Monitoring is an essential part of an environmental management system (EMS) if landholders are to demonstrate improved environmental performance. This paper reports results of two surveys to determine environmental issues and priorities for monitoring. The first survey was conducted on 12 EMS pilot projects, and the second on 18 catchment management organisations in Australia. With the exception of pastoral zones, EMS facilitators identified moderate to major issues in land condition, water balance, riparian zone, native vegetation condition and pests. Water quality issues were rated as minor to moderate problems. Issues raised by the greatest number of respondents were water balance problems and weed and pest issues. Catchment managers reported widespread degradation issues in land condition, water balance problems, altered water flow, water quantity and availability and water quality. Degradation of the riparian zone and native vegetation were also reported. Both EMS facilitators and catchment management organisations understood the need for environmental monitoring; however, few EMS pilot projects have addressed it. This was due, in part, to a lack of readily available tools and concentration on the EMS process itself. Tools of most interest to facilitators were soil erosion risk, soil test interpretation, soil structure assessment, soil health, water leakage and perenniality, water quality, riparian zone management, herbicide resistance, greenhouse emissions and energy use. Facilitators also suggested that tools should be delivered in several formats, but workshops delivered by experts were of most interest. Catchment managers had realistic and pragmatic views about the role of landholder monitoring in assessing catchment outcomes and there is a mismatch between landholder monitoring and catchment reporting requirements. Landholders are likely to monitor only what is in their direct interests and this will be mainly on land condition. We conclude that on-farm environmental monitoring conducted by landholders will be of limited use for catchment management organisation reporting. However, it will be very important in helping farmers to make more informed decisions about their environmental management, together with education and support. The issue of catchment condition monitoring and reporting requires serious attention as current monitoring and reporting is likely to be inadequate.

An Environmental Management System (EMS) has been piloted in the Victorian lamb industry by two producer groups, one with an export focus and one with a domestic focus. We report on producers’ motivation to become involved in EMS, their current environmental performance in 15 aspects of farm management estimated through self-assessment and their experiences with an entry level EMS process. Producers were surveyed to assess motivation for participating before commencing. The results showed a major motivation was concern for the environment and an expressed ‘feeling’ of being responsible for the environmental impacts of their farming activities, both on and beyond the farm. Results from the completion of a self-assessment workbook indicate that producers on average scored well (>66%) in the management of more traditional farming aspects such as livestock and pastures and less well (<49%) in non-traditional aspects such as energy efficiency. All producers in the pilot project have progressed from self-assessment to implementing part of or a full EMS. This has provided insights into producer readiness for adoption with most supporting a staged approach and entry at a low level. We conclude that without market drivers, progress to ISO 14001 certification is not practical for most ‘small’ lamb producers. This supports the concept of a staged approach to EMS as being more achievable than immediate progress to ISO 14001 certification in the first instance because there are insufficient private benefits for most producers. We conclude that producers will need considerable extension support if EMS is to be adopted by more than a minority of producers (even the lower level approaches). Although environmentally motivated producers are likely to be interested in a Stage 2 EMS with extension support, incentives are likely to be required if the majority of producers are to embrace EMS.

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