No, it's not a coffee shop.
"It's like woody. . ."
This is agricultural education North Shore style. "This is the
region where coffee is grown in the world."
Where Sydney born Scott Graham and his team at Barker college
are converting a growing number of urban kids to Ag.
Out about 420 or so students doing agriculture from year 9 to
12 probably about eight or so are actually boarders from rural
and regional areas. The rest of them really are from the North
Shore and the northern beaches of Sydney so they have virtually
no connection to agriculture at all.
We've got durian today as our fruit of the week. It's probably
the smelliest fruit out there. It tastes a lot better than it
smells. What do you think? No, no good?
From coffee classes to exotic fruits. Here learning about
paddock to plate is done in reverse.
But I'd say our philosophy really is played to paddock in
education, you really typically start with things that are
concrete and you work towards things that are abstract and it
makes the most sense to students. And of course, they
all eat food and wear clothes. And so um really starting at
that point and working backwards is the way to really engage them
in a metropolitan context.
When you're surrounded by the city, teaching the paddock part
of the syllabus requires excursions and a clever use of
space.
So these ones are warrigul greens.
While the students do get their hands on all types of crops and
livestock. A big part of the program is focusing on this 60
to 70% of ag jobs that happen off farm, with graduates going
on to pursue everything from plant breeding and robotics to
product development.
Agriculture in metropolitan high schools really has been
overlooked. I mean, two thirds of Australia's population live
in only five cities. And so if we're really going to change the
number of people going into agriculture, it's going to
require something different to happen in metropolitan areas in
agriculture.
We want to find out is this a male yabby or is this a female
yabby.
The school's different approach is paying off. In 2008 Barker
had around 50 ag students and the course was almost shut down.
Now enrollments from year nine to 12, top 400. And importantly,
once they get a taste of it, most are hooked.
So in New South Wales we have about 4,000 to 5,000 students
starting year 11 agriculture and we have around about 1500
finishing the HSC in year 12. So there's a really significant
drop off statewide. At Barker we have around about 110 or so
students starting year 11 and somewhere around the 90 to 100
finishing your 12. So we keep you know at the most maybe a 10%
drop off.
Schools like Barker are increasingly on Anthony Lee's
mind. He's the CEO of Australian Country Choice. One of the
world's largest family owned cattle and beef suppliers.
What do you've got to do is you've got to have a market for
everything.
While some find boning rooms confronting he thinks students
should see what happens to animals in between the paddock
and plate. If you look at a young kid on a bush property or
a remote property somewhere they are exposed to it from birth. We
don't see that in urban Australia and metro Australia.
So it's very foreign to us. I have a view that we absolutely
expose people to it.
Look where you're going look where you're going.
Now sparked by his own kids the Brisbane based father of four is
taking his passion for education beyond the meat works. Because
while his children have grown up with a love for the bush, and
respect for its industries, he says they weren't learning much
about ag at school. And what they did hear was largely
I heard things like you know, you're part of the problem, or
negative.
I'm hearing that the beef industry is really bad and we
shouldn't be eating meat. Ehile would a teacher want to teach
it, why would a kid want to come into the industry? It's all the
same issue if they've hearing bad things.
So for the last year, he's been lobbying for an overhaul of
agricultural education.
Most industries would kill to have their industry in the
curriculum. We have it in there. We just need to get it taught.
Have you ever pat a cow before?
At the Royal Adelaide show there are plenty of lessons going on
in the learning centre run by South Australia's agricultural
high school Urrbrae.
These sheep are called a flat nose ballet.
While the tractors are a hit, students and teachers show both
young and old there is far more to ag.
If you look at how chunky she is, that's gonna give us lots of
hamburger.
This is one of the best examples anywhere in Australia at any of
the major shows, where you've got Urrbrae Agricultural High
School students, nearly 200 of them here, working and
demonstrating to the general public about what is agriculture
today.
But Luciano mesiti, who heads up Australia's Primary Industries
Education Foundation, says while there is plenty of interest in
here, interest in schools generally drops off when AG is
no longer compulsory.
There's lots of opportunities for kids to learn about
agriculture, and once they hit high school, then there's less
opportunity. So I think we need to bolster that all the way
through.
So Anthony Lee's call for action has now led to a national
working group that brings together industries Research and
Development Corporations and educators.
I don't think we're coordinated. That is the biggest thing I
think, you know, it's not about Victoria and New South (Wales).
It's not about cotton or beef. It's about agriculture in
Australia. And we need a coordinated plan. And we need a
coordinated effort about how we get to all schools, right around
Australia.
Phase one is to identify the best agricultural education
programs. And in South Australia's Riverland is a high
school with a program that's been described by educators as
gold standard. Loxton High takes a very businesslike approach to
AG.
We're going to weigh them, we're going to do a fat score on the
lambs. So we were looking at ideally looking at whether these
are ready to sell.
It's about making all those decisions with the kids that a
farmer would be making on their farm. If if it's an enterprise
here at school, it has to be profitable.
Remember, it's the long ribs because we're looking at fat.
Justine fogden lives and breeds AG. She's been teaching it for
almost three decades, and is also involved in her family's
farm.
About a tour half maybe yeah.
Yep, probably, maybe, maybe two because you can still really get
your get your fingers in amongst those ribs, can't you?
