We want to drive community cohesion!

These are exciting times! Our region is made up many small to medium size properties. How do we make these sustainable as urban creep, pressure and competition for the space?

The positive argument is that people are more interested in the story behind their food, which gives us good hope to progress our rurality.

We aim to promote, connect and support sustainable rural futures. Significant engagement throughout projects has already generated keen interest in participating and contributing to these projects.

A rural neighbourhood is forming and a sense of empowerment is fermenting. We seek to identify opportunities for rural enterprise and promote and support building the foundation blocks to maintain our families in the region.

We want to find avenues for keeping families together, keeping all the generations at home for as long as possible!

How are we going to achieve this? We believe that building these community cornerstones for collaboration, resource sharing, workshops, and communications will drive a strong future. We have already identified strongholds in the beef sector and our early emphases in the current period are:

• Enhancing collaboration and networks in the Noosa Hinterland.
• Good governance and a strong, healthy, and sustainable not-for- profit organisation.
• Setting up the abattoir in Eumundi and forming the Co-op.
• Developing our own Yearling Beef brand.
• Rural Enterprise Program to develop a strong local, rural economy and establishing programs to springboard into the future.

Research through the Rural Enterprise Project has confirmed some truths. Digital mapping has already identified sector clusters indicating that beef production has the strongest presence. Our survey, managed by the University of the Sunshine Coast, was spread across the community to extract telling data.

We can identify strengths and opportunities in the Noosa Hinterland. We need to know what the current land use is in order to improve strategic decision making that impact the region and influence governments at each tier by supporting initiatives and strategic decision processes.

Whilst urban creep is a factor, new residents should understand what they are buying into and we, already here, need to decide on what that might be as far as the future goes.

Country Noosa aims to contribute to decision processes by our government representatives to ensure the Noosa Hinterland and surrounds are not disadvantaged by the force of development.

We accept the need for tourism along the Coast but we want the same empowerment in our rural sector. The formation of steering committees for the current major projects enables farmers and producers to have genuine input and have a serious say. Drawing from the knowledge base of local farmers and contributors, we can design and build better outcomes with a view to economic benefits. Our networks grow in strength with a real momentum and vision for a positive future.

We can accelerate the milestones achieved already with more funding but that is another chapter for Country Noosa.