This week’s top stories from Young Farming Champions (YFC) around the country…

In the Field

YFC Tim Eyes from The Food Farm: Central Coast has been busy making hay (while the sun shines)! “When I started farming on the coast I was told you cannot make hay here and I am still told that every week. Yet this is my first season doing small squares and third season in round bales,” Tim says.

“It’s very hard to access information from fellow hay farmers. I think making hay is in people’s blood and they seem to just know how to do it but it’s hard to articulate what they are looking for. In saying that, making hay is one of the best things I get to do on the farm. It’s a lovely process.”

 

Acting Youth Voices Leadership Team (YVLT) chair and YFC Emma Ayliffe is harvesting wheat at her home near Lake Cargelligo, NSW. Though it’s not a bumper crop, due to drought, she was happy to have the job done before this week’s forecast rain.

As agronomist and business owner of Summit Agriculture, one part of Emma’s current day job has her completing cotton trials. This photo shows the effects of using biodegradable film to increase soil temperature and increase plant growth. You can see the difference for yourself in these 3 week old (4 node) cotton plants:

Elders agronomist and YFC Dee George has been lucky to be working with some lush, green crops in the Western Districts of Victoria. “Where I live is has been a very lucky part of Australia for rainfall,” Dee says.

“Here is a client’s pasture – a mix of cereals, annual ryegrass, balansa clover and shaftal clover – he cut for silage. The windrows were so large I couldn’t get my arms around it!”

Our resident Biosecurity Officer and Wool YFC Lucy Collingridge has been busy with emergency management training recently. This training is aimed at building the skills and knowledge of staff who respond to an emergency response, such as a fire, flood or disease outbreak. This is an essential part of making sure our agricultural industry is ready for anything thrown at it!

Much of eastern Australia has seen its most widespread rain event in six months, but it’s been hit and miss for our YFC across drought affected areas.

Wool YFC and YVLT Communication Creative Team Leader Bessie Thomas is celebrating following an incredible 57mm of rain in 3 hours yesterday. If you’re in the far-west you might have caught Bessie chatting to ABC Broken Hill radio on Monday morning about the lucky break.

Out of the Field

YVLT acting chair Emma Ayliffe had the opportunity to tell her story at Chicks in the Sticks in Moonambel Victoria on Saturday 26th October. Emma says it was a great day, where participants had the opportunity to do workshops with soils a well as a tour of the Moonambel Gap Olive Grove. After a gorgeous grazing platter lunch Emma shared her story with 90 rural and regional women. “The highlight of the afternoon was meeting so many wonderful women from diverse backgrounds that were all meeting for the love of their rural lifestyles and to support the producers in their own backyard,” Emma says. 

Wool YFC Peta Bradley attended the AAABG (Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics) conference in Armidale last week. Bringing together the latest research in animal genetics, with extension staff and farmers. “I was also lucky enough to present in a session on the breeders day,” Peta says. And by all accounts she did a fantastic job!

The NSW Landcare & Local Land Services conference in Broken Hill was a hit according to YFC Jasmine Whitten. Earlier in the year Jasmine was selected as one of 16 presenters at the conference.

She had the pleasure of sharing an education program called ‘Healthy Soils, Healthy Farms” which she helped design and deliver with the Buckwaroon Landcare group – a group of farmers from Cobar. The education program aimed to help primary school students in grade 4 understand how farmers care for the soil through the use of QR codes, science experiments and a stream table to understand how water moves through our landscape.

Jasmine’s presentation was a huge hit at the conference, with attendees declaring it was one of the best and many people deciding to use similar ideas in their activities. Jasmine was also one of the five young people who received an Intrepid Landcare Sponsorship to attend the conference which was supported by the Bio Conservation Trust (BCT). This scholarship has seen Jasmine explore the concept of ‘How we can work together to conserve biodiversity on private land?’ which she is busily trying to finalise to share with the world, so stay tuned!

Climate YFC Anika Molesworth, Wool YFC Melissa Henry and Rice YFC Erika Effer also attended the conference and the four superstars took the chance to catch up, which is fabulous to see. Well done team!

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University of New England YFC Becca George was invited to guest speak at the Zonta Club of Armidale’s October meeting. “I spoke on my personal experiences with drought as well as at the UNICEF Youth Drought Summit earlier in October,” Becca says. “With Armidale on Level 5 water restrictions & the smaller surrounding towns nearing ‘Day 0’ there were questions from the members about what was discussed at the summit regarding water. Thank you Zonta Club of Armidale!”

