about the raft of sound fundamental extension principles that underpin them. We go on to explore these key principles in the next part of our analysis.

Establishing the common extension principles of both approaches

As the primary aim of our approaches has been to engage farmers in voluntary NRM practice change, our analysis of the key extension principles is largely focussed on those principles that impact on this process. These are discussed below, together with supporting references from other researchers where appropriate.

1. The process needs to be flexible to cater for the different needs of different farmers and different groups.

Both the EMS and Landcare approaches have demonstrated the importance of flexibility to accommodate the changing needs of farmers. In the case of the Landcare approach, this involved a complete re-design of the objectives to facilitate farmer ownership of the process. The Productivity Commission Report (2003) points out that farmers are not a homogeneous group, with the same skills, values, preferences and resources. So obviously the drivers for farmers to change to more sustainable practices will vary depending on the individuals and their circumstances. In the case of the EMS approach, the drivers were essentially the farmers’ desire to have a working process in place to manage environmental risks and complex legislation, to identify the real and relevant environmental impacts, and to demonstrate good environmental outcomes to the community. For the Landcare approach, the drivers were essentially the farmers’ concerns about their broader long-term sustainability, and their ability to demonstrate these concerns and possible solutions to the broader community.

The initial engagement approach with potential farmer participants was about “marketing an opportunity” in response to these drivers. In the case of Landcare, our opportunity was an ACIAR project which was offered as a resource for exploring sustainability issues with farmers. As there were no particular outcomes to be achieved other than to test the Landcare approach, there was no imperative to be prescriptive. In the case of EMS, our agenda revolved around trialing a training/planning idea, which we offered to farmers as a practical and achievable process for managing environmental risks and legislation. As the overall process was quite systematic and structured, we negotiated this approach with participants at the outset, indicating that the process could be changed if needed and that final decisions on content and outcomes rested with them.

Although our approaches have been built around farmer groups, it has been with the recognition that it is the individuals within groups that change – not the groups themselves. This is even more important considering the work of Shrapnel et al. (1997), which showed that personality styles common in farmers indicated a preference for one-on-one learning rather than group learning. In addition, groups are often less than adequate in achieving sufficient support at critical times during the complex decision making characteristic of NRM change (Barr and Cary 2000). Consequently, each group of farmers, and the members within a group, need almost individual attention to discover their unique needs and drivers for change to sustainable practices.

2. Look at what farmers are already doing and build constructively on this

This values and acknowledges intrinsic on-farm knowledge and practices. It implies that farmers can set their own objectives and decide how to achieve them within the constraints of their own attitudes, goals and circumstances. A good facilitator will respect local knowledge and get the farmers to use it to explore achievable, sustainable practice options. Our EMS and Landcare approaches have attempted to build the process of change around this local knowledge and experience. We recognised that farmers are already doing much that is environmentally sound, and this has been featured and documented throughout the processes. It is best summed up by a quote from one of the farmers in the EMS project – “ It is important to the community to see that farmers are not raping and pillaging the earth but are often greener than the greenies. Farmers understand how important the land is and want to protect it for now and for generations to come”.

3. Some practices and innovations are adopted more readily.

Marsh (1998) points out that for innovations to be readily adopted, they must demonstrate a need (or respond to an expressed need), demonstrate an observable difference (in on-farm situations) especially for practices that have slow and indirect effects, and demonstrate a measurable benefit (in line with individual objectives). In our EMS work in North Queensland, we responded to the farmer need of wanting to be proactive about dealing with legislation and negative community perceptions; used processes that readily demonstrated applicability to on-farm situations and developed tools for individual farm business managers for dealing with the environmental challenges that lie ahead. A comparable situation applied in the case of the water quality monitoring innovation in the Landcare approach. Here, a similar need was addressed, support provided to understand how the innovation could make a difference, and benefits demonstrated in being able to objectively assess the impact of farmer management practices. This supports the assertion of Pannell (1999) who claims that trialing is “perhaps the most important phase in determining final adoption or disadoption”.

