June 26, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

The real cost of prices are down down down

Archibull Prize, Food for thought, Young Eco Champions, Young Farming Champions
Agriculture Education, Archibull Prize, Art in Agriculture, Coles, Community Action Project, Farming Future, Farming unlocked, Global Goals Education, Prices are down down down, SDGs in Action, Susie Green, Sustainable Agriculture, Young Farming Champions, Youth Empowerment
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As part of their quest to win the Archibull Prize we invite the participating the schools to write a blog which documents the journey of their artwork and their learnings. To engage the whole school community including parents, staff and students within their school, as well as feeder schools and community partners we ask that their blog be a living document and the blog posts are published regularly for public viewing.

Have a look at a small sample of this years student’s blog. I guarantee you will be amazed and very proud of next gen

Secondary Schools where the big ideas are flowing

Model Farms High School http://modelfarmsarchi2013.blogspot.com.au/

Trangie Central School http://trangiecentralarchibull2013.wordpress.com/

Tuggerah Lake Secondary College Berkley Vale Campus http://berkaarchi2013.wordpress.com/

Gunnedah High School http://ghsarchi.tumblr.com/

Shoalhaven High School http://shoalhavenhigharchibull2013.blogspot.com.au/

Menai High School http://mhsagriculture2013.weebly.com/archibull-prize-2013.html

Archie Action in our Primary Schools

St Brigid’s Catholic Parrish Primary School http://stbrigidslim2013.blogspot.com.au/

Bowral Public School http://bowralbull2013.primaryblogger.co.uk/

Avoca Public School http://avocaarchibulladventure.blogspot.com.au/

Barrack Heights Public School http://bhpsarchibull.blogspot.com.au/

We ask the students to explore some challenges to feeding and clothing the world and over the next few weeks I am going to share my thoughts ( and those of other fellow Australian bloggers and farmers ) on some of the issues we raise.

Today lets look at the too often overlooked wicked problem that is food waste.

To challenge the students we ask the students to investigate waste and why we waste so much. Scaringly Australians waste 4 million tonnes of food and organisations like Foodbank http://www.foodbank.org.au/ redistribute some of this waste to people in need.
The students learn about and understand how food wastage occurs including poor purchasing choices and then we ask these bright minds to develop strategies to reduce waste.

Blogger Susie Green who blogs at Farming Unlocked recently penned this excellent and highly thought provoking post titled The Real Cost of Perfect Food

As Susie reveals

A significant degree of waste is also occurring as a by-product of our seemingly insatiable demand for fresh produce that looks perfect, has consistent eating quality and is of perfect size and colour. Much of this waste is not even taken into account in the quoted 4 million tonnes worth of waste mentioned above.

Fresh produce that does not meet a required specification is often discarded before it even leaves the field. Perfectly good food is rejected for a minor blemish or for being the wrong colour, size or shape.

Further, growers are having to go to extraordinary lengths to produce this “perfect” produce; investing heavily in complex growing systems and fighting a battle they can never win completely to iron out the “imperfections” of nature. It takes a lot of effort and costs a lot of money to grow the perfect piece of fruit and vegetable. It takes even more effort to grow an entire field of exactly the same perfect fruit or vegetables.

Susie then shares the story of how Australia’s apple growers are tackling this challenge.

Susie’s blog has created quite a bit of discussion including these comments from fellow blogger Ann Britton

Link to story Blemished fruit dumped despite perfect eating quality

Link to story Crops up in Flames

and Susie reflects on the challenges she faces on a personal level ( she is not alone is she?)

The challenge lies in how we can collectively make a change. I face a constant uphill battle with my own children (only 4 and 6 yo), who I struggle to get to eat a blemished piece of fruit. I haven’t brought them up that way – it is just somehow a natural trait to look for something that looks nicer. As long as they have that choice, they will pick the better looking fruit every time. Perhaps it does need a very clever marketing strategy. I just hope we can position ourselves to make the change before we reach a situation that is forecast in the following article.
http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/news/global-food-crisis-imminent/2659947.aspx?storypage=0

What does it say about us as nation that we have the luxury of demanding perfect food at rock bottom prices and believing it is a birth right when 870 million people, or one in eight people in the world, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties.

Susie’s blog has helped kick-start the discussion and is generating great conversations. Will the world talk or act?. That is the decision of every single person who says they care

Great articles here

Australia needs a Food Waste Strategy

The Disease Called Food Waste

It stinks, but food waste is feeding our hunger for energy

Source http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

June 8, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

Say yes to Buy Australian Grown

The pointy end of the Archibull Prize program is ready to begin

All the schools now have their cows and their paints and their industry resources

They have done their entry survey

Soon they will know who their Young Farming Champions and Eco Champions are

Now it is time to share with them what our call to action is and what we hope they will understand and will need to make wise choices about as consumers and decision and policy makers

Did you know this?

And that’s just the cows!

Imagine the amount of land!

The people!

The infrastructure!

Supporting business!

The technology!

It takes to get your dairy products from cow to consumer!

These are only a handful of questions and they are only for one area of agriculture.

We all have to eat and that alone means that agriculture is not only important but vital.

Every Australian wants

Affordable
Safe
healthy food
food produced in an environmentally friendly way.

Every Australian wants their food produced by people who care

A passion to link consumers with producers … to promote public understanding of farming, and the interconnectedness of health and nutrition and the agricultural sector … is the driving force behind Art4Agriculture.

The quantities of grain, pork, meet and cotton to feed and clothe Sydney are staggering and they only hint at the full story.

