Most people and organisations look to achieve long-term, productive outcomes from their investments, whether that be a farm, a house, or in the case of a local government, a whole community. The cornerstone of the Productive Landscapes program is to assist managers to apply various supporting tools developed for implementation at a property or sub-catchment level. The program delivers a suite of activities to ensure long-term, productive outcomes, with a focus on the balance between production and conservation values.

There are numerous competing uses for our productive landscapes, including farming, pastoral, forestry, mining, urban development, industrial development, tourism and recreation. As a result of these multiple and often competing uses, pressure has substantially increased on our productive landscapes.

This program seeks to assist in the management of those landscapes through productive and sustainable use of resources and providing information and frameworks for best practice management. The program also works on improving our understanding and management of threats to the long-term viability of the productive lands of northern Tasmania.

This program has three themes, focusing respectively on:

• Sustainable Agriculture
• Planning for Best Practice
• Climate Change

Sustainable Agriculture

The sustainable agriculture theme promotes farm profitability, prosperous farming communities and environmental stewardship. NRM North works with a range of partners, including research agencies, industry groups, agribusiness and farmers to ensure the latest tools and techniques for sustainable agriculture are implemented, to enhance and protect on-farm natural resources including soils, water, native vegetation and biodiversity.

Planning for Best Practice

The planning for best practice theme brings together Property Management Planning (PMP) with management options which represent the best practices available within the natural resource management community, utilising current levels of understanding within a range of land uses. The goal of the PMP process is to look at the farm as a whole, covering environmental, financial and people-related issues. The plans quantify and map issues on the property as a whole and prioritise works to improve farm sustainability and productivity.  NRM North provides incentive funding to implement many of these works.

Climate Change

With climate change emerging as a key, over-arching natural resource management issue of the 21st century, this theme seeks to assist the urban and agriculture environments to deal with climate change issues in simple ways. From reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions to helping small and medium enterprises achieve energy efficiency, we work with a range of partners to adapt and mitigate the effects in an uncertain climate.