The Livestock Collective is honoured to be one of the many deserving recipients of this year’s Foundation for Rural Regional Renewal grants.  Funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund and a range of other donor partners, the Networks to Build Drought Resilience program focuses on agriculture-dependent communities. It’s designed to give local NFPs access to the funds and resources they need to prepare and strengthen their community’s response to future drought and climate change. Managing Director, Holly Ludeman said Livestock Leaders workshops started in WA in 2020 and two ..read more

Goal setting is one of the most useful practices to ensure you stay on track with your ideas and achievements. Knowing what you want in life comes easy to some but requires more thought from others. Nothing is wrong with either, but setting small goals can help get you and keep you on the right track. Goal setting is relevant to every single person and every single industry.   What is a goal? First things first, a goal is an outcome (personal or professional) or a physical object you are working towards. This can be something as small as making sure you make it home on time for dinne ..read more

How to measure the success of its advocacy is a question that is front of mind for the team at The Livestock Collective (TLC). The Collective’s Project Manager Amelia Nolan said it was extremely difficult to measure its success in advocacy, and even harder to keep track of the impact advocacy from a wide range of alumni from the Livestock Leaders training was having.  This training upskills people from all areas of agriculture and across the supply chain to advocate for the industry in an informative, authentic way that starts conversations and builds trust.  “Honestly the question i ..read more

Resilience in the face of adversity – drought, fire, flood or activism – is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to many, but the good news is that it can be learned. The Livestock Collective hosted a two-day Livestock Leaders Advocacy and Drought Resilience Workshop at The Mangrove Hotel in Broome in August to address this topic with the support of Federal Government funding. FRRR Funding Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal Future Drought Fund Program Manager Kristy Shay said the project was selected for because it builds drought resilience by strengthening the capabilities of livestock ..read more

The agricultural industry needs to talk about its dirty little secrets first. We can’t leave a void of information to be filled by others again.  It sounds like a scary prospect, but this is the message I shared at State of Social in Perth on August 23 and 24. State of Social is billed as Australia’s smartest digital marketing event and a meeting of the brightest marketing minds. Essentially I talked about taking control of brand narratives and detail my involvement in the livestock industry taking control of the narrative of live export of sheep and cattle and the founding of The Livesto ..read more

A word from The Livestock Collective Director, John Cunnington.   Biosecurity is back as front page news to the wider community with the recent incursions of Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) and subsequently Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in Indonesia. As the agricultural supply chain is aware, biosecurity has always been a major issue for Australian agriculture with most of our trade protocols being underlined with Australia’s clean and green image of being predominately disease free. With most seeing FMD-related material spamming their timelines, I was hoping to provide a slightly different persp ..read more

The Livestock Collective would like to welcome our new team member Jeana Pritchard. She has joined us as the new project coordinator and will be working on events and social media. She has taken over the responsibility of the Livestock Leaders socials, so if you’re wondering who the face behind the screen is – its her! Jeana will be out and about at our events so make sure you keep following our pages to see where we will be, and don’t hesitate to come and have a chat. Jeana is based in WA and we asked her what life was like growing up. Keep reading to get to know her better.    Expl ..read more

Meet Martin, or more specifically, meet Martin having a crack,  @martinhavingacrack (this is what he’s known as on Instagram) and we thought we’d have a crack at interviewing him about his life on a farm.  The Livestock Collective had been following Martin for quite some time and really enjoyed his posts and stories. When a Victorian Livestock Leaders workshop came around, we knew we had to get him involved. Now a proud Livestock Leader alumni, he continues to keep us updated (and entertained) on his daily antics.  Tell us about what it was like growing up in rural Australia? I ..read more

Looking at the shock and rebuild after droughts, fires and floods  By Deb Gray After much consideration and research, I discovered nothing compared to how this felt to live through. No matter how prepared our producers are for extreme weather conditions, they are never really prepared for the personal and mental toll it takes to put these plans into action and then begin the actual recovery process.  I cannot tell you how it feels to prepare your livelihood for these conditions. For the last five years, most producers have had to continuously borrow against everything they have worke ..read more