Sharon O'Keefe manages GRDC's Northern Region from Boggabri, NSW, connecting grower priorities to research investment. Two flagship alliances in Toowoomba and Dubbo identify R&D needs and help farmers adapt to climate change while staying profitable.
Chapters
The role of Regional Grass services is really. It's the area of GRDC that we get out involved in the paddock. So in the north we have Sharon o', Keefe, who's the regional manager for GRDC based in Bogabrai in northern New South Wales. Sharon spends an excessive amount of her time travelling around, meeting with growers and advisors across the Northern Region and really discussing what their issues are. What are the R and D issues, restricting their profitability. Sharon then feeds that information back into the Northern Panel and spends a lot of time here in the Canberra office talking with managers right across the organisation and making sure that Northern Region grower priorities are being introduced into grdc. Couple of really key projects will really benefit the Northern Region is the Northern Grower alliance project based out of Toowoomba and the Gray Narrah alliance project based out of Dubbo. There are two key flagship projects for the Northern Regions that are really focused on one, identifying the issues. So they're the formal engagement mechanism GRDC has and their second role is to address the short term issues raised by growers and consultants. In those meetings. It's about addressing the issues to be able to keep growers in business. Today we've really increased the capacity in GRDC's investment in farming systems across the Northern Region. Growers continue to highlight the restrictions and the challenges that the modern farming system has, the changing climate that the Northern Region continues to face. So GRDC continues to invest in farming systems to make sure that we can provide information to growers to adapt to their changing systems.
