Wet Tropics Sustainable Agriculture Survey Interim Report

A survey of rural landholders in the Wet Tropics Natural Resource Management region

Research Report

Nick Emtage¹ and John Reghenzani²

¹ School of Natural and Rural Systems Management, The University of Queensland

² Terrain NRM Ltd, Innisfail 

ISBN 9781921359095
Published May 2008

MTSRF Project 4.9.4 - Integrating ecology, economics and people in forest and landscapes 

Extract

This report describes the results of a survey conducted among 1,600 rural landholders in the Wet Tropics region of Far North Queensland in 2007-2008. The main purpose of the survey was to investigate key social and economic issues affecting landholders’ decision making in regards to the use of natural resource management practices, and to examine landholders’ adoption of and attitudes toward selected currently recommended practices for various
industries. A total of 320 usable responses were received.

This report provides a summary of responses to the survey using descriptive statistics, with a breakdown of the responses according to the primary purpose for land ownership provided where this break-down is appropriate. Reports of the analyses of relationships between responses to various topics and socio-economic characteristics will be compiled following completion of the current report and are expected to be released in May 2008.

The survey was undertaken one and a half years after Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry caused a great deal of destruction to the environment, crops and built infrstructure in the Innisfail and southern Atherton Tablelands parts of the region. The survey covered a variety of landholdings in terms of the size of their area, the climate they experience, their topography and the landholders’ main purpose for owning rural land. Landholders targeted in the survey were a random selection of people who have freehold properties of greater than two hectares in area. Respondents ranged from those with twohectare rural residential landholdings with no agricultural enterprises through to landholders whose properties are used for grazing and cropping enterprises and cover more than 70,000 ha, which are located on the boundaries of the region where the climate can be described as the ‘dry tropics’.

This report is intended to provide an overview of the responses to the survey, providing descriptive statistics (including averages, median values, frequency distributions and percentages) of the responses. Details about the methods used to conduct the survey are provided in a separate background and technical report published through the RRRC (Project 4.9.4). Following the publication of this report the research team intend to undertake extensive statistical analyse of the responses. These analyses will examine the relationships between variables, that is, the relationships between respondents’ socio-economic characteristics and their property management objectives, attitudes to practices, and their current and intended practices. These analyses will be used to define and describe a set of landholder types in relation to NRM activities on private rural landholdings in the Wet Tropics region.