The Archibull Prize for 2012 is up and away. If your school would like to participate Expression of Interest forms can be found here

This year the students will investigate the theme “What does it take to sustainably feed and clothe my community for a day”  and the industries they will study are Cattle and Sheep, Wool, Dairy and Cotton

We have been lucky enough to enlist the expertise of Sophie Davidson from Cotton Australia Education Coordinator to help us tweak  the 2012 curriculum and what a little treasure she is.

Here is a bit of background on the gorgeous Sophie ……..    

Combining a love of teaching with her love of the land, Sophie says ramping up the education activities of the cotton industry – an industry which is overwhelmingly innovative, technologically advanced and driven from within to be sustainable is an opportunity to combine her skills and interests to achieve something genuinely worthwhile and important.

Sophie with Cotton Young Farming Champions Tamsin Quirk and Katie Broughton

Sophie says after working in the Media and Communications a field which is all about taking charge of how an organisation or industry is represented, she moved into primary school teaching from there following her dream to do something more altruistic.

She says coming from a family farming background, has given her an awareness of  sustainable farming practices.

“I guess I have always been in agriculture without classifying it as such. My family have farmed for over four generations and it is a bit of a pilgrimage going back to the ancestral property in Scotland.”

“Growing up we had a small sheep property on the Lachlan River which we farmed with my extended family. We would also occasionally head up to my Grandfather’s property in Narrabri. When he bought it, it was partly grazing country but he gradually set it up for cropping, moving more into irrigated cotton as time went by.”

“My parents now own a grazing property near Woodstock and are keen on natural sequence farming.”

Sophie says since joining Cotton Australia her favourite experience has been the willingness of people to share their knowledge, experience and ideas and work collaboratively to get results.

“Broadly my role is to engage teachers, students and learning institutions in cotton and agriculture and promote a positive the positive story about agriculture to the next generation.”

“I’m looking forward to helping create more school-industry partnerships that improve teacher and student perceptions of the industry and encourage more students into agribusiness.  I also excited about developing curriculum resources that are credible, objective and well used by teachers that raise students awareness of sustainable cotton production.”

Yes and ditto to that and we are very much enjoying working with Sophie

This blog post is an excerpt from a COTTON AUSTRALIA STAFF PROFILE on SOPHIE DAVIDSON Wednesday, 25th July 2012