About the Grains Industry Profile

In 2004 the Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS) initiated a special Keystone Project to apply the Signposts for Australian Agriculture framework to the Australian grains industry. The Grains Industry Profile is the output of that project. Working in collaboration with the National Land & Water Resource Audit, the Grains Research and Development Corporation and the Grains Council of Australia, BRS has demonstrated how an interactive website can be used to report on an industry’s contributions to ecologically sustainable development or, more simply, our total quality of life.

The profile is designed to evolve over time. New components will be added as information becomes available or needs arise. A special feature of the profile is that it invites and displays comments from users. The comments will influence future directions including the selection of components, their desired outcomes and how progress with respect to those desired outcomes should be measured.

Structure of the profile

The profile is made up of two types of objects: 

1. components of the industry’s contributions
2. management responses

The components are linked together in a ‘tree’ which can be viewed at any time by clicking on the ‘full component tree’ button. It is possible to navigate up and down the tree or jump from branch to branch. Each component follows the same format. The description of the component includes a statement of the desired outcome, an indicator and a summary measure. The results section provides values for the summary measure and indicator when data is available.

Management responses describe actions that may be taken to modify the outcome of one or more components. A management response includes a description of its purpose, characteristics and, where available, data on its adoption. Go directly to management responses by clicking on ‘management responses’ at the left of the screen.

Components and management responses are cross-linked. One management response may relate to several components and vice versa.

At the end of each component or management response there is a space for posting comments.

Clicking the ‘+ more' icon expands the text to provide more detail. 

Current status

The Grains Industry Profile currently contains 30 active components and 16 management responses. Thirteen of the components (four economic, two social, seven bio-physical) have a desired outcome that qualifies as an operational objective and for which indicator values are available.

All components use previously available data, but the information is often presented in new ways. For example, bio-physical data that was previously presented for Australia as a whole has been linked to the grains industry through land use information.

The work to date has only scratched the surface of what is possible. There are, however, some obvious limitations with existing data. In general, economic information tends to be available over time but not in space, whereas bio-physical information tends to be available in space but not over time. Social information is a mix of both. As well as making better use of existing information, the Grains Industry Profile will help to identify gaps that may need to be filled.