Episode 10: Has your innovation actually been successful?

So, you’ve implemented change, well done! How do you know it was all worth it? 

This episode is the final from our current series on 'how to innovate' - and it's time to take stock. But really, that all comes down how you measure your success.

In the first episode, "What is innovation?", we looked at three key motivators: 

1) for growth and profit 
2) for climate resilience or consumer future-proofing 
3) for community building. 

And it turns out these key motivators are also quite useful as metrics of success.

So, in this episode hear how social and cultural innovations have helped to forge bush tucker markets and create employment pathways at Worn Gundidj, an Aboriginal Cooperative in south-west Victoria; we discover how regional collaborations have created fit-for-purpose research and innovation across the Mallee region of Victoria and; we learn some of the key numbers and strategic questions you should be asking when measuring the success of an innovation.

GUESTS:

Dylan Kelly & Peter Lyles, Horticulture, Worn Gundidj (based in Tower Hill and Warrnambool)

Rebecca Wells, Chief Executive of the Mallee Regional Innovation Centre (MRIC)

Matt Dalgleish – Agricultural market analyst at Episode 3

This podcast has been created by the Victoria Drought Resilience Innovation and Adoption Hub and is funded through the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.

Transcript

Kirsten Diprose:

Innovation Ag is made on the lands of the Gunditjmara and Wurundjeri peoples. We acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging.

Rebecca Wells:

Globally competitive, resilient, sustainable, and prosperous. I guess to us, they're not throw-away keywords. We really think that our position and what we contribute can be quite considerable in the fields that we're working in.

Dylan Kelly:

I get to be a part of smoking ceremonies. I hear a lot about what's going on in the community, see tourists coming in, and they're wanting to learn about plants, they're wanting to learn about the local history. And me also being able to play a part and share my knowledge and learn at the same time.

Matt Dalgleish:

People always say money's not important, but it's only those people that are comfortable in their situation with their money that can say that. When you are struggling for money, it's absolutely important, and it's the only thing sometimes on your mind.

Kirsten Diprose:

Hello and welcome to Innovation Ag, brought to you by the Victoria Drought and Innovation Hub. I'm Kirsten Diprose.

This episode is the final episode from our season on how to innovate, and it's time to take stock. Like any good innovation journey, at the end of it all, we need to ask, did it work? Could we have done better? But really, that all comes down to how you measure your success.

You might remember in episode one, what is innovation? We looked at three key motivators for innovation. They were, one, for growth and profit. Two for climate resilience or consumer future-proofing. And three, for community building. And of course, it can be a combination of all of them.

So these motivators are also pretty good metrics for success. And sometimes success is obvious. You trial a new seed type and you get a higher yield. Easy. But other kinds of innovations, especially around adoption or social change, take time, and it can be hard to know if what you're doing is working while you're doing it.

So in this episode we speak to market analyst Matt Dalgleish for a numbers perspective. We speak to the CEO of Mallee Regional Innovation Centre, Rebecca Wells, for a regional collaboration perspective, and then Dylan Kelly and Peter Lyles from Worn Gundidj, an Aboriginal cooperative in Southwest Victoria, for a community building perspective. At least that's what I thought I was going to do. But as you'll hear, innovation doesn't fit nicely into categorical boxes.

But let's start with social and community innovation, where horticulture at a nursery run by Worn Gundidj in Tower Hill is helping people to find meaningful employment, while also bringing unique bush food flavours to restaurants and even supermarket shelves.

Dylan Kelly:

My name is Dylan Kelly. I'm a Barkindji Madi Madi Wanggumara man. I would like to pay my respect to the Eastern Maar people, the traditional owners of the land of where we meet. I'd like to pay my respect to the elders, past, present, and emerging.

Kirsten Diprose:

Thanks for that welcome, Dylan, and being here to share your story. So what's your role at Worn Gundidj Nursery?

Dylan Kelly:

I'm a trainee doing a traineeship in horticulture, my cert II. So I'm into my second year. And it's been really, really great for me. I've been enjoying propagating plants, watching them grow from seeds, getting them into the seed trays and then out into tubes. It's been really, really good. Enjoying it still.

Kirsten Diprose:

Dylan works with nursery manager, Peter Lyles.

Peter Lyles:

I've been in horticulture for 48 years, so landscaping and retail and I'm enjoying, it's great. And I've got these guys on board, and we're a social enterprise as well, so some of the guys have gone through difficult times. They're really enjoying it and really fantastic. So we've got a very, very close-knit unit here. There's only five of us, and we produce quite a lot of high quality plants.

Kirsten Diprose:

For Dylan, horticulture is more than just a passion. It's helped turn his life around.

Dylan Kelly:

So I'm in recovery. I went to rehab in Melbourne, September 2021. So I'm 19 months sober off drugs and alcohol, where before I found the nursery I was hanging with the wrong crowds, getting myself into a lot of trouble, found it very hard to get away and break the cycle. Gratefully, I found the nursery and good bunch of people and Pete, and he gave me the opportunity to come in and do some volunteer work. Yeah, I've just stuck at it and it's been great for me, and still, yeah, I'm loving coming to work.

Kirsten Diprose:

Congratulations on your sobriety. Plants are therapy is the saying, that plants just have this amazing and gardening ability for our own mental health.

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah, I do believe that. Yeah, I don't mind 'pricking out'... There's a lot. There's normally about a thousand in a tray when we do it, but it keeps me very occupied, and I've got a really good group of work colleagues and we can have a joke and have a laugh and-

Peter Lyles:

Lots of laughs.

