Bridging the Gap

Introducing the Young Farming Champions...

2012 has been the Australian Year of the Farmer with the aim of helping to educate the broader community about the importance of agriculture and enlighten them about the dedicated, hard-working people that provide that quality food for your table (and lots of other's as well) everyday.

Some of our city cousins have lost that connection with the rural communities and no longer understand where their food & fibre comes from, let alone what goes into growing it! The increasing curiosity about where their food comes from and the new platform of social media, I believe gives us a great opportunity for rural people to engage and tell our own story about what we do everyday to help put that food on your table.  

During my travels I have run across a program that has been started in several schools as a way of educating children about agriculture called Art4Agriculture. 

Part of the program for schools is the Archibull Prize - (yes ArchiBULL not Archibalds....!) in which students get to meet a young farmer, and then explore and showcase a particular food/fibre industry as the subject of an artwork.

Sounds like fun?! The other twist is the blank canvas each school is provided for their artwork is not actually canvas - but a life-size fibre glass cow!

A team of young farmers, aka "Young Farming Champions" travel to a few schools each and tell their story about what they do as a farmer. They have all put together some great videos to share with the classes during their visits so I hope to share some of these with you.

Thanks to Young Farming Champion Richie Quigley & Art4Ag for this one.

The 2012 The Land Sydney Showgirl Runner-up, Jess Monteith is also one of this year's Young Farming Champions!

You can read about Jess's story here, courtesy of Art4Ag.

The Art4Ag program is a great initiative and provides a little inspiration on just how easy it is for an everyday person to share their story about agriculture.

Art4Agriculture also have a great blog that you can follow: Art4Ag blog or go to their website www.art4agriculture.com.au