The world needs creative, innovative and courageous young people who can connect, collaborate and act. We know that youth may only be 20% of the population but they are 100% of the future. The time is now to let them share their dreams and design the future they want to see.
“Riverina Local Land Services is very pleased to support this Picture You in Agriculture project. Helping to “build capacity” of current and future primary producers and agricultural ambassadors is a high priority for Local Land Services and this project is an excellent opportunity to facilitate personal development of young people interested in agriculture. Local Land Services will also benefit from the opportunity to provide information to schools on topics of key importance such as: Aboriginal cultural heritage and cultural burns; woodland birds and threatened species found in the Riverina; healthy waterways; and pest animals and biosecurity.” ” general manager Ray Willis said.
Young people, aged between 18 and 35, who are studying or who have completed a agricultural qualification, are invited to apply for the Cultivate – Growing Young Leaders program. Successful applicants will receive an incredible two-year package of support including media training, networking and mentorship opportunities to help them share why their heart is in the Riverina and in agriculture.
In the second year of the program these young leaders will have the opportunity to hone their advocacy skills by engaging with primary and secondary students with PYiA’s in-school programs The Archibull Prize and Kreative Koalas.
Graduates of the program join the Young Farming Champions alumni – a national network of globally connected young thought leaders thriving in business and in life, who are inspiring community pride in Australian agriculture. Young Farming Champions include among their ranks Riverina Local Land Services veterinarian Dione Howard, finalist in the 2019 Leadership category of the NSW Young Achiever Awards ( winner TBA) Emma Ayliffe, 2018 Innovation Farmer of the Year Dan Fox and winner of the Leadership category of the 2018 Victorian Young Achiever Awards, Dr Jo Newton OAM.
Expressions of Interest to be submitted by 5pm 5th October 2020
Did you know the Murray-Darling Basin region produces food for 40 million people (almost double Australia’s total population)?
Or that it is home to 2.6 million people, over 40 Aboriginal nations and 16 internationally recognised wetlands?
Did you know this mighty river-system actually has naturally low volumes of water – so low that the amount of water flowing out of the mouth of the Murray Darling in one year is the same as the Amazon’s flow in one day!
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PYiA connects learning to real world issues and our surveys show our young people are particularly interested in learning about how we ensure everyone has access to clean water and the role of our river catchments in delivering this .
One of our aims is to work with supporting partners to introduce these young people to experts and so, in order to deliver on what our young people want, PYiA recently facilitated a series of webinars for schools participating in Kreative Koalas and The Archibull Prize. The webinars were hosted by John Holloway from the education team at the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA).
“We love virtual presentations and often it’s the only way to do them when the Murray-Darling Basin is over a million square kilometres. I love the look of understanding when kids can connect to new knowledge and see something with new eyes. We use water everyday but we rarely stop to think how special it is,” John says.
John tailored his presentations to both primary and secondary students.
“For Years 5 and 6 our key message is knowledge and awareness of the Basin as a special national asset. We all know, and can picture, the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, or Uluru—but despite its vital significance many Australians are oblivious to the Murray-Darling Basin. It’s such a massive and diverse system – really a living thing – and we struggle to get our heads around it. With older students we like to get the message across that water management, like many of our big 21st century challenges, is very complex and often contested. There are no simple answers – but this is something that all Australians are in together,” he says.
Kreative Koala participants Caragabal Public School and St Joseph’s Primary School at Grenfell fall within the catchment for the Murray-Darling Basin and water is always front of mind for these students. Caragabal recently celebrated the coming of the rain in an ABC story, and both schools found particular relevance in the seminar.
Danielle Schneider is a teacher at St Joseph’s and is leading her students through sustainability with a specific focus on water management.
“The highpoints from the webinar included speaking directly with John Holloway who was exceptionally knowledgeable and provided the students with information on the importance of water and sustainable water use and management within the Murray-Darling Basin.
The key messages the students took home were that there is a finite amount of water available on Earth and, therefore, it is essential to look after the water we have, sustain this, and recycle it where possible. Another key message was that the Murray Darling Basin Authority and the Australian States work to control Murray-Darling Basin water and we must all use it wisely and appreciate it. Overall, the webinar educated students about the Murray-Darling Basin. This linked well to our class studies based on sustainability and water use. It provided students with access to valuable input not always easily accessible to us in the past,” she says.