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah. We get the job done.

Peter Lyles:

But it is very therapeutic for them, for all the guys. We've got three people who've been through. And that's part of our social enterprise, which is what Worn Gundidj is all about. So a job opportunity. We're immensely proud of the guys, what they've achieved in two to three years.

Dylan Kelly:

Well, actually, before I went to rehab, I come in for a few days, my vehicle got impounded, and I didn't have enough money to get it out of impoundment, and I was speaking to Kaleb Comollatti, who was the bush food manager. So he actually helped me get into the Worn Gundidj nursery, into the nursery, and they helped me with getting my car out of impoundment. I come in and worked for a few days to get some money to be able to get it out before I went to rehab, or it would've been crushed.

So I remembered I came in and they gave me a hand when I really needed it, and I just thought that was great. And I wanted to come back in because I didn't mind the environment. When I did come in, I wasn't in the best space at that time. I was still trying to find my feet, but I knew deep down that it was what I needed to be doing to better myself, and I'm glad and happy that I did have the opportunity to come in.

Kirsten Diprose:

What's Dylan like to work with, Pete?

Peter Lyles:

Oh, excellent. Great. I've got to say it because he's going to beat me if I don't [lauging]. Nah nah, really good. Look, as part of my training for these guys, I've taught TAFE and I've done lots of other things in me time. So we're now training him in... He's getting out to talk to groups, and he talked to 10 different land care groups the other day, and out of that we've actually had one lot come in and put an order in for spring. So he's now getting that confidence of where he can go out and talk to different groups.

But I've seen this guy come on from when he first came as a volunteer, and he used to ring me from rehab once a week, "G'day, Pete. Can I have a job? Can I have a job? Can I have a job?" "Yeah, all right, Dylan, I'll give you a job."

Dylan Kelly:

Pete's really good because he's got that horticulture and teaching classes, so he's very easy to understand and he helps me get through all my bookwork. So I'm on track.

Kirsten Diprose:

Tell me about the actual plants that you grow, the native plants.

Dylan Kelly:

So we grow a lot of native indigenous plants to this area. So they do have a high success rate in growing. We've got a wide range of bush tucker plants, which are very popular. We've got some noon-flower.

Peter Lyles:

It's an interesting one, isn't it?

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah, It's like a ground cover, and you can eat the leaf of it. It's like a-

Peter Lyles:

A succulent.

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah, it's good for when you're dehydrated.

Peter Lyles:

So we mainly provide land care and CMA, don't we?

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah.

Peter Lyles:

So basically, since I've taken over the nursery, our direction or my direction has been obviously land care. So we do a lot with Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority. They do a lot with Warrnambool City Council, Moyne Shire, all the shires as far as Colac and the Mount Gambier border and also up in Grampians. And as Dylan said, it's all the local species that you can see as you're driving around.

Plus, we also then started getting into growing the bush food as well. It sort of happened by an accident, the fact that we were growing stuff that was also bush food. We then just set up our little bush food division, which then became Bush Food Programme, drying bush food, which we buy and then redistribute to lots of different restaurants around the area, and even up to a couple of the breweries. They're making a lot of bush food beers, or additives to beers and to gin and things like that. And then they went into ice cream. So we do four different tubs of ice cream. So we've got strawberry gum-

Dylan Kelly:

Peppermint gum. Davidson plum?

Peter Lyles:

Davidson Plum and wattle seed, isn't it?

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah.

Peter Lyles:

Yeah.

Kirsten Diprose:

Now these ice creams, I've seen them pop up on fancy restaurant lists. It's through Timboon Fine Ice Cream, which quite a big commercial brand that you're working with.

Peter Lyles:

Yeah. And we've just got another order. So we basically do Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Koroit, and Portland. They're the four main ones. And obviously as it gets better, we'll expand, go to other areas.

Dylan Kelly:

So they are in store at IGA. You can pick up the tubs from-

Peter Lyles:

Little tiny tubs, and then you can get the bigger tubs as well. And then commercially, we sell it to a lot of the bigger restaurants. And as you probably know it, the bush food, ever since it hit, so things like MasterChef and all those other shows, it just goes ballistic.

20-odd years ago when I was involved, when it was then Nowawat Nursey that they tried all this bush food then, and no, they couldn't even give it away. Nobody was interested. Now people knock on the door, "Have you got this? Have you got that?" You just can't... It's just gone ballistic, basically.

Dylan Kelly:

In the nursery we've got a freezer and a fridge, so we do just sell them individually, just like our plants at the back. We do sell in large quantity for orders, like for CMA and for the Rail Trail, Koroit Rail Trail. They put orders in for 3,000 plants, but also we can have an ordinary person who's come in and buy one tube for $2.50, one tree. So yeah, it's-

Peter Lyles:

Very diversified, isn't it?

Dylan Kelly:

Yep.

Peter Lyles:

So sales are really good, and of course the rain helps. So this is our selling time. So autumn, winter and spring's our selling time, but we're also very aware of the weather. We're the same as farmers. But certainly we do work a lot in with farmers, with farm groups and also the land care people and landscapers. So we're now finding that... When I first started out this industry in Australia, it's come around full circle to where everybody wants native plants. And it's interesting that the governments, state and federal, are really pushing native stuff and I watch Landline pretty much nearly every week and I sort of see where some of the awards are going to where they're doing these plantings in rows. And they're putting in all your grasses and native plants, as well as weeds and stuff to where they're attracting all the insects, beneficial and non-beneficial.

