Meet Young Farming Champion, Farmer and Agronomist Emma Ayliffe who with farmer Craig Newham will be running the Good Bugs, Bad Bugs Workshop at Sydney Royal Easter Show Primary School Preview Day.

Read Emma’s story in AGWomen Global HERE

Student participants will go home with a new appreciation of the insects around us using cotton farming as the model. The first thing they will learn is there are NO actual bad bugs, just bugs in the wrong place at the wrong time and there are some very pesky little bugs that just love to chew cotton plants. With Australia being the most water efficient cotton producing country in the world and (with Egypt) producing the best quality cotton in the world  ( ours is the whitest and the strongest) our cotton farmers are being very diligent about encouraging the bugs in the wrong place at the wrong time to find somewhere else to live and dine.

Students will discover our cotton farmers have developed a very impressive pest management system known as Integrated Pest Management or IPM for short.

Its a big picture process that requires

1. Knowing your enemy and your friends.
2. Taking a year round approach.
3. Thinking of the farm and surrounding vegetation as a whole system.
4. Having good on-farm hygiene.
5. Considering options to escape, avoid or reduce pests.
6. Sampling crops effectively and regularly.
7. Aiming to grow a healthy crop.
8. Choosing insecticides wisely to conserve beneficials (good bugs) and bees.

Emma and Craig will introduce the students to the good bugs also known as beneficials and the bag bugs that the good bugs keep under control. Then the students will test their bug knowledge

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And like Emma they will find that spiders can be your friend ( at a distance)

Join the Young Farming Champions at Sydney Royal Easter Show Primary School Preview Day. Meet the team HERE

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