Building Drought Resilience in the Northern and Yorke Region.
A living, strategic plan guiding investment to help farm businesses, agricultural supply chains and communities across the region build lasting resilience to drought.
What the Plan does
The Northern and Yorke Regional Drought Resilience Plan (NYRDRP) informs, plans and prioritises future investment in drought resilience across the region. It is a living document, regularly used to identify, prioritise and coordinate the actions needed to build resilience among farm businesses, supply chains and the wider community.
Northern and Yorke is one of three South Australian pilot regions developing a regional drought resilience plan, funded through the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, an initiative designed to strengthen farmer and community resilience and preparedness as the climate changes.
Why resilience planning matters now
The region’s communities and agricultural industries have shown strong adaptive capacity over recent decades, weathering natural hazards and broader shifts in climate and markets. But the scale of projected change means that capacity cannot be taken for granted. Modelling from the Department for Environment and Water (2020) points to a harder road ahead:
- Drought is projected to become more severe, driven by rising evaporation and falling precipitation.
- Droughts are expected to occur more often, with the region projected to spend 65% of the time in drought by 2030.
- Root zone soil moisture available for crop and pasture growth is in chronic decline through the growing season.
- During drought years specifically, further sharp reductions in root zone soil moisture are projected, sharpening acute impacts on farm production.
Agriculture is the region’s primary employer and economic driver, making farm enterprises and their supply chains highly exposed to reduced rainfall and rising evaporation. The flow-on effects reach well beyond the farm gate, touching non-agricultural businesses, individuals and community organisations alike.
Three themes, five enabling priorities
The Plan sets out the risks and opportunities identified through drought resilience planning, organised around three themes.
Resilient farming enterprises
- Risk management
- Efficiency
- Foresight capabilities
Resilient industry
- Regional economic diversification
- Liveability and employment opportunities
Resilient communities
- Priorities identified through community and stakeholder engagement
Built through engagement, not assumption
The NYRDRP was co-designed with the region, drawing on more than 90 unique stakeholder engagement experiences alongside extensive desktop research, to ensure current and future drought risks are reported accurately.
Objectives of the Plan
- Empower the community to identify and understand the impacts of drought.
- Consultatively develop a plan that supports system-scale approaches to agriculture, ecosystem services and social support, and encourages coordinated action to capture opportunities for economic resilience.
- Strengthen partnerships and networks between stakeholders to inform ongoing drought resilience planning.
- Support best-practice information management, so decisions about resilience are robust and progress can be monitored over time.
The approach: incremental, planned and transformational change
The Plan applies the CSIRO’s Resilience, Adaptation Pathways and Transformation Approach, which distinguishes between three categories of change facing farm businesses as conditions shift.
- 3 SA pilot regions
- 90+ Stakeholder engagements
- 65% Projected time in drought by 2030