And so the way we're really pushing is into this conservation side, working with different groups. And one of the projects we're really excited about is for the red-tailed black cockatoo. And apparently there's only 1,500 left, whether it's Australia or just this area. So we're doing that through Wanon Water. So we're looking at really going more into this conservation side of things.

Kirsten Diprose:

You're plugged into the community, like lots of different aspects and organisations within the broader Warrnambool community, you're really plugged into. It kind of makes me think... You describe yourself as a social enterprise. What does that mean to you?

Dylan Kelly:

I think it's really good to give people that opportunity in the hand to get out there and get a bit ahead in life or get a bit of help just from having a career and being a bit independent. I think that's very important. It's been great for me. I definitely am a whole lot happier and able to be a supportive father for my children, financially and emotionally. And that thanks to having help within this actual organisation to get above water and one foot in front of the other.

Kirsten Diprose:

Yeah. And do you see yourself pursuing this as a career? Where do you want to see yourself in five years?

Dylan Kelly:

Yeah, I'm definitely going to stick out and stay in the nursery. We're good where we're at, but I would like to see us develop a bit more.

Peter Lyles:

Yeah. So as part of social enterprise, it's social development as well. So whether it's indigenous people or non-indigenous people that come in here with different problems, and we work in a different way.

Looking to the past 40-odd years of my experience, this place is unique in the fact of how we work. We take into account some of the problems they've had, and problems still eventuating, particularly around children and accesses and stuff like that. That's one of the problems we have. But in this workplace, we're very understanding to where if you were to go to a lawyer this afternoon for an hour and a half, some businesses would say, "Look, we'll take it off your wages." We don't do that. We could, but we don't because we're very sensitive to the needs of our workforce. But then again, Dylan might, "Well, I'll work till 5 o'clock." So we have this balance, which a lot of other businesses would not even tolerate. We have to be very mindful of that part of their recovery and the way indigenous communities work.

Kirsten Diprose:

Yeah. And how does Worn Gundidj work as a social enterprise in terms of you still have bills to pay, you've got wages to pay, how are you supported financially? And then also, what happens with the money that comes in from the plants and products that you sell? Where does it go?

Peter Lyles:

Yeah. So we're a non-for-profit organisation, which doesn't mean we don't make profit, but then it gets back into the nursery or go back into other programmes or the social programmes. It might go into bush food. The nursery has to run on a break-even basis. Obviously over the summertime it's always a bit stretched out because we don't sell many plants in summer. But having said that, down the track, we'll be looking at doing more ice cream and bush food, so to counteract that.

So Jobs Victoria is one of our major organisations. We've got places in Portland, Hamilton, Warrnambool, Geelong, Ballarat. There's about five or six offices out there. They're our main source of income. But having said that, we do make profits, and then that has to go back in... For example, at the nursery, I'm looking now at upgrading. It's only been open probably two years or more, just over two years.

Kirsten Diprose:

Yeah. Look, this particular episode of the podcast, we're looking at how do you measure success, and there are financial metrics, and we're all quite aware of those because I think that's what we hear about a lot, whether it's on the media or what's the profit? What's the GDP? We hear all this all the time. So I suppose your enterprise is a really great way of looking at other metrics to measure yourself.

Peter Lyles:

I think, to me, success is where... break into different areas where we'll have social success with the people that work here and their personal achievements, and I think the next one is rebuilding the nursery. We've had so many people in that once the nursery closed down five years ago, they said, "Oh, it's open again, and I'm really happy about this." And we've got farmers say, "Oh, I used to buy everything from you."

So that part of success is having that to where people are rediscovering us. And also our new products. So I think the success is actually seeing those products being sold and getting this fabulous feedback. We've got returning customers of three, four, five times, and plants are just taking off. Everything I put in just grows. It's fantastic. Never happened before. And then you get people coming end of the day, and a lady bought all this bush tucker food, dried stuff and, oh, it's fantastic.

Kirsten Diprose:

The plants are growing, products are being sold. The people are happy. There's even ice cream. This is literally every farmer's dream. Possibly everyone's dream.

Peter Lyles:

I think everybody loves feedback. Quite often these guys would be somebody in the nursery say, "Oh, this is great, this is a great nursery." And these guys are like, "Your heads are starting to swell." Which is great, and that's what it's about. That is what it's about for everybody, to go home feeling, "Oh, I had a great day today." And to me, that's success.

Kirsten Diprose:

Yep. And, Dylan, how would you define success? And you can answer this on a personal level or you can answer it on behalf of Worn Gundidj, what you think is a successful enterprise to work for.

Dylan Kelly:

I think me working at Worn Gundidj, it's good to be a part of, to help other brothers and sisters overcome their problems in life, and also be there and be a part, to show them that it is possible to be your best version of yourself. I think that's very important. That's very important to me, seeing people getting to spend time with their family and creating positive memories. That's basically what I think of a successful business.

Kirsten Diprose:

What about your connection to Country? Does Worn Gundidj sort of support that?

Dylan Kelly:

Yes, definitely, because I get to be a part of smoking ceremonies. I hear a lot about what's going on in the community. I see tourists coming in, and they're wanting to learn about plants. They're wanting to learn about the local history. And me also being able to play a part and share my knowledge and learn at the same time, because I'm still listening to the elders, and even Pete still listening and learning, and just showing my respect, just giving my respect to him to let him know that I appreciate him teaching me what he knows.

Kirsten Diprose:

Perhaps measuring success runs a lot deeper than the metrics of profits, climate and customers, and community. It's personal too. It can be about finding a purpose or giving back to your community. Rebecca Wells is the CEO of Mallee Regional Innovation Centre, which is also part of the Vic Hub. And in life, she really found herself back where she started, in a good way.

