Farming
Together

Farming Together was born through the Farm Co-operatives and Collaboration Pilot Program, a $15 million program funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government.

The Program fostered innovative collaborative models such as co-operatives to help farmer, fishing and forestry groups tackle supply chain issues, drought and climate change. These models also helped deliver triple bottom line benefits including improved farm gate returns. Farming Together flipped the traditional university and industry partnership approach by placing the farmer as the primary partner, realising unique results. The program has evolved to become the engine room that drives the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance (RAA) at Southern Cross University. 

The RAA team at Southern Cross University is on a mission to create large-scale impact by helping the agri-food sector move towards regenerative farming practices and wholistic land management. Our national goal is improved soil quality, farm productivity, food quality, biodiversity and climate mitigation outcomes.

In an increasingly uncertain world, collaboration offers strong, secure and powerful solutions. Together we can solve complex problems, achieving far more than we could do alone. Farming Together is founded on the core values of collaboration, respect, understanding and integrity.  

Between 2016 and 2019, Southern Cross University delivered the Farm Co-operatives and Collaboration Pilot Program (Farming Together). The program delivered improved farm gate returns for farmers, fishers and foresters throughout Australia, through collaborative business models and co-operatives. We exceeded KPIs by more than 340% in all program deliverables by reaching over 730 groups comprised of 28,500 primary producers across 23 industries in every region of Australia, supporting 51 projects financially and delivering more than 1,000 consultancy services.

Farming Together catalysed the formation of over 70 new cooperatives, the sharpest spike in agricultural cooperative formation in Australian history! 
 

The Farming Together team’s exceptional ability to deliver projects with large-scale impact was demonstrated by winning prestigious national awards:

  • 2019 Business Higher Education Round Table (BHERT) Awards for Outstanding Collaboration in Community Engagement
  • 2019 Australian Financial Review (AFR) Higher Education Awards for Industry Engagement Award

Program Director, Lorraine Gordon, was awarded the 2018 Rural Community Leader of the Year for Australia for her work with farmers and was a finalist for Australian of the Year in 2020.

From Farming Together, the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance (RAA) was formed to focus on environmental challenges impacting farmers. Through RAA, SCU utilises its diverse and extensive knowledge, experience, research capacity and international recognition to enhance and implement changes to education and practices for government, consumers, farmers, and land custodians. This led to the development and delivery of the world’s only Bachelor of Science – Regenerative Agriculture major and the Graduate Certificate to Masters in Regenerative Agriculture.

We are here to assist you in all aspects of collaboration

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