Responses and Decision Making in Natural Disasters

Late in 2023, a group of dairy farmers from across NSW were interviewed about their experiences, decisions made, support networks and lessons learnt following a number of recent natural disaster events, including the 2021-2022 floods. Tori Alexander (DPIRD) and Nikki Reichelt (University of Melbourne) share some of the findings from these interviews and the key challenges and successes observed.  

For further information on the interview findings and products take a look at the Storm and Flood Industry Recovery Program (SFIRP) webpage, or the DPIRD Dairy webpage as resources become available.

This podcast is an initiative of the NSW DPIRD Dairy Business Advisory Unit

It is brought to you in partnership the Hunter Local Land Services

Please share this podcast with your fellow farmers and colleagues and feel free to contact us with suggestions or comments via this email address thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com

Further NSW DPIRD Dairy channels to follow and subscribe to include:

NSW DPIRD Dairy Facebook page

DPIRD Intensive Livestock Twitter feed

NSW DPIRD Dairy Newsletter

Transcript here

Produced by Video Lift

The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice. 

Transcript

The Business of Dairy 

Episode #41 Transcript – “Responses and Decision Making in Natural Disasters”

Sheena Carter: Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast. I'm your host, Sheena Carter, Development Officer with the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development Dairy Team. Late last year, a group of New South Wales dairy farmers were interviewed about their experiences, decisions made, support networks and lessons learnt from recent natural disaster events, including the floods of 2021 and 2022. My colleagues Zita Ritchie and Tori Alexander discuss with the project researcher, Nikki Reichelt, from the University of Melbourne, some of the findings from these farmer interviews including the key challenges and successes observed. For further information on the interview findings and products from the Storm and Flood Industry Recovery Program see the show notes for website links.

Zita Ritchie: Welcome to the podcast, Tori and Nikki. Thanks for joining us today. Look, I think as a bit of context, as we know, we've experienced some significant natural disasters over recent years in New South Wales. A bit of background for those that are listening, the Storm and Flood Industry Recovery Program was funded following the 2021 New South Wales floods. And then subsequently, we experienced more floods in 2022. The intent of this program was to support future dairy industry preparedness and resilience, and industry development across New South Wales. The program is made up of three programs with 12 projects, led by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, and also Dairy New South Wales. But today we've come together to talk about one specific project, which is really focused on better response and short-term recovery. So, look, I will hand over to Tori to talk more about that specific project, which ties into the overall program of better response and short-term recovery. So, Tori, thanks for joining us, and perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about the project and what it aims to achieve.

Tori Alexander: Thanks Zita. Thanks for having Nikki and I on the podcast episode. So, the Farmer Emergency Response Project was born out of the recognition that, while we have a lot of anecdotal awareness of dairy farmer experience and response to natural disaster and emergency events, we're limited in our knowledge to do with the details of how they respond, how they make decisions, and then a reflection on their experiences and decisions moving forward. So, one of the reasons behind the project was to be able to capture that information in a more formalised capacity, but also to use it to create tools and resources to help farmers in the future, when more natural disasters are going to occur.

So, it was designed to engage with farmers about their experiences, understand their reflections, decision-making processes, and utilised networks they reached out to, and a reflection on their actions and their recovery. To do this, we interviewed 21 farmers across New South Wales. We interviewed from the very north of New South Wales through to the south in Bega, and we did a couple of farms out in the western region. And I do want to take this opportunity to thank those farmers very sincerely for their time and effort to be involved in this project. Without their input, we wouldn't be able to do this work, so I have a lot of gratitude to those farmers for participating. The reason that we picked the farms in those locations was to get a geographical representation of farms across New South Wales. The majority of farms were impacted by storm and flood or natural disaster events in the last few years, and we tried to get representation from those large dairy farming regions across the state.

Zita Ritchie: That's right. It really covered a broad area, and like you said, it was quite an involved process meeting with those farmers. So, there were really good insights gathered by the sounds of it. Nikki, you've also been involved with the project with Tori. Are you able to explain a bit more about your role and background and your involvement in the project?