Rebecca Wells:

My connection to agriculture and horticulture in particular, it came up because that's what I grew up around. I was on a block, which is what it was called in our region. My dad was a blockie and my parents had dried fruits and wine grapes. And that was in Merbein, which is in the northwest of Victoria. I think it's the furthest town in the northwest of Victoria and it's on the Murray River. So the New South Wales border's just across the way and the South Australian border is about an hour away.

Kirsten Diprose:

So blockie?

Rebecca Wells:

It goes back even to the soldier settlement with the region after the world wars, and I guess blocks or parcels of land we're given to the agricultural purposes. So it's just something that's sort of stuck through over the decades, and really, if they were a blockie, they could be doing dried fruit, they could be doing wine grapes, they could be doing a whole range of other... But in our region, usually horticultural activities.

I've driven my fair share of tractors and grafting and a range of other things like spreading fruit on racks. I left the region and I was never coming back. I went, worked in Melbourne and Adelaide and London before I ended up coming back into Mildura, and had a range of study opportunities. I've got three degrees. So all of that fed into that, seeing what else is out there. But then when you come back into the region, all of these experiences enable you to sort of tap in and see things sometimes in a different way because of the exposure you've had. So the idea of some of the things that I saw when I was in London and the scale and scope, quite different to say somewhere in Mildura, but it doesn't mean there's not ideas and concepts that you can take back from your various experiences. So yeah, I was never coming back, but the region just pulled me back in.

The other interesting thing about the region is it has this really strong history of innovation, which in some ways, I guess in terms of that horticultural innovation, it's because if they had a problem, they were probably a little bit isolated in the early days, so they just had to fix it themselves. When the CSIRO had a field station here, so that was open for about 85 years, and I think the region got really used to having those scientists and different types of activities where they could go and engage and see pilots in the field and have that literally here on the back door so to speak.

The CSIRO closed their station, but they still have a presence in the region. But I think some of that potential interest and activity and wanting to engage in things like research in the region, it's almost been a little bit inbuilt into the DNA of horticulture and other activities in the region.

Kirsten Diprose:

Tell me about how the centre came to be and what its purpose is.

Rebecca Wells:

So the centre is a collaboration partnership between the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, and SuniTAFE. It's headquartered here in Mildura. I see us often as an enabler. We mobilise that network of collaboration, seek out where the innovation is or how we can help move that forward, what does that adaptation look like? What can we do to enhance our region as globally competitive, resilient, sustainable, and prosperous? And I guess to us, they're not throw-away keywords. We really think that our position and what we contribute can be quite considerable in the fields that we're working in.

An example of that was last year ABARES actually reported that as the local government area of Mildura City Council, we were really punching above our weight in terms of our agricultural production, and I think that probably surprised everyone when those figures came out that we were on top across the country.

Kirsten Diprose:

Now, I don't want to break up the state of Victoria into factions, but in July 2022, Mildura was in fact crowned Australia's most valuable farming region with production receipts of more than $1.1 billion. Rebecca Wells sent me these stats after our chat to prove it, and I do believe it.

That's the thing about financial metrics, noting my own bias in favour of the southwest of the state, I thought the region that I live in was top agricultural dog, because if I pull up some other stats, Southwest Victoria is Australia's top agricultural production region, delivering $4.6 billion in output every year.

Anyway, united as the one state, Victoria is the largest food and fibre exporter state in the country by value. Change the metric, change the success. Don't get me wrong, the numbers I just quoted are all strong indicators of great performance, but what do they mean when you're trying to innovate on a regional or individual scale? The collaborations and partnerships Rebecca talks about are so important, but how do you know it's working?

Rebecca Wells:

I think there's so many ways to measure success. I guess it can be those range of things that you look at, attendance at events, how many projects, the stakeholders in your projects, or the money you've got for your projects. It can even now be about the recognition and coverage you get for what you're doing. But I think there's some indicators about who you regularly work with, the idea of how others can come to you and canvas you.

So in the life of the centre, we've just turned four, so we're still pretty... I think we're still a little bit new kids on the block, but I reflect on what we've achieved in that time, and it is a credit to our centre partners, Melbourne University, La Trobe University, and SuniTAFE, that they've been able to work in a really credible way with the region and open doors, and work together so that we can facilitate opportunities for the region, but also work on the needs of the region with what they're saying they want looked at.

I think in terms of that, there's the standard things that you can tick boxes, but there's also a bit of an X factor, which sometimes gets talked about that makes something a success. In this case, is it a process? Is it this unique offering that we have? I mean, early on Regional Australia Institute described us as... I think it was like a non-infrastructure asset. I think about us and our networks and maybe the idea of people as disruptors, and that in some ways we don't have something in particular that people want to come and visit us and I'm like, that's fine, come and visit us, but we'll probably end up just either introducing you to people, or it won't be that we'll be showcasing you a big room with all these various demonstrations. It's out in the field, what's happening.

There's lots of ways of measuring change, but for us too is how the region is engaging with our formal structure of the centre. We have our board, we have our partners represented on it, but we also have our strategic advisory panel. They can open doors, they can jumpstart projects just through engaging with the researchers.

Kirsten Diprose:

What Mallee Regional Innovation Centre does differently is it gets researchers in the room before they do their study, basically to test whether the proposed research is something that's needed or has in fact been done before.

Rebecca Wells:

What happens in practise is we have the research projects. They come and they get presented to our strategic advisory panel, they get time for the panel to ask some questions, and we also have some time with the panel just to talk about it as well.