Australian Registered Cattle Breeders Association (ARCBA) scholarship winners and UNE YFC Becca George and Ruby Canning attended the Young Breed Leaders Workshop.

YFC Becca George and her sister and YFC alumni Dee George are showcased in this month’s NSW Farmers magazine ‘The Farmer.’  Their family has been farming Central West NSW since 1912 and you can read the full story here: Nevertire Women Lead The Way on Family Farm 

In an extra busy week for Becca, she also attended the Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA) national conference in Ballina, NSW. “I recently received one of the student scholarships to attend the 2019 AWiA Conference, awarded by the committee,” Becca says. “The theme of this years conference was ‘Review, Renew, Regenerate’. The sessions included topics on culture in agribusiness, current and emerging risks in the industry, regenerative agriculture, as well as the importance of self care and maintaining physical and mental health. Thank you to the Australian Women in Agriculture Committee for giving me the opportunity to attend this event & network with likeminded women.”

YFC and grain farmer Marlee Langfield and her fiancé Andrew are the new face of “Tang Laysy Import Export Co., Ltd.” Ad for canola oil which has hit the streets of Cambodia!

Marlee’s face also made the cover of the National Farmers Federation (NFF) 2030 Roadmap, which included the national drought policy. You’re changing the face of Aus Ag in the best possible way Marlee!

NFF 2030 Leader and Friend of the YFC Matt Champness was spotted over on the Crawford Fund website. Read this update on his time as part of the Crawford Fund’s Laos-Australia agricultural mentoring program.

LEGO Farmer, NFF 2030 Leader and Picture You in Agriculture friend Aimee Snowdon shared her story of change-making on The Agvocate podcast – and it’s well worth a listen here! 

As a past Youth Ag Summit delegate, Aimee shared her story on how the Youth Ag Summit helped her journey to becoming Little Brick Pastoral. This year’s delegates will be challenged to create their own project, so Aimee spoke about her love of photography, farming, and improving youth education, and why and how she ventured into photographing LEGO.

It was at the Youth Ag Summit Aimee realised the consumers of 2050 are the youth of today, and therefore sharing knowledge of how food and fibre is produced should start with them – and what better way than LEGO. Well done Aimee! 

Friend of the YFC Guy Coleman is an Australian delegate to the 2019 Youth Ag Summit. Good luck Guy!

Prime Cuts

This week alone our YFC have been acknowledged by the community in some tremendous ways and we couldn’t be more proud!

Climate YFC and InStyle Farmer for Change, Klorane Changemaker and  2019 Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence (AFR WOI) Aumna Anika Molesworth, attended the AFR WOI dinner celebrating the 2019 nominees with Picture You in Agriculture founder Lynne Strong.

Rice YFC Erika Heffer won the 2019 Austcover Young Landcare Leadership Award.

Well done Jasmine Whitten on your outstanding presentation at 2019 NSW Landcare and LLS Conference!

Mega Congratulations to YFC Emma Ayliffe, Lucy Collingridge, Dione Howard and Bessie Thomas who have all been named on the NSW Department of Primary Industries Hidden Treasures Honour Roll 2019. The Hidden Treasures Honour Roll celebrates women volunteers who give so much to their rural communities. We couldn’t agree more that these women are absolute treasures!

And just between us and the fence post, there are a few more exciting awards in the pipeline for our YFC over the next few weeks. We can’t wait to share the news with you. Watch this space!

Archie Action

We are on count down to our 2019 Archibull Prize Awards and it’s time to head over to the Picture You in Agriculture Facebook page to keep up with the action! We’ve asked this year’s YFC to share their favourite blogs from the schools participating in this year’s competition. There’s lots to read and get excited about ahead of awards day onNovember 19th. Check it out!

AND…. Time is running out to vote for the 2019 Archibull Prize People’s Choice Award! It only takes a few minutes to look through he amazing artwork entries this year and pick your favourite. We’ve already counted more than 32,000 votes. Yes, that’s THIRTY TWO THOUSAND votes. Can we beat our all time record of 60,000? Vote now and don’t forget to share the link with your friends! 

Join the fabulous Costa Georgiadis our guest of honour at the awards ( immortlaised in Lego by Lego Farmer Aimee Snowden) in celebrating our incredible 2019 Archibull Pirze finalist schools

Mega shout out to our supporting partners celebrating 10 years of The Archibull Prize