What are the costs to landholders of changing their management toward practices that reduce the loss of sediment and nutrients to the GBR?

This project focuses on understanding the implication of diversity of enterprises, landholders and landscapes on the cost of best management practices (BMPs) and thus on the cost of achieving improved water quality in the GBR. The project, which will assess the key agricultural sediment sources (grazing) and nutrient sources (cane), will also be relevant to other agricultural industries.

The first significant product from the project is nearing completion. It sets out the key impediments to adoption faced by landholders and offers a basis for assessing opportunities to design new adoption support processes, incentives or other measures that are likely to increase adoption.

The researchers from CSIRO, Central Queensland University and the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry have been working on frameworks for understanding costs and cost variability to ensure they collect the right data from landholders and then assemble it most effectively to build a comprehensive picture of costs and impacts across the focus case study areas. Advisory groups for grazing and cane have been appointed and are being supported by consultations with regional stakeholders.

Land types, sub-regions and best management practices (BMPs) have been prioritised for evaluation, which will help the project team decide where to hold workshops and the data to focus on at each one. These data collection workshops, which started in April, will continue for most of 2012

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For more information on this project click here.