Barr & Cary (2000) point out that environmental innovations that have been profitable, or believed to be profitable, are usually readily adopted on Australian farms. The challenge for change agents is to identify those practices that are seen to potentially provide this profitability as well as provide environmental benefits. For those practices needed to protect or enhance the environment, but without an immediate demonstrable profit benefit, change agents need to work out how these practices can provide a profit to farmers (or at least be cost neutral). Our experience with the EMS and Landcare approaches suggest that this is best done by the farmers themselves, and the real challenge for change agents is to let go and empower the farmers to make this assessment against their own criteria. Barr & Cary (2000) add several other practice characteristics that will affect adoption. These are their complexity, compatibility with the existing farming system, and observability of outcomes; as well as the farmer’s beliefs and opinions toward the new practice, level of motivation and perception of the relevance of the practice, and the farmer’s attitude to risk and change.

4. Farmers need to be able to adapt sustainable practices for local conditions.

This is important on two fronts – the practices must first be adaptable and secondly farmers need to be directly involved wherever possible in the observation and adaptation of the practices. In the case of the Landcare approach, this was achieved through farmer cross-visits, and the environmentally focussed farm walks where farmers were able to observe different adaptations of common environmental management procedures. In the EMS work, farmers contributed their collective knowledge within a collaborative setting with technical experts and community stakeholders. The importance of this adaptation process for local conditions is emphasised by Cary et al. (2002) who note that “…given Australia’s diverse environment, there are few sustainable practices which meet the test of global applicability”. The authors point out that every advantage should be taken of sustainable practices that have widespread application, but more importantly, “…increased effort needs to be applied to identify and develop locally applicable sustainable practices, and to resist the temptation to promote them beyond localities where their advantage has been established”.

5. Adoption of new practices is a continuous process and occurs through a number of avenues

Our research has shown that for individuals involved in improving environmental management practices, the process is ongoing rather than discrete, and frequently being reassessed. As such it is just another example of action learning and continuous improvement. And farmers, like everyone engaged in managing change as part of everyday living, undergo the process through a number of avenues apart from ‘organised’ extension and education activities. Coutts (2003) points out that mentoring, self-directed learning, experiential learning and other personal and community growth processes are constantly at work within communities in building capacity (increasing the abilities and resources of individuals, organisations and communities to manage change). He goes on to say that planned and proactive interventions, that is, formal extension and education activities should be seen as complementary to these informal capacity building processes.

6. ’Real’ participation of farmers and stakeholders is a key

Both the EMS and Landcare approaches have been based on a strong principle of maximum ‘real’ farmer participation. This is in recognition of the fact that despite general acceptance of this principle in modern extension processes, there is still much participatory rhetoric, with often only ‘token’ participation of farmers and stakeholders. Marsh (1998) notes that a truly participatory approach is one based on two inherent principles that encourage adoption – that participants have increased ownership of outcomes, and that practices can be adapted by the practitioners for the local situation. The latter principle makes practices more relevant, achievable and compatible with existing farm management, personal perceptions, economics and farming style. Marsh (1998) goes on to say that participation is particularly important when changes are necessary to meet external goals or aims rather than the farmer’s own goals or aims.

In our EMS approach, farmers contributed the content from their collective knowledge, but were challenged throughout to consider aspects of the environment that may be new to them. Additional information or expert knowledge was introduced to the group within the context of a collaborative approach, with technical experts, community stakeholders and growers working together to identify and develop practices that best address identified priority environmental issues. The final decisions on priority risks, best practice guidelines and monitoring plans rested with the farmers. The purpose of this approach was two fold – to build ownership by participants in the evolving EMS, and so build and maintain the motivation to implement, monitor and improve best practices at the farm level, and to ensure that outcomes met the farmers’ need for practicality and cost-effectiveness. In the Landcare approach, the environmentally-focused field days instilled in the farmers a sense of ‘real’ participation. This involved them taking control of the process by sharing their own personal experiences and practices on their own ‘turf’ with other farmers, community environmental personnel, researchers and extension officers, in a non-threatening supportive environment.

There is also an important view that not only is the level of participation important, but also the transparency of participation. Uphoff et al. (1998) and Pretty (1994) propose that both have an impact on the empowerment of participants, and therefore their willingness to embrace voluntary change which has risks, costs, and unclear and less tangible benefits. Vanclay and Lawrence (1995) support this by suggesting that a strongly participative approach using groups of like-minded farmers to develop local best practice within a district can help overcome the problem that the farmer’s agenda may be different from the pressing environmental agenda. Green (1993), working on improving the management of fisheries, found that participatory learning helped people find ways to adapt practices to better suit their particular needs or to modify their original objectives to better reflect the management potential of their resources. He also noted that this potential seemed especially high when participants and resource management ‘experts’ are engaged in long-term dialogue, rather than a one-time learning encounter.

