Community & Lifestyle

MLA bushfire recovery support continues online amid COVID-19

Sheep Central, April 22, 2020

MLA managing director Jason Strong.

MEAT & Livestock Australia is continuing to provide red meat producers impacted by recent bushfires with online support and services to help with their recovery amid COVID-19 restrictions.

MLA said its ‘Back to Business’ program, which allowed producers in fire-affected regions to access up to three free one-on-one-sessions with a local farm business consultant, is continuing to be successfully delivered online.

The program has already been taken up by 74 individual farm businesses throughout New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania.

A series of free weekly webinars is also being held for livestock producers, offering practical tips to help rebuild on the back of not only recent bushfires, but also drought, floods and storms.

The hour-long webinars are being hosted by MLA, Australian Wool Innovation, Sheep Connect NSW, and Integrity Systems Company every Tuesday at 1pm through to 9 June. They offer resources and support to help those impacted by recent challenging events to get ‘Back to Business’.

MLA managing director Jason Strong said more than 500 producers had participated in the weekly webinars, which were originally scheduled as face-to-face workshops throughout bushfire and drought impacted regions.

“In response to COVID-19 containment efforts, we are being agile in the delivery of support programs for producers, working in collaboration with AWI, Sheep Connect NSW and ISC to deliver the webinars, and with the State Coordinators to deliver the one-on-one support sessions.

“We’re pleased these programs are being well received by producers while the industry continues to support global containment efforts of COVID-19,” Mr Strong said.

“It’s important to remember that many producers impacted by bushfires are still in the recovery and rebuild phase.

“The ‘Back to Business’ one-on-one support sessions give producers clarity and direction by prioritising actions, which is vital during the ongoing recovery phase, while the webinars enable producers to access expert speakers, tools and advice,” he said.

To complement the webinars, a podcast has also been launched featuring webinar presenters and technical experts. Producers can simply search Back to Business in their podcast app to download the podcast.

Producers can also catch watch the recordings of past ‘Back to Business’ webinars on the Sheep Connect NSW website. The podcast and webinar recordings are another tool for producers to access at a time that suits them, MLA said.

Sheep Connect NSW was a recipient of MLA Bushfire Recovery Sponsorship Funds to produce a series of webinars and MLA and ISC have partnered with them to take the ‘Back to Business’ workshops online.

For more information on MLA’s one-on-one Back to Business program, email [email protected] and a representative from MLA will get back to you with further details.

For more information on the webinars and how to register, visit https://www.mla.com.au/news-and-events/events-and-workshops/  or https://sheepconnectnsw.com.au/events/

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Comments

  1. Jack Cleary, April 23, 2020

    Will ‘Back to Business’ also mean taking compelling action to force graziers to take early action in saving livestock from bushfires, or is it going to be all about the ‘poor old producer’ who lost several, hundreds or thousands of animals?

    Solutions may not be easy and I suppose when I think of it, people ‘in general’ don’t even change their behaviour when it’s humans who are victims, but livestock underwrite essential income, bank loans and the like. Their safety is critical and has not been addressed in the Industry nor has a plan for drought .

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