This week’s top stories from Young Farming Champions (YFC) around the country (and globe!)
In the Field
Youth Voices Leadership Team YFC Mentor and all round amazing woman Dione Howard has been busy learn all the ins and outs of social media at the Social Media Gov Summit. As part of the workshop she learnt about how to delve into the behind the scenes of the common social media apps to learn how to find your most engaged audiences and what is working well on a social media channel. One lessons she shared with the team is “vertical video is king ” as it takes up more screen “real estate”. A great reminder for us all to get a little more intimate with our social media apps…
Young Farming Champion Lucy Collingridge shows she is ahead of the curve filming in vertical mode
Winter cropping is underway but what a difference a few hundred kilometers can make…In the northern part of NSW with Agronomist Casey Onus’ clients dry sowing in anticipation for a break, while at the south end of the state Agronomist and farmer Emma Ayliffe will complete her’s and her clients winter crop sowing this week. Australia is such a vast and varying country and while some farmers have been extremely lucky with the rain, others are still waiting for mother nature to provide some relief from the drought.
Dryland crops around Moree going in exactly that, dry!
The opposite happens in the south with early crops out of the ground and what is left to be sown going into moisture with a promising start.
Grain Young Farming Champion Marlee Langfield is looking forward to her germinating canola crop getting some rain. Check out this great time lapse video of Canola seeds germinating
Overseas NFF 2030 leaders course Alumni Matt Chapness is in Laos sharing the technology and knowledge that we have on weed management in staple crops. Matt is working with rice growers in Laos sowing rice and introducing the concept of inter-row cultivation for weed control to help them get better crop yields
“They are small holder farmers and are very vulnerable to climatic shifts. It doesn’t take a lot for them to lose a whole year of production. They don’t have a lot of savings … I want to help them as they aren’t as fortunate as we are.
“Obviously it is different to Australia, but there are similar principles applying.”
Matt working with growers in Laos to improve how they grow rice which is not only a staple crop in their diets it is critical to many farms incomes.
Out of the field
Dione Howard, busy as always, is off to Melbourne next weekend as she wraps up her stint as the Wool Producers Youth Ambassador Role. As part of her trip she is attending the Wool Producers Animal Health and Welfare Advisory Committee and Executive meeting as an observer which has been a key aspect of her involvement as the Youth Ambassador. While there she will also get to find out the next round of “Raising the Baa” recipients as they are announced.
Dione Howard
Young Farming Champion Meg Rice attended the National Press Club Agricultural Leaders Debate
YFC Jasmine Whitten has been way out west has been running education programs in Cobar at the St John’s Parish Primary School. Run in conjunction with the Buckwaroon Landcare and Peak Gold Mine Environmental officers the program showcases how farmers care for one of our most precious resources, soil.
Jasmine pictured here with the students of St John’s Parish school and the teams from Buckwoon Landcare and Peak Gold Mine
Young Farming Champion Lucy Collingridge used social media to share how she is volunteering her time to support rural and regional communities through the agricultural show movement. Lucy shared her wisdom and experience in this fabulous blog
Young Farming Champion Alana Black has started her global journey of a lifetime flying out last week to join the Rural Youth Project, based in Scotland. The aim of the project is to “develop feasible strategies to develop leadership and enterprise skills amongst young people in agricultural and rural communities based on understanding their current situation, aspirations, opportunities and challenges.”
Alana is currently in the Netherlands on an agriculture learning journey and shared her trip highlights on ✔️ vertical and aquaponic farms 🍅 ✔️ community farming initiatives 🚜 ✔️ floating dairy farm 🐮 through our social media pages
The Netherlands is the most densely populated country in the European Union and with 26% of the landmass under sea the Dutch are looking more and more to urban farming to meet production needs. At STRIJP-S which has become a place for artists, designers, theatre-makers and musicians to showcase their work Alana visited a closed loop aquaponic farm. Located on the 5th floor of an old Phillips manufacturing building.
At Kipster Farm which is the first farm of the world to produce CO2-neutral eggs and has a viewing facility open 24hrs a day for transparency Alana was very impressed with the farm’s egg cartoons. Made from potato starch, cellulose fiber and water, the CO2 footprint of a the Kipster egg box is 90% smaller compared with a standard egg box.
Alana also visited the world’s first floating dairy. The offshore facility is right in the middle of Rotterdam’s Merwehaven harbour and will house 40 cows milked by robots. Eighty percent of the cows’ diet will come from food waste gathered from Rotterdam’s nearby restaurants.
The Floating Farm is 27m2 and has three levels. The lower level, on the floating base, houses the factories and a visitor’s area and shop. The factories process the raw cow milk, rainwater collected from the roof and cow urine and manure. Once processed, the manure will be used as fertiliser to grow feed for the cows.
Talking about globetrotters Wool Young Farming Champion Sam Wan is off to Italy. The trip is part of her prize pool of winning Elders Employee of the Year Sam will use the Italian wool study tour to experience the Italian connection of the wool pipeline and learn all she can to benefit her wool growers 🇮🇹”
Superstar YFC and climate action activist Anika Molesworth has had the most thrilling experience receiving the Instyle and Audi Future Shapers Women of Style award for the Farmer of Change award! On top of rubbing shoulders with the rich and fabulous she looked stunning and gave an inspiring speech . We couldn’t be prouder (and more jealous) of her truly unreal experience. See her acceptance speech here
Lifetime Highlights
Well honestly who can go past the superstar Anika…congratulations on being so damn fabulous, if you haven’t already go and grab your copy of June InStyle Magazine and see for yourself.
As the sunsets on yet another wrap-up of a fortnight of achievement of young people forging their way in this world we will leave you with this
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out!” – Dr. Seuss
We also blogged about our lessons learnt
- What we have learnt about the world of volunteering
- What we have learnt about using social media to amplify youth voices
- What we have learnt about leadership development
Its been an exciting fortnight for our Young Farming Champions – looking forward to sharing the future with you
#YouthinAg #YouthVocies19 #StrongerTogether