It’s staggering enough to discover you need 8,000 cows to produce the ice-cream Sydney consumes every day

Sydney consumes 300,000 kg of pork enough for 3 rashers of bacon per person per day

Enough grain to produce 32,000 loaves of bread

Enough hens to lay 800,000 eggs

Sydney consumes over 600,00 kg of beef and lamb

We could make 1 million pairs of jeans with the amount of cotton Sydney uses every day

Yet whilst Australian farmers look after more than 60% of Australia’s landscape

and produce 93% of the food we eat

Believe it or not only 6% of our land is suitable for planting the food we eat.

What outcomes does Art4Agriculture hope to achieve

We see success as an exciting, dynamic, innovative and profitable agri-food sector supported by all Australians

We see success as an appreciation of Australian farmers producing healthy, affordable, environmentally friendly and safe food translate into consumers taking that little bit of extra time required to seek out Aussie produce

We see success as young people getting excited about careers in Agriculture

How can you help make a difference?. Check out this blog from Susie Green at Farming Unlocked

May 26, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

Its the little things that make a person big on the inside.

Today’s guest blog post comes from Young Eco Champion Erin Lake. This is her story….

G’day- my name is Erin and I lead a pretty lucky life.

I have had a lot of great opportunities so far- some being not so obvious as others, but I reckon it’s the little things that make a person big on the inside.

My attitude to life is always do things with a smile- it makes you enjoy every moment and helps people around you enjoy those moments too. Plus, its amazing what kinds of opportunities having an open mind can bring!

So my story begins out in Western NSW- where I was born. In a little town called Jerilderie, famous for Ned Kelly’s ‘Jerilderie Letter’.

Jerilderie is full of wonderful people with a great ‘country spirit’. It’s a town, like many others in Australia, where people who go up the street to buy the paper, end up spending hours there in front of the newsagency talking to people about things going on around them.

I didn’t spend much time living in Jerilderie, but my Nan has lived there since 1974, so we would always be back there in the holidays, and Nan would take us up the street to talk to Bruce the butcher, and the newsagent, and the chemist… So I guess this cemented my philosophy of being happy to chat to anyone from any walk of life- everyone has a story to tell.

My Nan has been a pivotal part in my appreciation of nature and the bush. She would always stop and pick up any litter she came across, and held quite romanticised views of the bush and how important it is to protect our native plants and animals.

Each member of the family has a tree planted at Nan’s house, and mine is a Gum tree- planted on the day I was born. It’s now taller than the house and Nan says g’day to it whenever she feels like sending her love to me.

We moved around a bit when we were young, to Merimbula and then Cooma in the Snowy Mountains where I grew an appreciation of the beautiful snow country.

We finally ended up in Gerringong, on the sunny South Coast of NSW. Here my brother and I spent a lot of time at the beach surfing and bodyboarding, we went fishing, snorkelling and were pretty much always outdoors.

My brother and I standing in a field of canola on our way to visit Nan

My family were so proud when I became the first person in my family to get a degree. And when I got two degrees with an honours in environmental science they thought I was just showing off…

But really I just love learning, and I particularly love learning about the natural world. There are so many amazing things out there in nature, and you don’t have to look very far from your backyard to find tiny little miracles.

And this is Mick- he has been my partner and best mate for 10 years now, he has been the rock behind my journey. He loves nature just as much as me and so we do lots of things like bushwalking and canoeing together and really love it.

Uni was a great time for me, but during my course I felt that I wanted to get more practical ‘hands on’ experience, so had a look through the TAFE NSW website and saw the Conservation and Land Management course, and I thought I’d give it a go. It was here I found my passion for bush regeneration and learnt about managing the land sustainably.

It had a lot to do with the amazing teachers of the course – Gerard and Kelly, who I ended up working for professionally for a few years while I finished Uni. Working in the bush is some of the best work you can do in my opinion- you are always learning, outside all day in some of the most amazing places that no one ever goes, and you usually work with some pretty awesome people along the way… people who share your passion and can chat all day about the world while you give it a helping hand J

In the last year of Uni I did an honours thesis which looked at the way landholders in my region were managing the rainforest on their properties and what it meant to them to live in these areas of high conservation value.

One of the landholders was a dairy farmer, and following my thesis she invited me to come back and do some work for her on the farm. This work lead to a great working relationship with the community, and for the next few years we undertook a lot of natural resource management projects including restoration work, community engagement and working with young people- introducing them to the NRM industry.

I also worked for a while in Local Government as a Bush Regeneration team leader managing some of our areas reserves and natural areas.

I learnt a lot during these years on ground, but I soon felt like I wanted to know more about how environmental issues are managed higher up the chain. I wanted to know how decisions are made that effects change on the ground. so I applied for the graduate program in the federal department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (SEWPaC), and once i got the job we moved to Canberra to see what the public service is all about.

My graduate year was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot- i spent some time working in water policy when the Murray Darling Basin Plan was being developed, and then I worked in the Biodiversity Fund team managing NRM grants. A definite highlight for me was travelling out to Broken Hill on a field trip, where we visited Lake Mungo National Park and got to hear stories from the traditional owners out there.

In my final work placement i was lucky enough to work in the Australian National Botanic Gardens as a member of the Bush Blitz team- you can read about that here.

I am now a part of the team that is managing the National Wildlife Corridors Plan, a national strategy to support the development of continent scale wildlife corridors across Australia. It’s really exciting work and I am doing what I came here to do- learn about the processes that shape biodiversity management in Australia.

My work has taken me to lots of amazing places and I have met so many interesting people- I love working in the natural resource management industry and am excited to see where it might take me next!

See more of Erin’s story by watching her Young Eco Champion’s video here

You can see some of the wonderful work she is doing in the community here

The Fountaindale Dam Project

Dune Day

May 14, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

Moo Baa and Cotton….How out of touch is the next Gen?