In terms of that, you've got a group of stakeholders that are coming together that won't be project stakeholders. They're really stakeholders in the region, and their job, in some ways I think about their influence is for the betterment of the region.

In terms of that, it's a little bit different because you can meet with your stakeholders who you know will be involved in a project or will be a direct beneficiary, and they influence you to make changes. But in this example, we have researchers coming in, they get their projects tested, and in some ways, our strategic advisory panel makes us accountable and keeps us honest.

I've seen from masters to professors go away from this, and reshape their projects. And in one case, just scrap the project and rejig it into a whole nother thing that came up in the discussion about a greater need in the region. I don't think I've often seen that. And there's always those discussions about research for research's sake, and it's like what we want to do is we want to be involved in things that will have that impact on the region. So if they're talking about what they want to do or what they're involved in, what will that impact be? What have they missed in their thinking? What can we advise? Where can that value be added? Where can the doors be opened? Do they know that this has happened before, or they know that this hasn't happened and they should be speaking to this stakeholders? I think that in a lot of ways, it underpins a lot of the success, and in some ways, that group probably aren't really widely known about, but they sit there, and their impact is quite significant.

Kirsten Diprose:

I think you've touched on some really interesting points there about innovation. Sometimes we just think, "Oh, I've got this great new thing or this new research I'm going to do," but has it been done before? Is it actually useful in the context? How important is the context? Because agriculture is so tricky, something that works in one part of the world does not work in the other.

Rebecca Wells:

There's probably a couple examples in terms of that that I could speak to. One example in terms of that, fit for purpose in a region, I think of our first project, which was actually Dried Fruits Australia, a national peak body coming and talking to us, and they wanted to look at pruning, and the dried fruits predominantly in Australia are grown in our regions. It's not something you'll find in other places. So the way that they operate and what they do will be here in the region in the environment that they work in. So how do we modernise a part of their process, pruning, that hasn't been modernised? It was the only bit of their production cycle that they hadn't modernised and they wanted to.

We were able to bring in some researchers from La Trobe University, and they worked with the peak body, and they've now developed a prototype for the region for dried fruit that would look at pruning, so mounted at the front of a tractor, so really exciting. And they've engaged with their industry, and they've bought in and other growers have built other prototypes. And at the end of that project they've now made those schematics available to their growers. So they can take them, it hasn't been locked away, hasn't been patented. It's there for the benefit of the industry, and that will directly impact as a benefit to the region. I think that's a pretty unique example of how we can help foster and bring parties together in terms of that innovation activity for the region.

Kirsten Diprose:

With that example that you gave before, it made me sort of think about the balance of commercialisation and those sort of partnerships and non-patented products. Sometimes agriculture can be so specialised, and you'd see it in hort all the time, that it's not worth the kind of commercial private world making that investment. What are your thoughts on that?

Rebecca Wells:

You're spot on with some of that stuff, because in the scale of things, industries have their all size and placement and how they fit across the whole sector, so to speak. So in some ways, there may not be the incentive or value-add for someone to go in and make something they'll continuously get an income from.

An really interesting point was when I first started in this position, the region wasn't really known for innovation, and there were a couple of innovation scales out at the time and we scored really lowly. And I think part of that is they were using measurements like patents and trademarks and a range of things that that innovation then gets missed out in our region. So I think our region is really, really innovative, but maybe doesn't always get recognised. We have a range of manufacturers and others that make tools and equipment that go all around the world. We have so much stuff happening here, and again, I think some of it isn't as widely known, and people would probably be surprised by that.

Kirsten Diprose:

Again, the metrics, if you measure innovation by the number of patents and trademarks, is that an accurate reflection? Rebecca says in her experience it's bringing the right people together that makes the biggest impact.

Rebecca Wells:

Our involvement in One Basin CRC, so Cooperative Research Centre. And essentially, there's a water connection, there's social, there's economics, the whole range of things that will feed into One Basin CRC, which is really exciting, and we're going to be a hub for that here in our region. But that process to get that up was really interesting because often when we started the process there was an interest in trying to do something different, and some people told us that there were concerns, how could you bring a group of interested parties together? But I think it's a reflection on some of the things that the centre gets involved with that for us, we go out and we have all these connections and conversations. And it's often through that network we have that we are then able to establish how we can be an enabler and where the opportunities are and how we can bring parties together.

Often there's a number of entities all looking or thinking about the same thing, but they're doing it in isolation. So part of that for us is we can bring them together. We talk about measures of success, the idea that maybe we can bring parties together, and there's something now happening that wouldn't have happened before that will have an impact in our region in a whole range of different ways that wasn't even on the table. So in that regard, that's often why too now that whether it's governments or other organisations or even research and development corporations, they want to come and talk to us now about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and also where they can, want to be involved.

To me, that's a different type of measure of success that they think we're doing something a little bit differently. I still have trouble probably articulating that because we're in the middle of doing it all, but there's something that we're doing that people are recognising I guess is a little bit different.

Kirsten Diprose:

So if you can't put something into a graph to analyse it, can you even measure it? This is where I thought a market analyst might come in handy.

Matt Dalgleish is the director of Episode 3, an agricultural and commodities markets firm. He's nicknamed The Meat Watcher because he watches beef and lamb markets and graphs it. To be fair, there's probably a bit more to his role than that.

Matt Dalgleish:

We also provide consulting based services, risk management advice, reporting, benchmarking.

Kirsten Diprose:

Matt's based just outside of Ballarat in Western Victoria.

