Adapting to climate change: concentrate on getting the basics of property management right
Adapting to climate change: concentrate on getting the basics of property management right Conference Paper
16th Australian Rangeland Society Biennial Conference
- Author(s): Silcock, R.G., Taylor, K. M.
- Published: 2010
- Publisher: Australian Rangeland Society
Abstract: A pastoral property manager has many issues to deal with and a surprisingly large number of options to consider. Many of those issues can relate to family or personal matters and not the traditional financial or production aspects of a business. Then there are the exhortations from modern urban media to act upon a wide diversity of “critical” matters. Many of these recently are aligned with environmental stewardship, preservation of biodiversity, food safety, animal welfare and taxing of carbon consumption. We suggest that such matters mostly have little impact on business profitability for rangeland pastoral enterprises but can create negative personal energy and distract from the main game. Income is driven largely by seasonal rainfall (which is unreliable and uncontrollable), but profitability is driven mostly by sound business management practices. Good planning, preparedness and timely decision making is needed and intrinsic to that is matching grazing animal numbers to available feed supply. If this is done well, most other controllable enterprise options will become much easier to manage for a profitable outcome.