'Cross-boundary farming' Forum

A forum on 'Cross-boundary farming' will be held in Wagga on Friday, 7 September, 2007 and hosted by the Institute of Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University and community members are welcome to attend.

The free forum will look at the opportunities and pitfalls of cross-boundary farming with guest speaker David Brunckhorst of the University of New England attending to present information about the Tilbuster Commons project.

The experimental Tilbuster Commons project near Armidale ran from 1999-2004 with 4 families on adjacent properties agreeing to pool their land into a commons and rotationally graze cattle and goats. Financially the venture produced better returns than when run as single entities and required less management time. The environmental benefits were obvious because the grazing rotations decreased the pressures on all the properties by allowing the pastures to regenerate and reduced the need for fertiliser.

The forum will bring together a range of contributors including Paul Nolte (local farmer), Prof Deidre Lemerle (DPI), Bill Thompson (Commins Hendriks Solicitors), representatives from political parties and Bill Baker from NSW Farmers to discuss the implications and possibilities of cross boundary farming for agriculture and consider questions including:

What are the environmental benefits?
How are private property rights affected?
What about relationships between and within families?
Will the workload increase or decrease?

The forum runs from 9.00am - 3.30pm on Friday, 7 September, 2007 and is free. It will be held at the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre on CSU's Wagga campus.

Please RSVP to Kate Roberts by Friday 31 August on 6933 2680 or kroberts@csu.edu.au

A program is attached.