Today’s guest blog comes from Art4Agriculture Young Farming Champion Liz Lobsey who was very excited to not only have the opportunity to share the story of Cotton recently at Moo Baa Munch , she also got to speak with both the Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Sid Sidebottom about her favourite topic agriculture.

Liz Lobsey shares the experience ……………………….

I was given the fantastic opportunity last Thursday to head to Corinda State School in Brisbane to speak about Agronomy for Cotton Australia at the Moo Baa Munch.

Firstly I will be upfront and say, defining agronomy, and making it sound like the best job in the world is a little harder then I first thought.

The Cotton Classroom (right at the front gate)

The Moo Baa Munch is organised by Agforce QLD and each industry is invited to host a site and speak about what their industry involves to high school and primary school students and why it is an exciting career prospect. I must say, even I learnt things that I didn’t know, so I can only imagine what the school students brains where like by the time they had visited the very numerous and highly diverse exhibitions.

The field to fabric process which was a joint presentation between Cotton Australia and AWI was fantastic. My favourite question was ‘So where does cotton wool come from?‘ Definitely a question the 4 of us did not expect and definitely stunned all of us.

Being involved in this collaboration between the wool industry and the cotton industry at Moo Baa Much reminded me of a question recently posed by Lynne Strong, farmer and Art4Agriculuture program director in a recent blog. Why can’t industries work together?

The thing I learnt from this joint field to fabric presentation, was just how successful agriculture can be when we do work together and what a great return on investment for all stakeholders.

After all once cotton is picked and the wool is shorn and the processing of the end products is almost identical, just different terms are used.

Cotton wool???

I was absolutely shocked that a lot of primary school students actually do believe that cotton actually comes from a sheep. It’s a bit like people thinking that milk comes from a bottle and meat comes from the shelf at the supermarket.

It’s a little scary to think that the people who buy our products are so disconnected, and they are passing this disconnection onto their children, who will pass it onto their children, and the cycle will only continue unless agriculture engages and debunks myths like these now. That’s why programs like the Moo Baa Munch and the Art4Agriculture programs are so extremely important.

What was very powerful for me as a young person with a career in agriculture and working with school children through Art4Agriculture in 2013 and 2014 was the the cotton industry and the wool industry had done their research and recognised the smart way to handle the challenge was tell the story together.

Sophie Davidson speaking about cotton processing as part of the joint Field to Fabric presentation with Wool.

Sophie Davidson (education coordinator for Cotton Australia) put these figures to the students we spoke to.

In 1813, the world population was 1 billion.

100 years later in 1913, the population was 1.7 billion.

In 2013 the world population is 7 billion.

For the last 100 years the world population had increased by almost 5.4 billion people and it is only going to continue to increase.

In light of this, the fact that we have 800 graduates at present completing agriculture related studies each year and we have 4000 graduate positions available, is of great concern.

We cant produce food and fibre without farmers and our farmers cant access the latest research and technology if we have no scientists. We cant give our animals the best care if we have no vets. We can optimise the care of our scarce natural resources unless we have soil and plant scientists like me. And that is just the start of a long list of people needed to help farmers produce the high quality and affordable food and fibre Australia is so famous for. Take the wool and the cotton industry just as example. Everywhere in the world it is recognised that no-one produces better quality wool and cotton sustainably than Australia.

Me and Sophie Davidson ( Cotton Australia)

I pose this question to you. What do you think Agforce is trying to achieve though Moo Baa Munch?.

Is it the need the need for agriculture to sexy up its image?
If so do we really need to make agriculture sexy to attract the next generation?
Or, do we simply need to reacquaint them with a very important industry that has been here for hundred’s of years and gets more exciting and more necessary every year ?

These were certainly the questions on the lips of Premier Campbell Newman, who I had the pleasure of meeting.

Me and the QLD Premier Campbell Newman

And its not just Campbell Newman asking how can we make agriculture sexy, this is something that industry has been talking about for quite some time.

Personally I think we should be looking at the first rule of marketing and taking a step back and engaging our consumers and the next generation of agriculture’s potential workforce first and finding out what they really think about agriculture. Once we have this knowledge then we can address their concerns and fix the problems and then we will have a real chance of selling agriculture as ‘dripping with integrity and sexy.’

I was also lucky enough to have a brief conversation with the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Sid Sidebottom about improving agricultures image, and he firmly believes that something needs to be done, sooner rather then later.

Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Sid Sidebottom

So, it is our responsibility, as professionals, producers and supporters of the agriculture industry to be proactive and engage the public and change their misconceptions. After all can we think of better people to tell our story than the people who grow and produce the products?

I believe that we are at a make or break period for the agriculture sector. Realistically if we don’t do something now to ensure young people see agriculture as an attractive and exciting and innovative industry to work in what sort of future does agriculture have in this country?

What sort of future does Australia have without a thriving agriculture sector?

The Moo Baa Munch was a fantastic experience for me and I am confident all the visitors felt the same. A huge hats off to Agforce for being proactive and innovative for designing and managing the event. Also a big thank you to Sophie Davidson and Cotton Australia for letting me have the opportunity to travel down and speak to students about the cotton industry, learn more about the wool industry, agriculture and the value of successful cross industry partnerships.

It was a great personal and professional development opportunity for me not only to brush up on my public speaking skills but also a fantastic opportunity to engage with the community and share stories about my favourite topic Australian agriculture and our inspirational farmers.

May 5, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

Do farmers matter?

Farmers in this country are less than 1% of the population and number 10 on Reader’s Digest most trusted professions list.

Above us are ambulance officers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and fireman. Why is this you ask?. The answer is easy. If you are an ambulance officer, a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist or a fireman there would be a time in most people’s lives when you would be reminded just how important your profession is.

