This is a grass-roots project developed by the Stakeholder Advisory Groups for the Orroroo and Pastoral Nodes of the SA Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub, the project seeks to model ‘typical’ farm businesses in the area and consider, through extensive consultation and discussion, whether there are enterprise or income solutions that may provide financial and environmental sustainability in the face of institutional change and a changing climate.

It aims to achieve this through engagement with stakeholders in the Orroroo – southern Flinders Ranges region to;

• Model historical farm financial performance of marginal farming in SA.
• Model future farming systems and/or enterprises that may contribute to sustainable primary production.
• Analyse scenarios for carbon and biodiversity market returns from likely vegetation assemblages that could be restored in target regions.
• Initiate a conversation about implications and opportunities arising from likely changing climate, market, and institutional environments.

Project description: 

Modelling Current Farming Systems:

Two complementary approaches will be undertaken to achieve the modelling objectives of the project.

1. Region-level farm financial and production benchmarking

Pinion Advisory, in collaboration with the project reference group, will identify four ’typical’ farming businesses to construct production and financial models. Using historical data (over the last decade), production (yield) and financial outcomes will be modelled for each of these farms to understand the ‘current’ viability of these farm businesses under the present climate conditions.

2. ABS Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE) microdata

The University of Adelaide approach is to report on farm financial indicators to estimate both short- and long-run impacts of environmental variability, and to identify the impact heterogeneity among various farm groups. This is to be achieved by using BLADE microdata containing various farm financial data sourced from the Australian Tax Office. Annual data currently is available from 2001–02 to 2020–21. Access to this dataset is only provided to authorised researchers. Environmental measures (such as temperature, rainfall, soil, vegetation coverage and drought indicators), as well as economic financial variables (commodity prices, interest rates) will be merged with the BLADE microdata based on the farm operation location. Vegetation coverage will come from cover datasets, DEW’s South Australian Land Cover Layers 1987- 2015 spatial land cover datasets for 3 time periods (2000-2005, 2005-2010 and 2010-2015). From the above detailed analysis of the financials of marginal farming, financial models of four ‘typical’ farms in the area will be created.

The intent in running the two modelling approaches in parallel is to gain an understanding of the applicability of the different methods to address the question of understanding how and if sub-regional farming systems can be modelled with sufficient granularity and scale to be used more broadly to address similar questions in other regions and in different enterprises elsewhere. In simpler terms, to what extent do the two methods and their basal datasets agree or disagree in being able to represent (or provide indicators of) the production and financial outcomes of farming systems over time, and their ability to respond to changing environmental conditions.

The project has been co-designed with input from the stakeholder advisory groups (Orroroo and Pt Augusta). Consequently, the objectives, methodology, and proposed outputs have been developed with local producers. Significantly, the producer advisory group was highly engaged with the project team at the initiation workshop in December 2024, and has outlined the guiding principles and parameters that will be used to develop the project outputs. 

Key achievements and results: 

2024 project update

In 2024, the project was co-designed with input from stakeholder advisory groups in Orroroo and Port August. This element of the project will ensure that the activities are highly relevant to, and meet the needs of, the stakeholders who identified the need for the project. Consequently, the objectives, methodology and proposed outputs have been developed in collaboration with local producers and significantly, the producer advisory group was highly engaged with the project team at the initiation workshop in late December 2024, and have outlined the guiding principles and parameters that will be used to develop the project outputs in the coming months and into 2025.

2025 project update

In 2025, the project team has engaged with the producer advisory group, and criteria to define the modelling approach were established. Pinion Advisory (Royce Pitchford and Taylah Blight) have collaborated with SARDI (Peter Hayman and Dane Thomas) to construct the baseline farm production and financial models that will be used to benchmark the current state of farming systems in the region. Concurrently (mid 2025), the Flinders University team has commenced initial analysis of historical data from the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to establish the extent of the datasets and the range of financial and production outcomes reported for the period from 2005/06 to 2021/22. In the second hand of 2025, the Pinion modelling will be validated with the Orroroo producer group to ensure that the data is within the range expected from local experience, the future climate impact on production and financial return will be forecast, the ATO and ABS data will be validated against the outputs from the modelled farm, and the planned carbon and ecosystems modelling will be overlayed with the production and financial outputs. 

During the second half of 2025, the project progressed well. Strong collaboration between project partners supported the finalisation of the climate and farm benchmark datasets required for the project’s future-focused modelling, informed through two consultation touchpoints with the Orroroo producer advisory group (including a face-to-face progress and baseline parameter-setting workshop in September, followed by online engagement).

Following refinement over the new year period, the modelling outcomes will be shared with the project steering group and producers to validate and discuss the results, including the projected impacts of future climate conditions on production and financial return.

In parallel, analysis of historic farm performance using national datasets has been shared with the project steering group for initial review, with feedback currently being addressed prior to finalising reporting outputs.

This project will continue into 2026.