The MBDA seminars were a wonderful way to connect to students participating in The Archibull Prize and Kreative Koalas, and we look forward to facilitating further webinars in the future, guided and informed by what our young people want.
In partnership with Corteva Agriscience we invited young people in agriculture to share with us their journey to a career in the agriculture sector. We asked them to show us what they stood for and if they could wave a magic wand what would they change.
Today we meet Francesca Earp who shares with us her
Belief that gender inclusivity is the future of food security.
Young people can contribute to international agriculture
Empowering women benefits everyone
The is Francesca’s story ……
In November of 2018, less than a week after my final exam for my undergraduate degree, I packed my bags and moved to Laos. As my friends prepared for a uni free summer, I purchased a pair of zip-off pants. While my classmates worried about their final exam results, I worried about the waterproofing of my steel-capped boots. When everyone else my age was wondering what they were going to do with their lives, I unbeknownst to myself had already started.
I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone when I decided to enrol in my Bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience, even though the closest I’d gotten to livestock was milking a cow at the Easter show. Despite my lack of experience, I’d somewhat made a name for myself as the girl who loved adventure and getting her hands dirty. During my degree, I spent my holidays in South Africa at a White Shark research centre or as a farmhand at a Goat farm in Rural NSW
Francesca on a Rural placement on a goat farm in Wellington, NSW.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my degree, but I did know I was interested in the relationships between communities and their farming culture. I also loved travel and had been hooked since a service trip to Nepal in my high school years
Francesca and girls from the Dream Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal
So, it also came as no surprise when I decided to complete my honours project in Laos, investigating the cost of foot-and-mouth disease control. Just weeks after returning from my trip to Laos, my supervisor asked if I’d be interested in returning to Laos full time. This time as the in-country implementation officer for two agricultural development programs. It was a no brainer.
I flew to Luang Prabang in November of 2018, determined to make a difference. I worked with farmers, government and university staff. It wasn’t until six months into my time in Laos that I realised what I was genuinely passionate about. I noticed that the female farmers sat at the back of the room during training, that they answered on behalf of their husband in surveys and that I was one of the only females in my team. I noticed female farmer exclusion and disempowerment. After that, I knew what I wanted to do. I became dedicated to the inclusion and empowerment of female farmers in a culturally appropriate manner. I designed non-verbal training tools such as board games and activity books to accommodate for the higher rates of illiteracy due to limited schooling
Female farmers in Xayabuli, Laos playing the board game designed by Francesca
I ran female only training sessions. I became a PhD candidate, investigating the impact of socio-cultural factors on the uptake of agricultural development training programs, with a emphasis on the female farmer. My focus and passions go beyond the empowerment of female farmers in Laos. Just as food security is a global problem, so too is the exclusion of the female farming community. Female farmers in Australia still suffer the effects of gendered disempowerment themselves. With Australian women only becoming legally recognised as farmers as late as 1994.
The disempowerment of females results from long-standing and pervasive gendered marginalisation.
The experience of female farmers is a result of the socio-cultural factors of her community.
It is shaped by:
her age
her ethnicity
her community and
her beliefs.
For that reason, we need to tailor our gender empowerment strategies to our beneficiary groups.
Success comes from:
acknowledging the intersectionality of the female experience
being sensitive to the role of the female farmer in her own community.
learning to ask the right questions.
ensuring that development is custom-made to each community we apply it to.
being vigilant that the empowerment of marginalised groups is self-directed.
putting these women in the position that they can define their own empowerment.
Once we learn to do that, we will be empowering women the world over. Learning to tailor extension programs in Laos can teach us how to empower our own female farming communities here in Australia. Its an answer to a much bigger question.
Back in Australia, after a year and a half of living in Laos, I am still dedicated to the empowerment of the female farmer. To achieve my goals in gender development, I have devoted my studies to learn more about gender, sustainable development and agricultural extension. This has meant I had to make many changes to my original study plans, which saw me move to Cairns to complete my Masters of Global Development at James Cook University. For this Masters program, I am writing a thesis investigating the role of academics from the Asian region in creating feminist theory and scholarship. I am also completing a Master of Philosophy (science) at the University of Sydney, exploring the engagement of female farmers in gender-sensitive agricultural development projects in Laos. I will then begin my PhD at James Cook University in 2022, investigating the tensions between Western academic understandings of culturally sensitive female empowerment and its implementation in agricultural development programs.