With food in abundance in this country there is little opportunity to remind the community just how important our farmers are.

On behalf of all Australian farmers I would like to thank ABC24news who have created this wonderful video to tell our story

A key to helping maintain the momentum is farmers finding their own vehicles to tell their story. Vehicles that help us have two way conversations with the most important people and the white elephant in the room otherwise known as consumers and voters. This is not something farmers in general have the skill sets or expertise for. In the past we have let others tell our story and that has been a disaster of momentous proportions and it is one of the key reasons why agriculture is currently on its knees in this country.

So how do fix this. We can do it. I know because at Art4Agriculture we have found the successful model

Like any idea it’s not the concept but the people who make it work and for agriculture it will be our young people. They are out there. We have a whole cohort of them in Art4Agriculture’s Young Farming Champions program. Our Young Farming Champions are now working side by side with our Young Eco Champions to tell agriculture’s story to our most important audience

What does it take to have young people who can talk like this, who can inspire other young people to follow in their footsteps. What does it take for our young people to be the change that agriculture so needs to have?.

Art4Agriculture has the formula and the results speak for themselves?. Listen to the video.

Follow their journey

THE 2012 YOUNG FARMING CHAMPIONS

BEEF

Sponsored by Meat and Livestock Australia Target 100 program

Stephanie Fowler
Wagga Wagga, NSW

Steph grew up on the Central Coast of New South Wales in a small coastal suburb, Green Point. A decision to study agriculture in high school created a passion for showing cattle and in 2012 she started a PhD in Meat and Livestock Science, with a project that is looking at the potential of Raman Spectroscopy in predicting meat quality.

“When I was growing up I never dreamed that I would end up joining an incredibly rewarding, innovative and exciting industry that would take me across the country and around the world.”

Read Steph’s Blog post HERE

View her video HERE

Bronwyn Roberts
Emerald, QLD

Bronwyn is a Grazing Land Management Officer with the Fitzroy Basin Association. Her family has a long association with the cattle industry in Queensland and her parents currently run a 5500 acre cattle property near Capella.

“I believe consumers have lost touch of how and where their food and fibre is produced. In these current times where agriculture is competing with other industry for land use, labour, funding and services, it is important that we have a strong network of consumers who support the industry and accept our social license as the trusted and sustainable option.”

Read Bronwyn’s Blog post HERE

View her video HERE

Kylie Stretton
Charters Towers, QLD

Kylie Stretton and her husband have a livestock business in Northern Queensland, where they also run Brahman cattle. Kylie is the co-creator of “Ask An Aussie Farmer” a social media hub for people to engage with farmers and learn about food and fibre production.

“The industry has advanced from the images of “Farmer Joe” in the dusty paddock to images of young men and women from diverse backgrounds working in a variety of professions. Images now range from a hands-on job in the dusty red centre to an office job in inner city Sydney. So many opportunities, so many choices.”

Read Kylie’s Blog post HERE

View her video HERE

COTTON

What the world eats and wastes

As the 2013 Archibull Prize starts to roll out in 40 school across Queensland, NSW and the ACT we are putting the final touches on the 2013 curriculum with it currently being scrutinised by our primary and secondary teacher panel.

One of the questions we ask the students is about waste and why is there so much. We ask them to write a blog about how food wastage occurs, discuss poor food purchasing choices and suggest sustainable strategies to reduce wastage. If Eisenstein is right then this is a very important topic for discussion

This fascinating book the ‘Hungry Planet: What the World Eats’ by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluision is an inspired idea, to better understand the human diet and explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week.

The photographs in the book feature pictures of families from different countries at their dining tables with a week’s worth of food purchases. You can find all the images here. We soon learn that diet is determined by different things in first and third world countries.

Fascinatedly for me from the picture it would appear first world problems in Australia would include things like just how many bottles of 2 litre soft drinks can you fit into a plastic shopping bag before it breaks. No idea how they carry all that water. This must be a family that eats together and shops together. For my dairy farm its a bit of a worry their bottled water consumption seems to leave their milk consumption for dead. However I imagine the egg and livestock industry would be pleased to see this table. Not sure if this Aussie family is getting their five serves of fruit and veg per day though. What I do know is my grocery list looks nothing like this yet my health is nothing to skite about either.

Interestingly soft drinks and how to get them home in one piece without spraining your back would appear to be an even bigger problem in Mexico but it would appear they are getting their five serves of fruit and veg per day

In Britain which appears to be supporting the wealth of the confectionary giants a common topic of concern would be “does chocolate really cause acne”?

Enough of the flippancy. This picture of a family in Chad is very sobering

This image below outs the US and Iceland as the countries with the biggest wasters in the world. I wasn’t game to do the sums on OZ and covert the metrics to whatever prehistoric system the measure ‘pounds’ come from. Com’on pounds, shillings and pence or was that pounds and ounces went out of fashion when I was six. According to this article the average Australian wastes 200kg of food a year (see footnote)

I look forward to hearing what next gen has to say on the topic of waste and wise food choices because my generation doesn’t seem to have any answers to this very wicked wicked problem

Footnote-

The average Australian wastes 200kg of food a year – yet two million of us also go hungry. Why?