Nikki Reichelt: Yeah, thank you, Zita. It was a real pleasure to be part of this project. My role was a key social researcher of the project, under the supervision of Professor Ruth Nettle at the University of Melbourne. So, I led the human ethics approval process for the research, the data analysis, and the report writing. I work for the Rural Innovation Research Group, and we're a team of eight social researchers based in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. We're really an applied social science group in agriculture. Some of our projects and themes focus on improving transitions in farming systems, such as farm decision-making, improving knowledge utilisation, looking at the social implications of technological developments, improving extension and change management, looking the role of the private sector in extension, and things like improving resource management related to community-based natural resource management and sustainable farming. So, we're a very applied group, so it was really relevant for us to be part of this project, engaging directly with farmers and service providers.

Zita Ritchie: Wow. So yeah, you cover a lot of different things in your group, don't you, by the sounds of it?

Nikki Reichelt: Yeah, we do.

Zita Ritchie: And so, Nikki and Tori, I guess — well, maybe Nikki, you can answer this. So, you know, you've interviewed 21 farmers, and you completed those interviews at the end of last year. And since that time, you've been doing lots of data analysis and looking at some of the key findings and what challenges came out of those interviews. Nikki, can you maybe touch on that? What did you find, and what were some of the challenges that were presented?

Nikki Reichelt: Yeah, first of all, I just wanted to say the dairy farmers overall really demonstrated they have the capability and capacity to navigate their way through very challenging conditions. During those recent floods and prolonged wet, cows were still fed and milked, and the business kept going under very constraining conditions. So, you know, take my hat off to the dairy farmers there. But look, they did face some significant challenges through those experiences of floods, bushfires, prolonged wet conditions, and sometimes drought. With the prolonged wet conditions, the challenge for most dairy farmers was just understanding that they were in a prolonged wet event in the first place because they hadn't really experienced that prolonged wet event before. They didn't really know they were in the middle of one, and so I guess they weren't thinking about what they needed to do to recover and respond to a prolonged wet event. So their recovery plans weren't necessarily planned with that in mind. It was a really new and challenging condition to respond to.

Some of the other things was just the impacts on people, animals, the feed base, infrastructure, and local landscape – just those ongoing prolonged wet conditions and back-to-back floods. Sometimes with the fires – even though people had experienced bushfires before — some of the bushfires in 2019–2020 era, they were really much larger, bigger, more intense, and faster. The magnitude of these sort of things weren’t really experienced before so there was a sense of being a little unprepared for those mega, unprecedented type of natural disasters.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of outside the realm of what we'd experienced before. So, as you were going through the data and, I guess, different themes arose from the interviews as well, Nikki, was there anything surprising that came out of that? Looking at different aspects around decision-making, you mentioned planning, as well. Do you want to touch on some of the decisions that were made and anything surprising that came through with that?

Nikki Reichelt: Yeah, so when farmers were dealing with a prolonged wet condition, flood, bushfire, or drought, dairy farmers seemed to be making different types of decisions during the stages of an immediate response and recovery. The three main types of decisions that were made were intuitive, considered, and adaptive. What we mean by intuitive is making those decisions based on past experiences and those gut feelings where you have a strong sense about what to do, what feels right. A considered response is really referring to dairy farmers gathering information — whether from websites, talking to other people, whether that be staff or advisors — having discussions with others and weighing up the options. Another type of decision was an adaptive type of decision, based on a need to try something different in the moment because you realise the conditions are novel, and you need to change your plan, change your usual response and maybe question that gut feeling.

So dairy farmers were making all three types of decisions, and what varied amongst dairy farmers is their personal preference for one type of decision over another. Some farmers talked a lot around their intuitive or gut feelings that they used to base their decisions on, while others talked about having a more adaptive or considered response. Sometimes this also varied with the type of natural disaster. If you have a fast and quick natural disaster, like a mega-bushfire, you might have to really rely on that intuitive, gut feeling for an in-the-moment response. But if you have a long, drawn-out natural disaster, like a drought, you’ve got a bit more time to think about and consider your response. So the urgency of the situation and the personality type and preference for decisions really created that variation in decision-making types.

