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With more than 2.5 million Australians completely offline and another 4 million with limited digital skills, the Glen Innes natural resources advisory committee is launching a campaign to help.
The first step, according to GLENRAC project manager Eliza James: teaching farmers to use online mapping technologies for rebates and personal use.
"It has been identified through a lot of our drought assistance activities that farm mapping is a simple skill lacking in our farming community," she said.
"The water infrastructure rebate requires that landholders present a before and after farm map to demonstrate the change or improvement in infrastructure. Many thus far have been presenting our office with a hand drawn map, which we then have been scouting out on 6maps or Google Earth Pro."
GLENRAC will hold a workshop on Thursday October 17, kicking off at 10am and ending at 2pm. Tackling Technology for Producers will be held at GLENRAC's office on Church street.
Presented specialist Glen Chapman of Southern Blue Regenerative, the workshop will provide simple, easy to follow steps that landholders can utilise to increase their farm productivity through the free program Google Earth Pro.
Attendees will learn how to set up the program on their desktop, find their property and map its boundary, map paddocks, water and infrastructure, access external mapping data and export and print maps for rebates or personal applications.
"The beauty of Google Earth Pro is that the user can save their own data and come back to it later," said Eliza James.
"Maps can be printed or saved as a pdf to the computer, which comes in handy for farm planning, presentation of spatial information for grants, rebates and loan applications. Beginner users can calculate paddock areas or the length of fence lines, while more experiences users can import contour lines, calculate elevations and plan for future water infrastructure or tree alley ways."
Attendees are asked to bring their own laptop and wifi service. There will be limited laptops available for loan on the day.
The workshop will also be followed by a webinar to allow Glen to answer any follow up questions attendees may have.
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