This article makes some very strong points. Some that particularly resonated with me

75% of Australians believe their country is immune to poverty and as such do not think of hunger as a problem.
The pantry of Australia’s national food relief effort is a low profile outfit called Foodbank, a national operation using a big business model to channel surplus food from the food and grocery industry onto welfare networks. Despite the important expression of community altruism and other frontline welfare agencies, the problem of hunger is far from being solved. In 2011, Foodbank distributed 21 million kilograms of donated food and groceries, making the equivalent of 28 million meals to help 75,000 people a day through a network of 2,500 welfare agencies.
Foodbank relies upon a workforce of 3,500 volunteers to operate its warehouses across the country. Occasionally, state governments and councils provide grants for specific projects but largely, the organisation survives on donations. Only recently the Australian government has started to contribute $1 million a year to assist Foodbank in providing vulnerable Australians with what most of us consider as a human right, the right to safe and nutritious food.
This should prompt some hard questions. It is common for liberal market economies to off-load welfare responsibilities from federal and state governments to the voluntary sector and Australia is no exception.
Allowing hunger to be de-politicised in this way fosters the notion that it should fall to non-government organisations to answer pressing social problems, while governments are best at fostering self-reliance and self-provision.
The silence of the Australian government around domestic food security not only confirms its denial of the issue, but indicates a failing welfare system.
Also at issue is the environmental consequences of rampant food wastage. It is now reported that about 4.5 million tonnes (200kg per person) of food are wasted every year in Australia. The annual retail value of Australian food waste is estimated at more than $5 billion.
Among the reasons at the supply end are blemishes or imperfections, over-ordering or short shelf life, while consumers demand perfectly shaped products and plan their pantries poorly.
Food waste in Australian landfills is the second largest source of methane emission – a gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If one tonne of food waste generates 3.8 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emission, then Australian food waste is responsible for 15 million tonnes of CO₂equivalent emissions every year.
Despite this happening in its own backyard, Australian policy makers still have ambitions to contribute to global food security initiatives. For instance, the 2010 budget committed $464 million over four years to assist countries in Asia, Africa, and in the Pacific region to build community resilience and improve agricultural productivity.
But if Australia refuses to consider hunger as an issue of public policy and continues to consistently undermine adequate financial assistance to its own people, a nagging question remains about the nature of its ambitions for addressing food security beyond its shores.
How should we understand the Federal Government’s proclamation of rights to adequate food, clothing and shelter in international law, while hungry Australians are receiving support from privately run charity organisations?
If the problem of hunger in wealthy and technologically advanced Australia is to be eliminated, it must be recognised as a political question and a fundamental issue of human rights and distributive justice.

As you can see a great deal of this article resonated with me. I say lets tidy up our own backyard before we jump over the fence

March 28, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

The lighter side of life

Todays guest blog post comes from Kirsty McCormack. Kirsty is a lover of horses and all things cotton,a converted Ag ‘fag’ and 2^nd year Rural Science student at UNE.

My story starts 19 years ago in the little country town of Inverell.

My hometown is situated in the New England North West region of New South Wales and is a thriving commercial and service centre with a district population of 18,000.

I have been immersed in the rural side of life every since i was a youngster, which to me is much like the bright side of life. I have ridden horses since I was two with my family and I campdraft most weekends.

I have played Polocrosse, competed at state and national horse riding events and won national titles – all for a great love of horses.

As well as having a passion for sport, I have definitely tried my hand at a range of things and found that I haven’t completely embarrassed myself 100% of the time!

After growing up on a 75 acre property 8kms out of town with a multitude of 20 plus working dogs, 15 or so horses and a few cattle and sheep which has provided meat for our freezer it is a wonder that I did not have my heart set on a future in agriculture. But that was not the case, I was a head strong driven young girl who had decided that being a lawyer was the ideal occupation for someone that would go head to head with her mother on a regular basis, claiming that she was ‘always right’. So at Holy Trinity School Inverell I nurtured my skills, studying Japanese and Commerce as electives and avoiding agriculture at all costs, assuming that it was only associated with dead end jobs with poor pay. How wrong was I!

It was not until I left the familiar surroundings of Inverell and went to Calrossy Anglican School that I was introduced to this ‘brighter side of life’!

My lines for year 11 did not match up so I had to take Agriculture instead of Religion, and was pleasantly surprised when my teacher Brony Nielsen stepped into the room.

Fun on the farm

In 2011 with Brony’s encouragement I led a cow for the first time, took up meat judging, attended the biannual Cotton Australia Cotton Conference, went to RYAG Cattle Camp and was voted Karrawarra House Sporting Captain.

Calrossy opened doors for me that I didn’t even know existed. Being able to lead cattle at Sydney and regional shows has allowed me to make some great contacts in the cattle industry

Being the Junior Inter Collegiate Meat Judging Champion at Scone Beef Bonanza in 2011 is another amazing notch to have on my belt. One of the most astonishing experiences was the opportunity to attend the Cotton Conference thanks to WinCott and Georgie Carrigan.

Attending 2010 Cotton Conference with Calrossy Anglican College

The opportunity to meet so many interesting and diverse professionals in the cotton industry and seeing what the cotton industry has to offer I was absolutely blown away by the innovation, eagerness and pride that everyone there exuded about their passion – cotton. To start with I was going in blind, after only wearing the fibre I had no idea when the plant was grown, what it entailed or the mechanisms used to actually produce a real of cotton, so naturally I came home a little overwhelmed and all hyped on information thinking, about all the possibilities that this little plant had to offer me.

So as I entered year 12 my aspirations and goals began to change, I started investigating degrees and universities that had a strong agricultural line and program.

PICSE Youth Roundtable 2012

Here is where I was introduced to PICSE (Primary Industry Centre for Science Education) and the student industry placement scholarship. PICSE provided me with a week jam-packed with sessions, presented by the most energetic scientists, farmers, growers, researchers and students imaginable. I got a taste of what could be really achieved by the agricultural industry, through being able to witness the latest research in mitigating methane production in cattle, rotating dairy’s, greenhouses and grain operations I was no longer hoodwinked by the dead end, bad pay idea. Instead I now think agriculture is one of the most forward thinking, innovative, young industries in this country and the world today. You can have a look at what other young PISCE graduates have to say here

Within my year 12 syllabus we also carried out a Cotton Study which entailed a field trip and farm visit. This trip definitely re-enforced what I had been so awe inspired by the previous year and only fuelled my fire towards being involved in the cotton industry. I got to jump in cotton, be in cotton, feel cotton and help grow cotton. We got in, on and around the module builders the buggies, and pickers. This was enough to send me over the edge – in love with cotton.