I just wanted to quickly mention, though, there was also a sense of, you know, there’s a challenge if you just rely on your gut feeling all the time because you are relying on past experiences – that has limitations. Like one dairy farmer said, "For them, the past is no longer a guide for the future." So past experiences can no longer be relied upon as much as they used to. So this dairy farmer did acknowledged that their gut feeling decision-type did have its limitations with new and novel type natural disasters. With adaptive type of decisions, if you're just relying on adaptive in-the-moment type of decisions and improvising, you can become quite exhausted doing all that trial and error effort and sometimes those experiments that you do make in the moment are not always effective. So, really, a considered decision tends to prove most effective at the end of the day when farmers can step back, question their own thinking, and take an opportunity to access other dairy farmers' knowledge, or local relevant dairy services in their area, or even the public emergency and extension services.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, I mean, that’s all really interesting. Especially because there are a number of different decisions being made all the time, especially during the response. Actually, just explaining the differences in those types I find quite interesting. Like you said, "considered" has a role, but does that become more prevalent in, say, the recovery versus response? Or do you find that different decisions are more prevalent at different stages in the response?

Nikki Reichelt: Look, I have to say, with the 20 or so interviews I looked at, those three different types of decisions were made during the response – immediate response and recovery. It was more to do with personal preference but also the type of natural disaster you were responding to and how much time you had.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, that’s really interesting to hear. So, I mean, that’s the decision-making side of things. Tori, and also Nikki, you mentioned planning. What were some of the key things that came through around planning? Did farmers have a plan? Was the plan suitable? I mean, if a lot of these intuitive decisions are being made in their head, does that mean the plan is also in their head as well? What came through in the interviews about that?

Tori Alexander: Planning is an interesting one. Most of the farmers interviewed said that they had a plan, but that plan tended to be, as you mentioned, Zita, more of a plan in their head rather than a sit-down, write-out and document type of plan. Leading on from what Nikki mentioned about the different types of decision-making, the idea that your gut feeling or past experience is now not as valuable, so to speak, as it might have been in the past — that was a theme that really came through in a lot of the interviews that we conducted, particularly tied to the prolonged wet conditions, because they were conditions that had not been experienced by farmers in the past. It went on for a long period of time, and it was an unknown length of time with, in some cases, multiple floods scattered in between. So you're dealing with a prolonged event as well as those more acute flooding events.

So, similarly again to the different types of decisions being made and how that came largely down to personal preference, planning is also one of those things that comes down to personal preference. There was a fair bit of sentiment from farmers that they don’t want to document a plan or they don’t see a great value in documenting a plan because they feel like events evolve and change, like, one event is different to another, so if they prepare a plan for one event, is it going to be a relevant plan for the next time that same type of disaster happens? But in saying that, there were then farmers that did have quite detailed written-out plans in place, and they were very effective for those farmers. We had a farmer who had a bushfire plan – a very detailed bushfire plan – that was effective in their situation for the 2019 bushfires. And we had another farmer who had a very detailed community-based plan that developed in conjunction with other government and emergency services, and again that plan was highly effective in the multiple flooding events that that farm experienced. The feedback on that particular plan was that they had never lost an animal since implementing that plan, and they view it as a hugely valuable resource for their business. So, I suppose in summary again, plans are things that vary between farmers — whether they’re written or in their head or discussed with their staff. But there is great value in a plan and I think most farmers did indicate that their plans came into play and were helpful during their response and recovery.

Zita Ritchie: I think that’s really interesting. Like you said, it’s very common that a lot of farmers have that plan in their head, and they’re making those decisions, and they kind of know what to do. But also, really interesting to see those specific examples of other farmers that have got really detailed, written-down plans and the benefit that they’ve got from those as well. I know that we were asking farmers around networks and who they reached out to, who reached out to them, maybe specific services or networks that really assisted in their response and recovery. Are you able to shed a bit of light on what came out of that with networks?

Tori Alexander: I think networks are one of the things that’s really valuable for farmers, not only in their response but in their recovery as well. There was a lot of comments around, even just a simple phone call to make sure they were okay, how helpful that was in their recovery and their ability to pause and take a moment to put things in perspective, and then be able to move forward with a bit of a decision path or a bit of renewed energy for the physically draining conditions they were in but also the mental challenges of overcoming all the decisions that had to be made. Farmers who had good networks have a more positive reflection on their recovery as well. That was tied in with a lot of comments around how helpful those networks were.

