Wakool Agri-Innovation

Overview

The Wakool Agri-Innovation Program is designed to help farmers and businesses to explore opportunities to innovate, diversify, and value-add in their businesses. Developed in partnership with Regionality, the overall aim of this program is to encourage regional prosperity and opportunity by supporting the development of high value agricultural, food, and tourism sectors.

In support of regional innovation, skills acquisition, and community strategy, this program includes the delivery of capacity building workshops, two Agri-Innovation forums, subsidised conference attendance, and business development programs. In addition to capacity-building programming, funding has also been allocated to research into a digital trading platform and a regional product identity, forming an 'Agrisystem'.

'Capacity Building' and 'Agrisystem' form the two major facets of the program.

This program is funded by the Australian Federal Government via the Murray Darling Basin Economic Development Program. WMLIG successfully obtained this funding in 2019. Project activities commenced in 2020, and are due for completion in April 2022.

Communities eligible for funding under the MDB Economic Development Program - ABARES, 2019.

Capacity Building

The Capacity Building facet of this project incorporates education, training, business development, innovation, and leadership programming to stimulate professional development, diversification, and economic prosperity in the Wakool region.

Examples of Capacity Building programming can be found in the past events section of this webpage below.

Agrisystem

The Agrisystem facet of the Agri-Innovation Program maintains a focus on boosting regional economy and supporting local producers to explore new opportunities within their existing businesses. To achieve this, we have partnered with Regionality to deliver Business Development programming and undertake research into digital trading infrastructure.

The Agrisystem research program explores ways in which local producers may benefit from regional produce branding, shared logistics solutions, and a region-specific trading platform.

The first Business Development focus group wrapped up in December 2020, with participants exploring new marketing methods, new product ideas, waste-reduction solutions and more.