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Ag-vocacy groups promote primary production and the prosperity it delivers to rural/regional communities, national trade and food security. Establishing and maintaining these groups is work largely undertaken by volunteers and sometimes underpinned by scant or unreliable funding. Funding is often tied to project delivery, leaving few reserves for administration or support. Overall, this is a model that usually fails to develop good functionality or group longevity. The structural framework can squander goodwill and good human capital.

Objectives

However, case studies reveal common factors of successful, impactful and long-lived groups. METHOD/APPROACH: One example is the national Farming Together Program which attracted 28,500 stakeholders, two major national engagement awards and a total of $3m top-up funding beyond its initial stage. Another example is Agribusiness Gippsland which attracted 10,000 stakeholders and transacted $1.5m in funding as a volunteer-driven NFP. These groups were established despite natural disasters (e.g. drought, fire and flood) and negative marketplace messaging (e.g. right-to-farm, low retail prices and policy challenges).

Key Findings

The factors behind these two successful examples are common, scalable and repeatable. They include deep connectivity to local councils/RDAs especially for in-kind support from economic development staff; a regular, reader-focussed enewsletter and well-driven conventional and social media; a well-connected board of directors with good cross-sector linkages; contracted management that is not on secondment and, lastly, visioning and preparing for success.

Conclusions

Building these factors into the structural framework of ag-vocacy groups could assist in their performance, impact and longevity.