Now, the networks could be friends, family and, for example, staff that work on the farm, but it could also be service providers – the vets, vets were often mentioned, and then there were, you know, if you have a specialist service provider, such as an agronomist or a nutritionist, they were often mentioned, as well. And then, just your local feed supplier or just your local produce store were also mentioned in a lot of interviews. The kinds of assistance that farmers found useful, again it varied between farmers and what their situation was, it could be anything from that phone call through to someone coming on-farm to help. There was a lot of reflection that it would’ve been very helpful to have boots on the ground in the moment to help with a lot of the physical tasks, such as removing debris from the floods or replacing fences, particularly boundary fences, for example. But also a recognition that a lot of those physical needs of the farm came down to prioritising what was most important and then being able to allocate the assistance that was available to the tasks of highest priority. One farmer reflected saying, if wasn’t for the networks their situation was beyond the capacity that they had at that particular time, but their networks came in and helped them toss around ideas, make decisions, and support them through that recovery process.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah for sure. Seeing those networks also assist in that decision-making process, like Nikki mentioned earlier as well. That’s really interesting. So, piecing it all together now then, so we’ve talked about decision-making aspects, planning, and networks. Overall, were there any key lessons learned through the interviews? I don’t know, Nikki or Tori, you might want to comment on that?

Nikki Reichelt: There were a lot of lessons that dairy farmers learned from these recent natural disasters that they’ve lived through. Farmers are very willing to learn and reflect on what worked and what hasn’t worked. There was a lot of lessons learned around infrastructure, equipment, feed-based management, animals, and people. If it’s useful, I can just provide a couple of examples of those?

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, absolutely. Please do.

Nikki Reichelt: Just with infrastructure, some of the farmers said it actually pays to over-engineer some of your building structures to reduce the risk of structural failure during floods. One farmer had a wall of one of their buildings collapse just because it wasn’t over-engineered and have that extra structural support. So, over-engineering structures was definitely a lesson learned. And raising the height of laneways helps to reduce flood damage and provides access to other parts of the property while recovering from a flood. Just reworking the surface of your laneway with gravel, sandstone, rubber matting. Trying out different types of surfaces to provide an alternative, clean, dry area for cows to be fed or rested on when your paddocks are damaged by floods or prolonged wet. So just having these other alternatives to help feed your cattle in safe and dry places. That was a big lesson learned.

And installing a concrete feed pad definitely helped with getting back to business-as-usual operations in a faster and more effective way, and it also minimises feed wastage and improves animal health by keeping them dry and not having them standing in wet paddocks of course, I guess, reducing the risk of infection as well. So, it’s got a health aspect to providing those safe, dry feeding areas, that can be done in a number of ways and improvised.

In terms of just equipment, in terms of bushfires, it was really about purchasing a firefighting unit, making sure you’ve got pumps, and generators, and hoses. With other things around floods, one farmer said they were so glad that they invested in large vats to store high volumes of milk during natural disasters when milk tankers can’t access their properties. So they were able to, with those larger vats, hold off on getting the tanker to come in because they have a larger storage capacity and that milk didn’t have to be thrown out because it could still be stored safely in those larger vats. So just some of those simple, practical things, but things really did help farmers, overall, respond and recover through those natural disasters.

A couple of just quick general insights: some farmers basically said each natural disaster you experience can teach you something. So, really take the time to think what worked for your farm and what didn’t. It really pays to take that time to reflect. And it is important to document and pass on that knowledge to your staff and family to know what is possible to do, and not to do, in a response and recovery situation. So documenting those things is also really important, not just to think about them. And just to learn to accept whatever happens during a natural disaster, you know, you can’t change what has happened in the past, you just have to keep moving forward.

Zita Ritchie: Thanks for sharing a few of those gems. There’s so many examples of that isn’t there? From all the farms that we interviewed. I think that’s a good insight into some of the things that were captured. Tori, did you want to add anything on to any of those lessons?

Tori Alexander: The only thing I think maybe was a strong reflection from most farms, which isn’t so much to do with their own decisions to help their recovery, but it was to do with the assistance that was provided by grants. There was a lot of feedback that those grants had immense positive benefits on the farms, to be able to help with paying for damaged infrastructure, getting the farm back to operating faster because there was additional cash available to help. I think every single farmer was immensely grateful for that, so I just wanted to add that in.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, sure. No, absolutely. Well, I think that’s been a really good summary. So, I guess, where to next? I know you’ve analysed all those farms, and you’ve touched on some of the results. Tori, going forward, what are some of the recommendations that have come out of the analysis by Nikki’s group, and where to next with the project?