Matt Dalgleish:

I've got a small hobby farm, of course. I previously have been an owner of a commercial pig farm based in Bendigo, but that got sold October of last year. So I'm no longer involved in commercial farming in any sense, but the primary activity I undertake apart from the hobby farming stuff is obviously being engaged by the agricultural sector for that analysis work through Episode 3.

And then with my business partner, Andrew Whitelaw, Episode 3, we also run a podcast that talks about a lot of agricultural based topics called AgWatchers, so that's kind of another side venture that's a bit of a hobby for us.

Kirsten Diprose:

Because graphs don't work so well on a podcast. I asked Matt how he would assess the success firstly of Australia's agriculture industry. What metrics of success would he use?

Matt Dalgleish:

Oh look, I think, generally speaking, when you look at trying to measure success, it can be quite subjective, but when you're talking about it from an industry perspective, I would say you're looking at things obviously of financial measurement in terms of things like terms of trade and how well your, say, export sectors for a country that's so exposed to and needs the export sector across a lot of agricultural commodities or indeed even other export commodities we put out there, whether they're mining or whatnot.

Because we've got such a small population, we need to make sure we've got the ability to enter into those markets to make sure that the industries that rely upon them are able to transact and get good terms of trade, and those kind of financial performances are important. But I think equally, and this is becoming increasingly evident in the more present decades, is the need to make sure that the industry's sustainable, both sustainable from an economic perspective, but also from an environmental perspective that we are continuing to maintain levels of research and knowledge around what we're doing to the environment so that we can make sure we're not unnecessarily damaging things, and we're making sure that we can have a sector that's able to continue to contribute to the world in terms of food and fibre, but in an environmentally responsible way.

I think they're key measures, I think, from my perspective, of how the industry should be measuring their success and we're seeing initiatives like the carbon-neutral from MLA in the red meat sector. I think that was an incredibly... Look, Richard Norton outlined that when he was part of MLA. That showed a high degree of foresight, I think, at a time when it wasn't probably as present in the minds of the agricultural community in parts.

Kirsten Diprose:

Livestock is obviously your main wheelhouse when it comes to markets. How do we perform as a country with livestock? Obviously beef is a huge export and as is lamb, but on a global scale, how do we perform?

Matt Dalgleish:

Oh, look, if you look at our... As a production footprint, you compare what our production is to other countries where we're relatively small producers, really, because a lot of countries like China and India have huge, say, sheep flocks, but they don't export. Countries like Brazil have massive beef and India has massive beef herds, but again, I mean, Brazil are bigger on the export space, but compared to the domestic consumption, they're very much still focused on their internal market as their biggest market. Whereas Australia, again, because of that small population size, our footprint in terms of production is relatively small, but when you look at our footprint in terms of exports, particularly in that livestock space, we're significantly competitive. We're the biggest goat exporter.

If you look at sheep, lamb and mutton, we're the biggest exporter of that product globally, and New Zealand kind of compete with us for that one. And we're regularly in the top two or three and sometimes top exporter of beef depending upon the circumstances of a particular year. So I think we punch well above our weight in terms of the red meat space. Absolutely. From that perspective, you can say we're quite successful at what we do.

Kirsten Diprose:

Clearly by these scores, we are, as a nation, already doing a lot of things right, but there are other metrics Matt says we can apply too.

Matt Dalgleish:

If your focus is on success, again, it does depend on the criteria you're applying. If you're looking at an aspect of, say, financial success or that kind of economic sense of success, I think they're still relevant as you move down. But even at the macroeconomic perspective, there are other measures of success that a country can employ.

There's a thing called a Gini coefficient that looks at how equitable the spread of wealth is in a country, and that can also apply to particular industries. Or you can look at measures of inclusion of different diversity, or how fair is the income across the sector in terms of male to female employment.

So there are other measures that are still financial type measures, but have a different focus in terms of community or in terms of what you're trying to demonstrate, fairness to a degree, in that sector. I think there are different measures macroeconomically that can also be used and they can, and as you go down to the smaller regional or state, or indeed down to the farm basis, some of those non-financial measurements become... They're still relevant to the success of the business, but there are other factors like lifestyle and health and relationships and engagement in community, and all those other non-tangibles that are non-financial that I think also impact upon a person's feeling of success, or for want of a better description, happiness.

Kirsten Diprose:

One of the things you and Andrew at Episode 3 do really well is get some data, get some charts, and then explain what's happening. Or use it to explain something maybe a little bit adjacent to it. What's your thinking when you do that? Or what are you trying to convey? I think sometimes data is seen as this kind of proof measure, but it can also depends on how you interpret it to really understand it.

Matt Dalgleish:

Yeah, that's true. And it is a case and is said many times, not just on this podcast that data and statistics can be manipulated to a degree to show a certain type of bias. So there's always a danger there. But what we try and do a lot of the time on Episode 3 and indeed AgWatchers as well, anyone that knows what we do, I think they can see that there's a level of passion. We love being involved in markets and we love that use of data, but what we really like is being able to take that data and explain it in relatively simple terms to a person that may not be familiar with some economic concepts or concepts around how statistical analysis are done. We like to try and bridge that gap between the knowledge base of others, and help them to understand and help them to enjoy markets and the interactions between markets as much as we do.

Kirsten Diprose:

Economics is not a science, I always say to people. I reckon it's closer to a social science, economics, than anything else. I love economics by the way, but it's not foolproof.

Let's look at things on a smaller scale. In terms of measuring the success of a major innovation or change on your own farm or ag business, how can you go about it? What are some of the ways to understand whether what you've done has actually been successful?