Despite her passion and experience, she says being an ag
teacher is a big undertaking between managing classes,
developing content, and running a mini on school farm.
54 kilos.
Sometimes it's a detriment that there's actually so many careers
and so many areas that you can fit into agriculture, it's
actually hard to expose kids to the full range, and probably
running 10 or 12 different enterprises here. And I'm and I
need to be at industry best practice for each of those to be
successful.
It's a big ask, especially with the ag teacher shortage,
worsening in Australia, and many schools struggling to fill
vacancies.
We've had a lot of teachers who've retired and some that
have left the system. And so from from that perspective
there's a great deal of non-trained agriculture teachers
that are in schools at the moment.
Agriculture teacher training varies from state to state. And
for students who pursue an agriculture degree first, there
are limited incentives for them to then go on to study teaching.
You know, there's seven jobs for every graduate that graduates
from an agricultural degree. So there's lots of choices. So to
then go and do another 18 months to two years to get your Masters
of Teaching, and then come out on maybe even a lower salary
than what you would have graduated on two years ago, and
increase your HECS debt.
So getting industry involved in ag education is vital for its
survival and success.
We bring all the freight back into the shed.
And in a region like the Riverland, there is no shortage
of experts just down the road from the school.
And then we fly.
Today, Justine has brought her students to a local packing
plant, where owner Michael Ingliston is only too happy to
show what modern day processing looks like.
I think it's really important that we get kids involved and
show them the level of technology that's now in
agriculture. We've come a long way from the years past and the
level of technology in IT and robotics in the industry now is
substantial.
Opportunities like this have dropped off during the pandemic,
while Justine Fogden says industries are providing more
online resources. The chair of the National Working Group says
there's a lot of room for improvement.
I think we could be making it a lot more dynamic for future
focus jobs. I think the jobs that we have now probably aren't
the jobs 15 to 20 years from now. And I think our kids are
they're on top of that.
You're listening to VCA agricultural and horticultural
studies with Miss Hobbs. Okay, let's get into it.
Someone who's taken the lack of resources into her own hands is
Louise Hobbs who started a podcast to help students prepare
for assessments, which has reached well beyond her own
school.
I literally started it for five students, and it ended up
reaching 1000s.
That one, there's little Trotter that'd be a good show shape that
one? Yeah. Well.
Louise is passionate about making agriculture something to
aspire to. But despite coming from a progressive family farm
at Kaniva, in Victoria, she didn't feel that way not so long
ago.
When I went through high school myself, I got to my year 11 and
12. And yeah, the ag teacher, she said, Oh, do you want to do
AG? And I said, No, why would I want to do that? Because I
didn't see it as something that would be useful to me.
But after studying science and business management at
university, she decided to pursue education through the
Teach For Australia program, which led to her first placement
at Goroke College, a small rural school with 80 students.
Oh kai that's amazing. Oh, my goodness, everyone look at kai's
they look so good.
And much to her surprise, she was allocated ag studies, which
has become her favourite subject, despite initially
feeling under qualified.
And now cut down there and keep cutting down those holes.
I was like, why am I teaching AG. So we really need to improve
the understanding of both schools and teachers that are
training in science that AG is science. And if you train for
science, you should also be able to teach ag.
And gives us squeeze a DSL the bubbles coming out.
We need to diversify how we talk about agriculture. We need to
talk about STEM we need to talk about science, biology, English
agribusiness, I think there's so much potential for agriculture
to sort of, I guess, plug into all the different streams of
education.
Now seaweeds, a biostimulant. So does anybody know what does that
mean?
And tap into the big issues like sustainability, food security,
and climate change.
Okay, so we'll add our water now. So mimicking a rain event.
Ag is maybe the best place to do something about those things.
When it comes to the top students academically, they're
really attracted to those things. And in fact, they often
pick agriculture for that reason.
Our desire to attract top students has also prompted
Barker College to ditch one of the more traditional parts of ag
education.
I think for schools that show animals often the number one
thing that people think about agriculture is it's just showing
animals. And that's the main focus of it. And that's really
not what we're about. We want to have it seen as on par with
sciences like biology and chemistry and physics and
business studies and those kinds of subjects. And so, to get
those higher academic ability students, it needs to be seen as
more academic in its nature.
Do you think there is too much focus placed on showing
livestock.
I do it a lot differently to some schools that they've
learned cattle husbandry, they've learned how to show
cattle they've learned how to assess cattle that we're
currently assessing the carcass results from the show we're
looking at how the abattoirs work. We've talked about the
markets though the showing side of it for me, is this much.
From school to school, state to state and industry to industry
oh beautiful. Okay, you're someone go around, we want to
pick that with those screws up.
There are many different approaches to agricultural
education.
Once you've got your water in them mix it up.
While diversity is one of the selling points of ag. It also
muddies the water for those trying to find a clear path
forward to create and fund a national plan.
Anthony Lee expects the next couple of years to be difficult,
but he believes if all the players can stay focused,
Australia's second biggest industry has a much better
chance of reaching the workforce it needs in the future.
We have the resources, we have the capacity, we are an
essential service. We're always going to be here. We have
everything going for us to actually affect this change. And
it's up to us as the industry and the people within it to make
it happen.