Learning more about decisions and risks

Three events were held across the graingrowing areas in Dandaragan, Three Springs and Yerecoin, aiming to assist farmers better assess the risk and reward of their farm management decisions.

RiskWi$e is a five year, $30 million national program seeking to understand and improve the risk-reward outcomes for Australian graingrowers by supporting onfarm decision-making.

The target outcome is that 80 per cent of graingrowers manage their production management decisions in terms of probability of upside returns (reward) offset against the associated downside risks.

WMG chief executive officer Nathan Craig believes being involved in RiskWi$e is a great opportunity for growers to learn more about risk management in farming and said the first step to reaching this target was to engage with the broader farming community across the region.

Growers from Dandaragan, Three Springs and Yerecoin and their surrounding areas attended introductory sessions on the project, coming together to discuss risk and decision making with local industry stakeholders and researchers.

"While farming is all about managing risk, having the right information at hand can improve the quality of the decisions being made," Dr Craig said.

"While the national initiative has five broad themes that each group can work across, WMG and MIG are currently focusing on three of these.

"We are looking at risk management initially from three aspects of decisions around nitrogen fertiliser application, time of sowing and machinery purchases."

Dr Craig said the first step for growers participating in the introductory workshops was to think from a different perspective about the nitrogen dose-response curves that are often used for decision making.

"Through deconstructing the dose response curve and changing the format to a box plot rather than a line graph, growers were able to see the variability in wheat grain yield to a wide range of nitrogen application rates," he said.

"This data was developed using simulation modelling to assess the likely grain yield response to a range of nitrogen rates over the last 40 years of rainfall (1980-2020).

"While this was a simplistic view of wheat production for each region, it served a valuable purpose to stimulate discussion on the factors that sit behind each decision about when, where, and how much nitrogen to apply."

Common themes emerged from the events as factors across the region for determining the optimum nitrogen rate in each year including rainfall, cost and availability of inputs and soil type.

"There were also local nuances that affected farmers such as the closing of roads in one region during a wet year, which impacted the delivery of fertiliser, or the occurrence of leaching in high rainfall regions with sandy soils," Dr Craig said.

The groups will continue seeking further input and interaction from growers and are planning trials across the region to further investigate the impact of these decisions on-farm, and to gain more localised information to make informed, high-quality decisions that have a high likelihood of success for growers.

To join one of the RiskWi$e discussion groups contact WMG at comms@wmgroup.org.au or head to the WMG RiskWi$e project webpage at wmgroup.org.au/projects/riskwise to find out more.