Another useful way of assessing participation is through the three critical success factors of Pretty and Chambers (1994) for participatory programs to deliver lasting improvements:

• A sympathetic and supportive institutional context (often new);
• New interactive learning environments for both professionals and farmers to develop capacity;
• New methods for partnerships, dialogues, analysis and sharing.

Both the EMS and Landcare approaches have embodied elements of each.

Analysing what’s new

So what’s new? We know that none of the above principles are new – they have been part of established extension practice for decades. In fact, it is interesting to look back to quotes from an era when extension practice was perceived to be very different from what it is today. Here is an example from 1962 from A.H.Maunder, then Chief of the Foreign Education Branch in the Division of Extension Research and Training of the United States Department of Agriculture:

“The process of extension education is one of working with people, not for them; of helping people become self-reliant, not dependent on others; of making people become the central actors in the drama; not the stage hands or spectators”.

The principles we have identified are no more than the fundamental extension principles inherent in adult education, action learning and real participation. But what perhaps is new is that we were able to put a mix of these principles in place, in two independent projects, to good effect. One of the reasons for this is perhaps that we worked with fewer constraints than many of our colleagues. We have the relative security of permanent positions within a large state government department, in stark contrast with the short-term contract arrangements under which many NRM facilitators are operating.

We also operated with the luxury of no real agenda. The Landcare project was well resourced through ACIAR, but this funding organisation was flexible in its goals and expectations. Small, short-term funding provided some resources for our EMS work, but the majority of funding came from the Department of Primary Industries Queensland in the form of our salaries. Other than a general expectation to contribute to the broad NRM goals of our organisation, there was flexibility in outcomes required.

For us, even as experienced extension personnel, it has been a learning curve. With our farmer clients, we are building new networks and relationships with community groups, NRM regulators and researchers outside our traditional industry focus, adding another dimension and level of complexity to an already complex system. But we are discovering that our extension skills and technical expertise are both highly relevant to engaging farmers in voluntary practice change. Importantly, the farmers we are working with are gaining some confidence in their ability to deal with the environmental challenges they are facing.

We would sum up our approaches under the principle of ‘learning with others in equal partnership’. This is based on building effective relationships between individuals with varying agendas and goals, relationships that are built on trust, mutual respect, integrity, confidentiality and open communication.

However, our analysis raises the question that if these approaches based on sound extension principles and equal partnerships are the key to achieving voluntary practice change in NRM, why aren’t more people using them? We can offer no real answers, except to say that some issues that may be worth exploring are:

• How do we better engage change agents in the process of their own practice change?
• How do we deal with the personal risk to change agents of letting go and losing control over outcomes and goals? Is this a disincentive for change agents to change the way they engage with farmers?
• Given that these processes are resource intensive if substantial voluntary practice change is to be achieved, how do we obtain and best deploy resources where outcomes are unknown and goals are unclear?
• Do any of our organisations have the luxury of having no agenda, of being totally flexible, of not being the drivers of change but the backseat facilitators?

Acknowledgments

For the Landcare project component of this paper, the authors wish to thank:

• the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research for providing the funding;
• the project partners (Department of Primary Industries, Barung Landcare, Department of Natural Resources and Mines, and Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers) for their outstanding collaboration on the project;
• John Muir, the Project Officer, who did most of the excellent on-ground work with the farmer groups;
• various community groups who supported the project in several key areas; and
• the participating horticultural farmer groups, without whom, there would not have been a project, or the rich learning experience for all of us involved.

For the EMS project component of this paper, the authors wish to thank:

• the participating farmers from the Better Banana Businesses sustainability group and the Bowen District Growers Association, for their candour and willingness to share their rich farming knowledge with us;
• technical and research staff from the Department of Primary Industries and Department of Natural Resources and Mines of Queensland, and members and staff from the Burdekin-Bowen Integrated Floodplain Management Advisory Committee and the Burdekin Dry Tropics Board for their participation and support;
• the Queensland Government for providing funding through the Department of Primary Industries and the Queensland Rural Adjustment Authority.

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