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We make a difference to our environment

The Rice Growers' Promise

A sustainability framework for the Riverina rice industry

The Rice Growers’ Promise is a sustainability framework for the Australian, Riverina rice industry. The framework has been developed by 27 rice growers from the Riverina in conjunction with SunRice, the Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia and Murray Local Land Services through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare program. Its success emanates from a ground up approach making it very much a grower owned and grower led project.

The Rice Growers’ Promise allows Riverina rice growers to tell their story and sustainability initiatives they undertake on-farm and acts as their social license to operate. The framework is currently still in development but has clear priorities and goals in place to ensure that there is a prosperous and exciting future for generations of rice growers to come.

Our goals

Our farmers are very passionate about how they grow rice and over the last seventy years have dramatically improved their productivity, particularly from a water use and yield perspective. The goals in the framework that are still under development showcase where our farmers have come from and where they are looking to in the future. The goals will be realistic, robust and set to time frames to ensure that the industry can deliver against and action the necessary steps required to achieve them. We are lucky that a key focus of our industry has always looked to enhancing our research and development efforts, we hope that the framework will tie these efforts into one place, easy for all to understand.

We understand that sustainability has different meanings to different people, so that's why we want to show what sustainability means to our Riverina rice farmers

Our actions

There are many components to the framework each with their own group of complexities. The three pillars, Innovation, Quality and Community really detail out the approach we have. These three areas revolve around the Environment hence why it stands alone at the center of the framework. Our growers that fed into this work outlined passion, legacy and trust as three big ideas that act as the building blocks for the framework. As this is a whole of industry approach, our Riverina growers, alongside SunRice, the Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia, Rice Extension and the Murray Local Land Services will all be taking part in facilitating the success of the framework and chipping in to the areas of improvement required that is most tailored to their area of expertise.