Tori Alexander: Yeah, Nikki did an amazing job analysing this data. It was very complicated, and yeah a great job, so thank you, Nikki, for that. From the analysis that she did, there were nine recommendations that we have been provided. Four of those nine recommendations we are able to address between now and the end of the year within the life of this current project, and the remainder we’re going to attempt to address through other agencies or projects into the future.

The four that we are addressing at the moment are around producing case studies to show the experiences, decisions, and reflections of farmers that went through natural disasters, so that is currently underway. We’ll be producing six case studies in total, and three will have a video component to them. There was also a recommendation that information is quite challenging to find, so when farmers go to look up, how to create a plan for a response to an event, or who to contact to assist with something, that information can be quite hard to find, or it’s not necessarily dairy-specific or even agriculture-specific. So the recommendation was to bring that information together into one place that is easy to access and easy to use for farmers. So we’re working on that at the moment, with a repository of sorts, going on the New South Wales DPIRD website.

There was a recommendation to support networks, but also make services for the industry easy to access as well, or easy to identify, to create a registry of services that service the dairy industry in New South Wales. That has also been created, that’s being managed through Grow Rural and it’s a service provider registry, so that is actually live now and we’ll pop a link for that in the description for the podcast for anyone who wishes to have a look at it.

The final recommendation that we’ll be looking at addressing now has to do with helping to create a decision-support tool, for lack of a better word to describe it, for those decisions that have to be made in the midst, or the very short-term recovery of a natural disaster. So when farmers are overwhelmed by decisions and they’re not sure which decisions to prioritise, or how to prioritise them, this tool is going to be designed to help with that, or help service providers know how to help farmers as well in these situations. It’s very complicated, as everyone who’s lived through it would know, and those questions of, “is this the right decision?”, that can sometimes halt decision-making altogether – this tool is designed to help work through those things.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, that’s great. So, there’s a whole suite of things you’re working on in the background. Like you mentioned, there will be links to those in the episode’s notes, and also keep an eye out for those things as they come to fruition over the coming months. But that’s really great, I guess, aspects to be moving forward with from the outcomes of the interviews. Is there anything else either of you would like to mention before we wrap things up?

Nikki Reichelt: I’d just like to say, while it was really impressive how dairy farmers have managed to continue dairying post-floods, post-prolonged wet conditions, bushfires, and droughts, there are definitely ways we can improve the way we support dairy farmers during their natural disaster response and recovery efforts. I think we’re a couple of steps closer to making those improvements. It’s been a very valuable project to work on.

Zita Ritchie: Yeah, I absolutely agree. It’s been really useful getting those experiences directly from the farmers and documenting that, and having a concrete summary to be able to move forward. Like you said, they’ve done an amazing job weathering all these events, but like anything, we’ve got room for improvement in how we can better support farmers. I think it’s only a valuable thing moving forward. So, that’s fantastic. 

Look, thank you both for joining us today, Tori and Nikki, for telling us more about the project. Like you said, there’s more information available in the notes, but please reach out to either Tori or myself and the team as well, if you want any more information, and we’re happy to share that with you. Thanks very much to both of you for joining, and I look forward to seeing more of the recommendations come to fruition as we go forward.

Tori Alexander: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.

Nikki Reichelt: Thank you, Zita. Thank you, Tori.

Sheena Carter: That's all for today's episode of The Business of Dairy. We hope you enjoyed diving into the fascinating world of dairy farming and industry insights. As we continue to expand and evolve, we greatly appreciate your support. Our show is thriving, attracting new listeners each week, but we believe there's always room to grow, and we need your help to make it happen. If you've found value in our discussions, we kindly ask you to take a moment to rate and leave a comment about the podcast on your preferred platform. Your feedback not only lets us know what you enjoy but also helps boost our visibility to others who might benefit from our content. I sincerely thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to bringing you more engaging episodes in the future with the continued funding and support of the Hunter Local Land Services. Until next time, stay curious and keep milking those opportunities.

Bottom of Form