National Wine and Grape Industry Centre
National Viticulture Extension
New arrival starts with a plan.
Hi I am Duncan Farquhar, The National Extension Manager based here at The National Wine and Grape Industry Centre (NWGIC) in Wagga Wagga. I have recently joined (NWGIC) from a role as the Government Viticulturist in Tasmania.
The purpose of this position is to coordinate and manage the delivery of extension, industry development and training services at the national level. This will ensure that research outputs are delivered through optimal collaborative arrangements, with the wine industry, state agencies and regional associations, to maximise the capacity of the national wine industry to enhance its profitability.
The first step in this process is to align resources of various stakeholders in wine industry innovation by developing a National Extension Plan.
The Australian wine industry has strategic challenges in many areas. Addressing the threats and realising the opportunities facing the industry will deliver benefits to customer, grower, winemaker, researcher, supplier, regional community and environmental stakeholders, including profits to producers.
In order to address these challenges and make the most of opportunities the industry has developed a national research and development capability. There are many resources employed to address industry challenges using research results. These extension resources lie in wine businesses, in Australia’s state governments, in the Natural Resource Management regions in industry and research institutions.
Coordination of these resources will enable
- Research to better achieve targeted innovation outcomes
- Alignment of industry strategies and other stakeholder objectives with extension programs
- Extending the reach and better targeting of successful existing extension approaches
- Better integration of evaluations to target evaluation and avoid duplication
The National Wine Industry Extension Plan will identify how these resources can be strategically aligned to deliver profits, economic, social and environmental progress, innovation and integrated biosecurity for the wine industry.
The picture above is of celebrating my arrival in this exciting new role for the wine industry with Professor Thomas Henick-Kling (Director of the NWGIC). The wine, a 2001 Arras, is considered by many to be Australia’s finest sparkling wine. It was part of a generous gift pack from friends in the Tasmanian wine industry.
If you have any suggestions as we develop this plan please use the contacts below.
Duncan.Farquhar@dpi.nsw.gov.au
Phone +61 2 6938 1644
Mobile +61 418 427 789