Matt Dalgleish:

I mean, primarily, I think a lot of the time the focus is spent on the financial aspects of whatever that change is in terms of whether it's gross margin or some type of revenue measure or a cutting of cost or an efficiency measure. So they're all pretty straightforward ones and it's important because business that's not able to make money over the longer run, obviously you have cycles, and sometimes you're less profitable and sometimes you're more profitable, and this is true of any business, not just farming or agricultural businesses. You've got to have that as the baseline.

People always say money's not important, but it's only those people that are comfortable in their situation with their money that can say that. When you are struggling for money, it's absolutely important, and it's the only thing sometimes on your mind. And to the detriment of other factors, you maybe should be looking at your health or your relationships.

When it comes to changes you make on farm, whether they're technological changes or methodologies or practises or changes of farm enterprise even, there's the financial aspect, which is a given, but I think the other aspects that need to be addressed very crucially is some of those non-tangibles. So what does this change do to the amount of hours you have to work? Or does this give you more freedom to spend time with family and friends or to engage with your community more, to volunteer and do stuff there so that you have that feeling of connectedness to your community? Because I think that's important when it comes down to measures, I think, of happiness. But to me, measures of happiness are intertwined with what's success, right? It's not just financial success, it's someone that's comfortable in who they are, that are passionate about what they do, that have that connectedness to community, that have loving relationships with the people that are important to them, that have good health.

If you're bringing in new techniques that are going to give you more time or that are going to be more beneficial to your health or your relationships or to your ability to engage in the community, and in terms of even your mental health for that perspective, then they're all things that I think are successful implementations, and it's not just because they're financially better for the farm or better for the productivity, they're also better for those non-tangibles that I think are so important.

Kirsten Diprose:

And what I hear often is if your mental health is good, then you're much better able to make those financial decisions. Your business does improve because you're in a good head space as opposed to having to make decisions when you're stressed, essentially.

Matt Dalgleish:

Absolutely. And obviously, we don't do as much on farm analysis in terms of helping with farming margins or productivity, but for those that I've worked within the industry that do, having knowledge that they would say sometimes the bigger driver in a decision-making process on a farm is based around not necessarily the financial thing is the primary one.

There's some farmers that know that they could run different enterprises and potentially make more money, but it doesn't align with what they want to achieve in terms of their work-life balance. Or it's working with animals they don't really particularly like to work with. So they make a conscious decision that fits with their broader intentions that aren't always what's the bottom line?

Kirsten Diprose:

So I have to say, I was surprised to hear, Matt, the markets analyst, the numbers person to be so, well, philosophical, holistic, or dare I say it, mindful in his approach.

Matt Dalgleish:

Measures of success are very intertwined with happiness and what makes a person happy. What you might be doing, say, on a farm or what you might be doing for work, whether you're passionate about it, whether you feel like you're contributing in some way positively, whether you're getting recognition from your peers, all these types of things that are non-tangibles impact upon what people feel in terms of how successful they feel, and that also then guides, I guess, how happy they feel with themself. Are they doing something that they're proud of? There's all these kind of things that are so subjective that can't always be measured in a dollars and cents framework.

Kirsten Diprose:

Let's just go back to dollars and cents for a second because that's why you're here. You like markets, you understand your dollars and cents. When you're looking at your spreadsheet, what should you be looking at to understand whether this innovation has worked maybe a year or two after you first implemented it?

Matt Dalgleish:

Yeah, it's a good question. And again, it's slightly probably outside of my field of expertise in the sense that most of what we do is post farm gate. We don't have a lot of interaction inside the farm in terms of those measures around whether it's productivity or yield. So the agronomy type stuff that is done on farm.

Whatever it is. I think the key thing is you're wanting to identify what the goal is of what you're trying to achieve in terms of maybe a couple of key criteria, and it could be around productivity, it could be around on a sheep farm, lambing percentages increasing. It could be in a cropping operation, maximising yields of crops. There's so much that can be variable, but I think you've got to target what are the key drivers of... If it is something like profitability, you're trying to make the farm more profitable or more resilient to variations of market forces, looking at a few key measures of is our farm at risk because we're too focused on one particular commodity? Are you just going after the most money you can make, or are you trying to make a farm that has less volatility but still a good level of income to be sustainable, and a farm that's maybe easier to manage and less stressful?

And one area that we think is maybe not looked at enough on farm, and it probably is because of the role I do and the role Andrew does, because we have that focus off the farm, we do think a lot of farmers, and not all of them, there are some that are quite good farmers on farm, but then they also have a mind to what's happening externally that has influences upon their business. But I think there are a lot of farmers, and it could be the case that there's just so much to contend with on the day-to-day that the farmer doesn't have the time or energy or mental capacity to think outside of the farm. But I think sometimes they focus less on, as soon as the product leaves the farm gate, that's their job done to a degree.

And I think sometimes that's where they can come unstuck a little bit in terms of their planning and operational or implementation of new techniques or strategies or whatever is that they sometimes don't realise that they do sometimes have to have a bit of a look at how what they're doing on the farm will translate as soon as that product goes past the farm gate, or what influences that are outside the farm gate can come and impact upon the farm.

A good example would be the most recent turmoil in Ukraine and what that's done to obviously pricing of the commodity, but also pricing of inputs. COVID, what that did to the difficulties around labour and access to labour. So some of those external factors can leach into the farm and make for less happy operating circumstances. And that's where some farmers, I think, need to make sure that they're at least occasionally being aware of what's happening there that might come in, those external factors might come and influence their success or their profitability or their feeling of how happy they are with how the farm's running.

