COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1638992
This article is part of the Research TopicFuture Paths for Local and Alternative Food SystemsView all 5 articles
Trust frameworks and technology: water quality engagement with Australian farming stakeholders
Provisionally accepted
- 1Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
- 2Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, Australia
- 3CSIRO Environment Business Unit, Brisbane, Australia
- 4Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Ltd, Cairns, Australia
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This paper provides a community case study of the ongoing process of farming stakeholder engagement in a high priority Great Barrier Reef catchment that emphasizes stakeholder co-design and use of sensor technologies in water quality engagement and communication. Provision of near real-time visual evidence of the 'data' (e.g. nitrate-nitrogen readings, rainfall data and river heights at local scales) helped break down historic communication barriers and led to the articulation of farmer trust and confidence in the water quality science as partners in the scientific process. This confidence in interpretation of 'trustworthy' scientific information created the opportunity for growers to share and discuss experiences with neighbours, enabled peer-to-peer leadership, and facilitated on-farm practice changes and experiments. Social research highlighted the importance of investing in building a trust-based environment for dialogue between growers and scientists on a contentious topic, with farming stakeholders reporting improved communication, an improved trust environment with more direct oversight of monitoring data, and 'space' to learn and experiment as contributing factors to their engagement. The Project 25 framework is now being held up as an industry model for stakeholder engagement, and industry support is emerging for similar programs in neighbouring catchments.
Keywords: trust-building1, Digital technology2, Co-design3, adaptive co-management4, nitrate5, stakeholder engagement6. (Min.5-Max. 8
Received: 31 May 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Davis, Webster, Fielke, Morris and Abom. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aaron Davis, Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
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