I believe that we need to understand and recognise the cultural script of beneficiary communities so that we can tailor agricultural extension programs to these socio-cultural factors. More importantly, I believe in the power of the female farmer. I believe that inclusivity in agricultural extension programs will improve their equality and their successes. I believe that gender inclusivity is the future of food security.
Young Farming Champion Dr Anika Molesworth recently interviewed Francesca for our Leadership is Language series. You can watch the interview here
Read Francesca’s blog “Things my father taught me ” here
Communication, connection and collaboration are being enhanced at Innisfail State College, in northern Queensland, through participation in the 2020 Archibull Prize; and along the way the critical thinking skills of the students are improving.
Janet Lane is an agriculture teacher at Innisfail State College and as the school embarks on its Archibull journey Janet is already deriving great joy from their life-size fibreglass cow.
“She is beautiful. She is currently in the school office where she is contributing to the well-being of the office staff and next week she goes on tour, starting at the Elders office, because they have been such wonderful supporters of our agricultural program, and during the holidays she will be at the council chambers. I am really excited about connecting to the community and generating community involvement in the project.” Janet says
Year 9 classes from agriculture and art are focusing on Global Goals 14 and 15 and will collaborate on the Archibull. They have chosen as their Agricultural Area of Investigation “Clean, Healthy, Sustainable Catchments for All” and will do a deep dive into the effect of pollutants entering waterways and the Great Barrier Reef.
“Our biggest industries are sugar-cane and bananas, which are both pretty heavy fertiliser use industries; and we are framed by two rivers. We did a two lesson incursion exercise to model the catchments and to show it is not only farmers who are contributing to pollutants. We saw there was organic nitrogen from the rainforest and that hobby farms, fishers and water-skiers all contributed. It was a powerful exercise to give them a big-picture visual and the students were surprised at how much pollutant goes into catchment and how big the catchment actually is.” Janet says
The students have run with this big-picture idea and taken a critical look at their own school yard – seeing how rubbish from the playground can flow to the agricultural plot, potentially affecting their cows, and from there into waterways and onto the reef.
“We’ve been looking at the systematic and behavioural changes we can make. We approached the council who have provided extra wheelie bins for the school and we have workshopped ideas and solutions using inquiry learning.” Janet says
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Students participated in a full day incursion that bought of art and agriculture students together to looking at behaviour change and people’s atttitude to the environment.
The council is also supporting the school by providing links to local industry to showcase the range of local careers available and guest speakers, including an agronomist from Elders, have been giving the students practical insights into these careers.
“I’m really enjoying the whole process and the palette of possibilities The Archibull presents. The resources provided are phenomenal and I am looking forward to giving each section of Sustainability Circle pie pieces and giving a section to each group to study. The Archibull is also building teacher capability; teachers who wouldn’t normally work together are meeting each week and sharing ideas. And I’ve noticed a big difference in the students working in groups – they are starting to be more responsible, allocating tasks to each other and getting their group collaboration together. Most importantly I am seeing these kids develop their critical thinking skills.” Janet says
At Innisfail State College the aim of The Archibull Prize – students taking action on real world problems and working with real world people on issues that matter to them – is being realised and we look forward to following their Archie journey as the year progresses.
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The students are sharing with their Archie journey with parents and friends through their school newsletter
Picture You in Agriculture’s (PYiA) overarching aim is to support young people to thrive in business and life. We do this by identifying and developing emerging leaders, teaching them how to multiply their impact and providing them with a smorgasbord of opportunities to apply what they learn.
This is achieved through our cornerstone program Young Farming Champions (YFC) and by engaging with the next generation in primary and secondary schools.
The YFC program identifies and nurtures young agricultural professionals and equips them with the skills to:
Connect and collaborate with the next generation of consumers and
Advocate for, and drive change in, the Australian agricultural sector.
The YFC partner with PYiA to deliver our primary and secondary school programs that empower young people to design and implement sustainability action projects through the lens of agriculture.
John Holloway showing the students how much fresh water there is on earth if the earth was one metre across 
