Growers and GRDC representatives discuss how the National Grower Network runs brainstorming sessions to surface local farming issues and shape research priorities. The group emphasizes the value of smaller, grower-led projects and staying responsive to regional problems while connecting to national research efforts.
Chapters
So at the NGN forums we encourage growers to come in and we have a really informal chat brainstorming session where we all put our ideas on the table and then prioritise the ideas.
NGN is a community of stakeholders that we engage with directly to understand what the issues and constraints are on farm and compile them together to help shape GRDC investments.
Getting information from them and giving them some information to take back to discuss.
Just more of a two way thing really. What I like about it because they actually listen to what we reckon. Without coming to these sort of forums, you don't get to have your input. So you know, at least my $2 worth of input might be something. Hopefully one of them takes something back to put around the table that you.
Know, gets somewhere opportunity to talk face to face with GRDC and representatives of GRDC to inform us of how we're tracking with current research.
My role at the NGNS is to facilitate the discussion in the room. Have a lot of really great discussions with growers around what their issues are on farm, what's their bugbears at the moment and what local issues that we need to know as part of grdc.
Well, for growers groups, we are the ones that will be delivering on a lot of these projects, especially the smaller projects. They can often be grower group led and fully worked through with one grow group for example. So making sure we see the face of GRDC and know who to talk to about various projects, that's always very helpful for us.
The national Grower network allows us to be hyper responsive to issues that might not be super common across the cropping region and also allow us to tap into the broader research that GRDC is also completing across Australia.
What we're looking to do is capture ideas from growers with those ideas. We're looking to sow them through investments so that they can bring about better yields in the future for growers.