From this trip and PICSE I continued through my final year with a new direction and new motivation, getting involved in all aspects of boarding school life and loving every moment. I graduated with great marks and a great time, enough to get me straight into university the following year at UNE studying a Bachelor of Rural Science.

So through the summer naturally I went bug checking and nutrition sampling.

Carol Sanson at Cotton Growers Services at Gunnedah took me on after meeting on the excursion earlier that year, and I thoroughly cherished and enjoyed every moment of it. From literally counting bugs, to meeting farmers, sending leaf and petiole samples and driving the forklift, the whole experience was amazing and has benefited me throughout my studies at university. I was sad to leave the job and not finish the season as the end of the week came around all too soon before picking started.

I am definitely one very lucky university student though, on arriving in first year I was lucky enough to have been awarded financial assistance in the way of four amazing scholarship. With my ATAR I was awarded the UNE Country Scholarship, and three industry prizes, the Royal Agricultural Society Foundation Scholarship, Australian Wool Education Trust Fund Scholarship and RIRDC Horizon Scholarship. Within these amazing opportunities my 2012 year was full of motivating and exciting events that I was able to participate on and present at. I had two trips to Canberra one being awarded as a PICSE Ambassador, going into parliament house and presenting the findings from out Youth Round Table Discussion, and another with the Horizon scholars where we had an opportunity to make invaluable contacts and be heard on the Country Hour LIVE! Attending the 2012 Cotton Conference where I spoke to students, presenting at numerous PICSE events/functions and going to Sydney Royal, has all made for a busy year! Through participating in college life I am now an Academic advisor and on a leadership scholarship at St Alberts College and loving being able to help students learn about science.

I think the agricultural industry has a lot to offer every individual, through the little chunk I have been able to experience and been apart of thus far has only spurred me on towards aligning my future with the future of agriculture. I will never give up my horses and the link I have to the land through my dogs and cattle but with this newfound passion for cotton I can definitely see myself being a plant fanatic. When I finish my Rural Science degree I would like to complete a diploma of education to inspire other students the way my agricultural teacher did, I would like to go on an “agriventure”, be involved in research, be a cotton agronomist and one day a farmer’s wife! – But not just yet.

I am so excited to be involved in this great opportunity to show others how Bright a Lighter Side of Life can be!

March 14, 2013March 3, 2014 by Lynne Strong

Guess whose in the moos

Today’s guest blog post comes from 2013 Dairy Young Farming Champion Cassie MacDonald. This young girl from the burbs has turned her talents into a winning formula to fight the good fight on behalf of dairy farmers everywhere

I wanted to show people everyone can make a difference by sharing their story

I wanted the message to reach as many people as it can.

I wanted to show that if you have an important story to tell people will listen

I hope consumers will stop and think about what exactly is happening.

I hope they think about the choices they make

I grew up in suburbia on the South Coast of NSW, born to a chef and a TAFE teacher/mechanic. We lived a typical ‘city’ life, small house, small backyard; no real exposure to agriculture.

My older brother and I in front of our family home in Albion Park Rail, early 1990s

Except for the odd trip to a family friend’s farm where I was too mesmerised by the Clydesdale horses to notice if anything else was going on. We rode our pushbikes until the street lights came on, and we were warned about stranger danger. We had one tree on our block. The closest thing I came to agriculture was gawking out the window on our many trips to see family in Bungendore. And still, the cattle were too far away to really see anything!

I developed a fascination with animals at a young age, especially livestock, however this was completely unlived. I was lucky enough to be given a pony at this stage- which was the closest chance I had of getting up close with a large four-legged animal. Except at ANZAC day parades where mum would threaten to leave me homeless (jokingly of course) if I didn’t leave the Lighthorsemen alone, after standing staring at them all day, when it was time to go home.

In 1999, a massive family move to the Snowy Mountains when I was ten saw the start of the the change in my life, most significantly moving closer to the opportunity to be exposed to agriculture. I still couldn’t quite get my hands on it, but we were a step closer, living on a 15 acre block, astride my trusty little Welsh Mountain Pony, staring at the neighbours Herefords over the fence. The galahs and cockatoos would entertain us at breakfast time, and I loved for the first time in my life not having next door neighbours breathing down your neck. I was hooked on that ‘country’ thing! The fresh air, the space, the freedom. Walking down the driveway took no more than 2 seconds to catch the school bus, and mum would let us play in the paddocks all afternoon after school. My longing to return to the place where we grew up was quickly forgotten and replaced with the knowledge that the country was where I wanted to call home. Although, changing from a school of 800 students to one of 300 certainly came as a shock!!

The final push came when I went off to boarding school at age eleven. After hearing about an agricultural high school when in year six, I decided I wanted to go there to learn about farming so I could become a vet. On my first day there I was eager to sign up to the Rural Youth Club and enrol in the calf rearing program. I got to look after my first show heifer, an Ayrshire named ‘Agapantha’. I spent months teaching her how to lead and tie up, spending all my spare hours on the school farm. From memory, some of the teachers were concerned that this behaviour was abnormal and antisocial. How wrong they were! If only they can see where this has got me to now.

Showing cattle at Sydney Royal ( me on the left) with Hurlstone Agricultural High School

At the end of that year I attended my first show, a calf show at the school- I was hooked! I didn’t miss a show from then on. I broke in a heifer, or two, every year and after learning the ropes, in my senior years I ran the group, organising young students, heifers and even the show teams.

