The Moirs have joined with seven neighbours to engage Topoclimate Services to prepare property plans for 2630 ha of land in the Wilga District, 20 km north of Boyup Brook. This project is considered to be a pilot for a wider regional Topoclimate Project being promoted by the Warren-Blackwood Alliance for up to seven Shires in the southwestern region of Western Australia. Wilga Group members have offered access to their property plans for promotional purposes to the Alliance as demonstrations of the benefits of the Topoclimate Process.

"We were keen to get Gary and his Topoclimate crew to look at our place in detail for straight commercial reasons," Kevin said. " We wanted a working plan based on good quality land resource information to change our farming system around so that it contributed more on a sustainable basis to our overall income" (Kevin is also a registered surveyor). "We also wanted to identify the salinity issues on our property in detail so that we could work out an economic solution to the problem."

"We realised that if we got our neighbours involved as well, the economics of the process would be improved as well. However, we have also seen some less expected but more immediate community benefits from the process in action. Getting the farmers involved in the process as a group has broken down many barriers as the farmers have started working together and sharing information while taking ownership of the project." Kevin said.

"Gary had told me that this community benefit had occurred in other areas where they are operating topoclimate projects but I must say, I was a little skeptical until I saw it happening in our community here. The farmers in the group come from a range of backgrounds and run different enterprises on each of their properties but have a number of farming issues in common. The farmers are now talking openly together on these common issues like how to deal with the salinity issue on a community basis and on sharing resources like machinery to maximise effectiveness of capital investment for each property."

The Topoclimate survey team have now completed three weeks of soils, water resources, salinity and microclimate mapping in the area and Topoclimate MD, Gary Hutchinson says that preliminary maps and reports will be delivered to the farmers in February 2003. "It really was an uplifting experience to work with such a motivated group of farmers who had taken control and ownership of their farming futures and local community" Gary said. "

There was always plenty of farmers on-hand every day to help with operating backhoes or augers and each farmer was very keen to learn more about his own land while the crew were surveying on his property. The survey crew commented to me that they had never been so well-fed on a project before and I would like to thank the Wilga community for all their practical support."