Soil CRC releases Knowledge Sharing Guide

The Soil CRC has released a new guide to help grower groups and extension professionals plan their farmer engagement activities. Aptly titled the ‘Knowledge Sharing Guide for Grower Groups’, the guide was created as part of the Soil CRC’s Knowledge Sharing Project (1.2.006) led by Dr Hanabeth Luke from Southern Cross University.

“There are many factors impacting farmer engagement,” Dr Luke said. “Information overload, geographic isolation and time constraints all affect a farmer’s capacity to access and implement new knowledge.

“Additionally, the diversity in farming systems and regions means that one-size-fits-all approaches to knowledge sharing are often ineffective.

“Engaging farmers effectively requires listening to them, understanding their context, respecting their experiences, and offering approaches to knowledge-sharing that fit with their needs.”

The Soil CRC’s Knowledge Sharing Guide has been designed to help grower groups develop their own knowledge sharing plans and overcome some common barriers to engaging farmers across farming regions.

“The guide was co-developed by project researchers and the four participating grower groups— Agricultural Innovation and Research Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, West Midlands Group in Western Australia, Central West Farming Systems in New South Wales and Birchip Cropping Group in Victoria—and reflects the learnings that came from our Knowledge Sharing Project,” Dr Luke said.

Some key knowledge sharing points from the guide include:

Know your audience (build relationships with the farmers) and co-design projects

This comes with:

• Respectful engagement and authentic listening
• Developing an awareness and understanding of the issues, constraints, decision-making drivers, and local culture (e.g. demographics, attitudes, priorities).

Know your industry (the context in which your farmer is working and living)

• Timing of engagement is important, e.g. avoid seasonal constraints such as the middle of harvest time; field days can engage younger farmers better by being family-friendly.
• Do your research to understand the local and external factors and expectations that drive farmer decision-making.
• Consider working with trusted sources of knowledge in the community, e.g. are there community champions or a popular podcaster?

Quality over quantity

• In a digital world, face-to-face engagement and boots on the ground is still the best way of sharing knowledge.
• Intimate groups can be very successful, focussed on specific rather than broad content.
• Be explicit in pointing out your one (two at the most) strong take home message(s) that people can ponder and experiment with.

Be responsive and proactive

• For example, when an issue affects many of your stakeholders at the same time, such as flood impacts, you can use that as an opportunity to share relevant knowledge.
• Back up your extension activities with the technical data, show them the evidence and allow farmers to demonstrate how they are working with new approaches and technologies.
• Provide food and drink that your audience will enjoy.

While we know face-to-face engagement is king, the Knowledge Sharing Guide also includes a section on digital engagement that was informed by research conducted by Federation University. The full ‘Digital Engagement Guide’ can be found in the project’s final report.

About the Knowledge Sharing Project

The Knowledge Sharing Project sought to identify and test effective knowledge sharing strategies for supporting improved soil stewardship.

“The project aimed to increase the number of landholders actively engaged in soil health improvement practices by having the four participating grower groups trial new things and analyse their extension practices over a two-year period – in the areas of strategy, planning, prioritising, communicating and delivering,” Dr Luke explained.

As well as creating the ‘Knowledge Sharing Guide for Grower Groups’, the project identified policies and regulations that enable or constrain knowledge sharing and provided recommendations for training and engagement for others involved in extension.

“The Knowledge Sharing Project has delivered a range of incredibly useful resources to guide respectful engagement with farmers,” Dr Luke said.

“I encourage anyone who is seeking to engage with farmers to use these resources to reflect on and enhance their existing knowledge sharing activities, including Soil CRC scientists who may be invited to present their work directly to farmers.”

You can learn more about the project at the links below.

Find out more

• Knowledge Sharing Project resources
• Project overview
• Related article: Knowledge sharing for good soil stewardship

Image: An example of effective face-to-face engagement – nearly 600 people attending a Birchip Cropping Group event. Photo: Kelly Angel, Birchip Cropping Group.