Winning the Semex Youth Challenge at Sydney Show in 2011

Those six years of living on a farm alongside a great agricultural education and involvement in the Rural Youth club and the stud Ayrshire cattle team built the foundations for my love and commitment for rural Australian and our agricultural industries. I desperately wanted to become a veterinarian to continue my work with cattle, and ultimately agriculture.

Ayrshire calf day as an older teenager

After finishing high school I began studying Animal Science after being knocked back from entry into Veterinary Science. I started showing cattle for an Ayrshire stud (Mayfield Farms), and was mentored by my great ‘second family’, Paul and Vicki Timbs. They saw something in me and subsequently helped me every step of the way to gaining experience in the show scene, on the farm and in animal husbandry. These foundations have allowed me to come such a long way. In this time I also started working at the Working Dairy at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. After learning the ropes I graduated to Assistant Manager in 2008 and love every moment of educating the public about where our milk comes from, from looking after the health and wellbeing of the cattle to the harvesting, processing and marketing of milk and its products. Education is something I am extremely passionate about, as I believe we need to form partnerships with consumers so can work together to ensure agriculture has a bright and sustainable future.

Milking on the Timbs’ farm

Learning about calf husbandry at the Timbs’

Working hard at the Sydney Royal Easter Show Working Dairy

After a second knock back in 2007, I finally gained entry into Veterinary Science in 2008. I am now in my 5^th year of my degree, and graduation just around the corner. I am a proud member of Ayrshire Australia, the ASC Youth Group, Wagga Wagga Show Society and the RAS of NSW. Representing Wagga in the Sydney Royal Showgirl competition finals in 2011 was a particularly proud moment. I am very happy to tell my friends that I earn my money milking cows (and I am happy to persuade them to have a go at it too!).

I am also very happy to stand up for the industry that I have become so passionate about. When I saw the Coles’ video “Our Coles Brand Milk Story”, I was infuriated with the way they had spun the truth and misrepresented the facts. I suppose any dairy farmer or dairy industry employee could tell you this too. I wanted to reply but knew that words, especially to Coles, would get me nowhere and would get to no one. I thought about it for a second- how can I reach the consumers and have an effect?

I decided to put a skill, that usually only made my school teachers angry for ruining my books, and my mother for using all the paper up in the house, to go use. So I put pen to paper, sitting on the living room floor, underneath my iPad balancing carefully on the edge of a chair. Fifty-two clips later I had completed all the drawings. Five hours worth of work over two afternoons. Two weeks later my video has attracted almost 16,000 hits on YouTube

“The response has been unbelievable, but it’s exactly what I wanted

I wanted to show people everyone can make a difference by sharing their story

I wanted the message to reach as many people as it can.

I wanted to show that if you have an important story to tell people will listen

I hope consumers will stop and think about what exactly is happening.

I hope they think about the choices they make if they buy supermarket brand milk, and how it affects others.

Ultimately it would be great if more people boycotted generic brands and bought branded milk products instead so we can really combat the problem.

I also want shoppers to think about the information they are being fed, especially by such big powerful companies.

As you can see I am extremely passionate about the dairy industry, its future and the opportunities it can give you. I am a walking talking example of the joy you can get from working in and the doors that it can open for you. I will continue to advocate for this wonderful industry that has made me who I am, so that other people can see the exciting opportunities out there. The dairy industry is full of amazing, talented and supportive people and I want to help make a difference to someone else’s life like the people I have met in the dairy industry have made to mine.

Giving the thumbs up to a career in dairy

March 8, 2013April 15, 2024 by Lynne Strong

Taking the message to the skies

Art4Agriculuture is feeling very honoured to be featured in Rex Airline OUTthere magazine this month. Special thank you to Mitch Brook the author and the wonderful graphic artist who have both done an amazing job of capturing what we stand for

Look at this imagery- superb

Extra pleased some of our Young Farming Champions are in the spotlight as well. Well done team –

OUTthere

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

You can read it here http://art4agriculture.com.au/forefront.pdf and if you are flying Rex please show it to your fellow passengers

March 2, 2013March 3, 2013 by Lynne Strong

Cotton Pickin – the Boggabri Blog

Today’s guest blog post comes from Heather Gow-Carey one of our Eco Champions

But firstly a little bit from me to put it into perspective

One of the things that still fascinates me is despite the vastness of our country just how little of it we can grow food on and how precious our natural resources are to sustain our standard of living now and in the future.

Yes we all know Australia is a pretty big place and what most of us don’t realise (including me until recently) is believe it or not over 60% of it is owned, managed and cared for by Australian farmers. To put this into perspective the white bits on the map below are the 40% of Australia that are classified as non agricultural land.,

What’s even harder to believe is that only 6% of our agricultural land is suitable for growing food. This means our 134,000 farmers have a huge amount of land between them that doesn’t generate an income It therefore goes without saying that Australian farmers are at the frontline of delivering environmental outcomes on behalf of the Australian community and they have a very big unpaid gardening/park keeping gig in any man’s language. I was as flabbergasted as most people when I found out these statistics that overall 94% of what farmers own and manage returns them no direct in your pocket benefit. As one of those farmers of which 50% of our farm is pristine rainforest it does however give great satisfaction and warms your heart to see it support diverse native vegetation and wildlife.

Can you just imagine what its like following the cows home through this – I can tell you its doesn’t get much better

However its very clear as many of our farmers readily admit they don’t have the skillsets nor the time to do all of this gardening alone. Luckily Australia has a whole team of very special professionals called natural resource managers who partner with farmers to help them get the best outcomes for Australia’s scare natural resources.

