(Cover photo: The orphan lambs are always a hit)

Rural Skills Australia and Tasmanian Lifelong Learning co-facilitated the intensive, five-day program ‘Discover Agriculture’, which ran from Sunday, 28 August, to Friday, 2 September.

Doing a faecal egg count

The objective of the five-day, live-in program is to show students the range of opportunities available in primary production and in the value-adding and agricultural services sectors. It is intended as an insight into the variety of career options and potential pathways available in today’s Tasmania’s agricultural industry. Roger Tyshing, RSA’s Education and Training Adviser for Tasmania, runs the Discover Agriculture program in conjunction with industry for students in years 10-12 to help them gain an understanding of the breadth of agriculture and the range of career pathways available in the industry.

He works with a range of industry partners to implement the Discover Agriculture program and to equip industry entrants with the basic skills to enhance their employability and workplace safety. Participants in the annual program come from schools and colleges from all around Tasmania to visit farms and agricultural businesses. The program is strongly supported by industry and schools. 

Smart, dedicated and capable

Well, with Discover Agriculture 2011, home and hosed, it provides an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve achieved. This year we had a number of firsts. We were lucky enough to have a participant from each of the main Bass Strait Islands, King and Flinders. We added an extra day.

We met with more people and travelled a greater distance to do so. We visited a Berry farm and a Hazelnut enterprise for the first time, learnt about the technology behind precision agriculture as well as visiting a composting operation and gained a better understanding of how Tasmania is in a prime position to develop niche markets.

The program has an emphasis on innovation within the industry and understanding some of the drivers of agriculture. This year a common theme we heard from our host was the increasing importance of technology in agriculture and the vast opportunities for young people in agriculture along with overwhelming encouragement from the people we met, for the students to get into the industry were the overwhelming messages of the week.

We visited a dairy farm, a mixed beef, sheep, poppies, hazelnut and forestry enterprise, a wool and fat lamb with some cropping, and a berry farm. We also had a look at vegetable production and packing for the fresh market, Roberts Wool Store, a major livestock saleyard and the manufacture of bio-diesel using a by-product of the poppy industry. A visit to the Bureau of Meteorology office provided a better understanding of how weather has so much impact on agriculture. Along the way we visit two research farms looking at controlled traffic cropping at one and breeding and selection of new pasture varieties at the other.

We were lucky enough to meet with a representative from the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research, who led the students through a pasture measurement exercise which was timely as we’d just come from the University of Tasmania where students were taught about the different pasture species and their composition in paddocks. Soil sampling and weed identification, learning what agronomists do and visiting a soil and plant testing lab and later in the week the parasitology lab and having a go on the microscope looking at sheep worm larvae were all highlights.

We need smart, capable and dedicated young people in the Agricultural Industry and this this group of 26 young people was anything to go by, that’s exactly what we’ll be getting.

Roger Tyshing

Lamb marking at Meander

Past participant Ashley Hobbins

Previous participant Ashley Hobbins was this year's Greenham Tasmania scholarship winner, with a prize of $10,000.

Anecdotally, we know that many past participants are working in industry or continuing their studies or training in agriculture-based courses. The great news is that judging by the calibre of participants; agriculture can look forward to having some bright and keen young people helping the industry to advance into the future.