This section contains information about this website and sustainable agriculture in the Perth region.
Information about agriculture and rural land use in the Perth region.
The Perth NRM Region covers an area of about 4,543 sq kilometres (1.6 million ha).The area of peri-urban and rural local governments is 1.1 million ha.
The Perth NRM region (Source: Australian Government)
The area of agricultural holdings in the Perth region was 478,013 ha in 2011 (ABS). There are 1,511 farm businesses in this area which is 12.1 percent of the Western Australian total.
The area of rural smallholding land use in the region is 123,196 ha which is 19 percent of the WA total. The number of rural small landholders is 19,764 which is 36.5 percent of the WA total (Source: Department of Agriculture and Food WA, 2007).
Land mainly used for crops is about 164,752 ha from 1,073 farm businesses. This is about 34.5 percent of the total area used by agricultural businesses. Land used for grazing is about 227,347 ha from 813 businesses representing 47.6 percent of the agricultural area.
Horticulture (fresh food production) is an important activity in the region and to the State. There are approximately 483 orchardists in the region farming around 5,884 ha representing 25.8 of the total number of growers. In relation to grape growing, there are around 246 businesses growing on around 1,770 ha representing about 30.9 precent of producers by number.
In all, land used for agricultural and rural smallholdings represents between 25-30 percent of total land use.
This page provides an overview of the Perth Region NRM sustainable agriculture project
The sustinable agriculture project is a project of Perth Region NRM. The overarching goal and objectives of the project as outlined in the Perth Region NRM Strategic Plan Overview (November 2010) [2] are as follows:
GOAL: Engage agricultural industries and farmers in implementing good management practices and promote attitudinal, behavioural and institutional change to build a sustainable agricultural sector in the region.
The Perth Region NRM sustainable agriculture project is largely funded by the Australian Government through the Caring for Our Country program.
Current projects for the 2011 - 2013 period include:
Key industry and community partners include:
Additional projects include the Regional Landcare Facilitator project and communications associated with the Australian Government's Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI).
The Perth Region NRM Sustainable Agriculture Practices Information Hub has been developed by Environmental Knowledge Systems Australia (EKSA [5]) using content from its Land Use database. This includes content which EKSA have maintained for Perth Region NRM since 2005.
Initial content has been exported from the RCMT to the TargetOn [6] web-based information management and communication platform which has been developed by EKSA and is maintained for Perth Region NRM. TargetOn is collaborative and enables all information to be easily maintained by Perth Region NRM project staff.
People involved in this project.
This information hub has been funded through the Australia Governments Caring for Our Country programme. The content has been developed from a database managed and maintained by EKSA [5]since 2005. This site represents the latest output from the database.
Project initiation and management:
Vineyard, orchard and winery management
Links:
[1] http://sustainableagriculture.perthregionnrm.com/resource/link/australian-land-use-map-20052006
[2] http://www.perthregionnrm.com/media/5690/strategic%20overview%20final.pdf
[3] http://sustainableagriculture.perthregionnrm.com/content/keith-pekin-development-officer
[4] http://sustainableagriculture.perthregionnrm.com/resource/contact/sandy-pate-perth-nrm-inc
[5] http://eksa.targeton.com/
[6] http://eksa.targeton.com/library/information-products/targeton