Last year with support from the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country Initiative Art4Agriculture accessed funding that would allow our Young Farming Champions to train and work side by side and go into schools as part of the Archibull Prize with Young Eco Champions. The outcomes can only be described as phenomenal. Today’s guest blog post comes from Heather Gow-Carey

The Boggabri Blog……………………………..

As part of the Young Eco Champions Program I have developed a strong interest in agriculture and learning more about our industries that feed and clothe us. Even though I grew up in a rural area, I have found my knowledge of agricultural production is quite limited – so I decided that if I wanted to follow a career in natural resource management and agriculture, I really should get some inside knowledge of what is involved on the agricultural side of things.

My first farm visit was cotton!

I was lucky enough to have the help of Sophie Davidson from Cotton Australia in tracking down a working cotton farm that had been improving both their on-farm efficiency and the health of the surrounding environment. She arranged for me to visit John and Robyn Watson who have been farming since 1979 on their farm “Kilmarnock” at Boggabri in Northern NSW.

When John began farming here it was the first cotton to be grown south of Narrabri, along the upper Namoi River.

Both John and Robyn live and breathe cotton. When I first got to the farm, we jumped in the car and started driving around their property. I was amazed! To be honest, I had hardly seen any form of broad-scale cropping before. While John and Robyn have had lots of visitors to their farm, John mentioned that it was very rare to have someone like me who had almost no knowledge of the industry. So at least I didn’t feel too stupid asking the basic questions! I chatted with John about the production of cotton, right from the beginning when they sow the seeds all the way up to harvest – and even about the ginning and export process.

Their property is 1500 hectares plus extra land that they lease from adjoining properties. It is a mixture of cotton, grain and cattle grazing, with about half of it under crop (both irrigated and dry-land). Kilmarnock was one of the first farms to take up the Best Management Practices (BMP) Program and John chaired the Australian Cotton Industry Council’s BMP Committee for three years.

He also played an active role in the implementation of BMP in the Boggabri area, encouraging other local growers to get on board with the program and John and Robyn have been active members of their local Landcare group. Robyn has even written a paper titled Restoring the banks of the Namoi on ‘Kilmarnock’: Success arising from persistence

In 1995, they started a program of improving the riparian areas because they were concerned about bank erosion and pesticide contamination of the river. From this time they have revegetated more than 20kms of riverbank, stretching alongside their property, along with encouraging neighbouring properties to undertake similar work. Robyn has been the driving force behind the Landcare work on their property, she would collect seeds and propagate them in a small nursery that she had set up. In talking to Robyn, she mentioned that there had recently been a few fish surveys undertaken along the Namoi River and there was a sharp increase in both the diversity of species along with the overall counts of fish along the revegetated sections. So not only has their work stopped the erosion of their property and loss of fertile soil, it has improved the environment in a number of ways.

From a farming perspective, the Watsons have been improving the overall efficiency of their production which means they are using less water, pesticides and herbicides and getting higher overall yields. There are a number of ways that they have been doing this:

Having designated dry-land cropping areas, which rely only on rainfall reduces overall water consumption, along with having extensive channel and dam networks to recycle flood irrigated areas. They have also recently got an overhead pivot irrigation system which moves slowing down the crop rows to prevent extra water loss.
All cotton is GM so as to be resistant to round-up and cotton pests. This means that they have reduced the amount of pesticide that is used, so they very rarely have to spray at all. Being resistant to round-up results in reduced soil cultivation and lower amounts of herbicide required on cotton crops to control weeds and facilitates healthier soils through less soil disruption and reductions in residual herbicides.
They ensure that there is always a few ‘refuge crops’ (usually pigeon pea) sown each year, so this allows insects that would be affected by GM cotton to have the ability to persist and not alter their population structure or effect the birds that feed on them.

Robyn is also very talented at spinning cotton, and generously taught me how to do it. I found out firstly you have to pull the bolls away from the cotton plant and pluck out the cotton seeds. This is essentially what happens at the cotton gin, though on a much larger scale. You end up with a bowl full of fluffy cotton balls and from here you can start to spin.

Using an ordinary spinning wheel, it is possible to end up with a range of different thicknesses of hand-spun cotton which can be dyed and then knitted or woven just like wool. I was very impressed and even got to take a few bolls so I could give it a go at home. Robyn is one of the few people who spins with cotton and I think she may be going to go to the Royal Easter Show to do some demonstrations – she is one talented lady!

While I was up north, I was also able to visit the Namoi Catchment Management Authority (CMA) at Narrabri and go out in the field with Lauren Wilson and Megan Davies to conduct some vegetation surveys. One of the target areas that the Namoi CMA is working on is the protection of riparian areas that are not in poor condition, though need some assistance (eg. through fencing out livestock) to ensure that their condition does not worsen. I found this a great experience to have a look at regions that are so climatically different from down on the South Coast of NSW, and find out about the challenges that these regions are facing from an environmental perspective.

‘I really did have a great time visiting Boggabri and Narrabri, even though it was only short, I learnt so much and had such wonderful experiences. Coming into this program, I had the opinion that most people hold about the cotton industry – that it used huge amounts of water and sprayed chemicals all over the place.

From learning from the other Young Farming Champions and this visit to Kilmarnock, I really have changed my perspective of the industry. It is a vital industry to Australian agriculture and is one that is innovative and always changing to promote efficiency and ensure overall productivity.’

‘I now know the story of cotton – it is how this little plant turns into the pair of socks on your feet.’

*Heather has just finished an International Bachelor of Science (Geoscience) (Hons) and gone to Canberra to join the DAFF Graduate program

You can share stories with Heather on Twitter here @HeatherGowCarey

We are Champions for Change

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.

Category / Food for thought

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Cotton Pickin – the Boggabri Blog

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