Kirsten Diprose:

Yeah, well, farmers have to make decisions every year, particularly I know in grain where they're always looking at, okay, how much do I... You're on the futures. You're like, "Do I lock in at this price? Do I wait and see if this falls?" You can lock in your prices and then a war in Ukraine breaks out and everything changes. Or there's bush fires and everything changes. Yeah. There's so much that a farmer can't control.

Matt Dalgleish:

Yeah, that's right. And that's where some of those risk management techniques are incredibly useful. One is identifying what your appetite is for risk, and then secondly, then saying, well, if I'm wanting to understand what I do well, which is the business of farming, I acknowledge that I'm not wanting to be a market speculator or a trader, so therefore I have to employ strategies that are going to try and limit as many of those external risk factors as possible. And sometimes that is engaging external consultants to assist with that kind of advice. They can't do everything.

But yeah, that's where it becomes incredibly important, because some of those external factors can come in and impact upon the success, whether it's financial or otherwise, of the farm. And those factors, things like I said before, labour, the lack of having access to decent labour means that then the farmers and potentially family members are working much more longer hours, and then you're dropping the ball with other things that I think are important, like your health and like your relationships with family and community.

Kirsten Diprose:

A question about technology, because I think technology can be a really tricky one because we didn't know that we all needed an iPhone until we all had one, and then the world, everyone got one, and so now we all need an iPhone.

How do you know if that piece of technology is going to really... Or how do you measure, rather, whether that technology has been worthwhile in your business?

Matt Dalgleish:

I think the primary for me is does it save significant amount of time and is it easy to use fairly quickly? So you don't want to spend a lot of time having to pick up a whole lot of necessary skills to be able to use it appropriately, and therefore waste a lot of time where you might be doing other things. Sometimes technology can become an incredible time-waster or you get sucked down a rabbit hole. And I'm not just talking social media. Some of them are designed indeed to keep you a little bit addicted to it.

For me, it'd be all around how much time do I have to invest to get proficient with this technology, and then once that's there, does the implementation of this technology actually give me more time to focus on other things that are more important? That would be probably the key I'd take from that one.

And when you were saying it, it made me think about when I was at university was when the internet was, I'm showing my age here now, Kirsten, but the internet was just beginning. So they had the search engine, and they introduced us to this new thing called an email account when I was at uni. And my initial impression was, "No one's going to use this." Because the internet had hardly anyone on it at that time, and the email account, I thought, "Why would you just not call someone?"

Kirsten Diprose:

I'm with you, Matt. I'd still rather just call someone. But let's get back to the intangibles, those squishy feelings that are hard to measure, but let's face it, govern our lives. Could we somehow put these in a graph to make them more tangible as success metrics?

Matt Dalgleish:

You can where there's data that exists, of course. I guess the danger is that you're overlaying what is largely a subjective feeling in some instances with some kind of objective data.

You're right. We do love graphs. I think part of that's because of the learning style that I fit into is very much a visual learning style. Knowing yourself and knowing... There's a plethora of self-analysis tools, or there can be places you can go to get fancy surveying done on yourself to determine your personality or your learning styles, and I think that's really helpful. I know a lot of HR companies do that, and I've done it many times over the years for different employment purposes.

The more you know yourself and the more you know what drives you and how you learn or how you engage with people, I think that helps for you to, A, target areas, whether it's in a career or in some kind of a farming enterprise or lifestyle, it helps to get you into a space that you feel comfortable in, that you enjoy.

I mean, some of the most unhappy, unsuccessful people I know are people that are doing stuff, whether it's a job, or they're in a relationship or some kind of a situation that they are finding difficult because it doesn't fit with their personality type perspectively or it doesn't fit with the types of things that really motivate them or engage them. Understanding that for yourself I think is crucial.

You can do some of those measurements to get to know yourself, and some of those are portrayed as graphs. If you look at some of the stuff you can get online, what type of personality type you are, what drives you in certain key areas, they are graphic representations that sometimes help you to determine your approach to life or approach to what kind of occupation you want to pursue.

Kirsten Diprose:

I had a friend who worked in a bank once and did one of those personality job match tests, and it came up with ideal to work for a bank.

Matt Dalgleish:

There you go. Yeah, so often they're self-fulfilling. But the other thing I've noted too, tests that I'd done when I was a 23-year-old were very different to the tests that I did when I was a 33-year-old, and then other tests as a middle-aged man. So depending upon your experiences that you've had over time, your style and the things that are important to you obviously can change. It's worthwhile to sometimes do them on a... Maybe on every five or 10 years it's not too bad to go back and revisit some of those things and to look inwardly sometimes to see what still drives you and what you're seeking in life.

Kirsten Diprose:

And that's it for this episode of Innovation Ag. Thank you to our guests, Matt Dalgleish from Episode 3, Rebecca Wells, CEO at Mallee Regional Innovation Centre, and to Dylan Kelly and Peter Lyles from Worn Gundidj in Tower Hill.

As I mentioned at the start, this episode is the last in this particular series, and I feel a bit sad, but there is an exciting bonus episode coming up too from a live podcast we're doing in June at Deakin University's Geelong Campus. The topic will be building innovation teams, getting agriculture research out into the world, so keep a look out for that one.

You can find the episode transcript on our website, vicdroughthub.org.au. Thank you for listening. This episode is written and hosted by me, Kirsten Diprose, produced by Rachel Thompson, and we have editorial input from scientists, academics, and farming groups involved in the Victoria Drought and Innovation Hub.

This podcast is funded by the Australian government's Future Drought Fund. Catch you next time.