By Rebecca McGuire, head of St Peter’s agricultural and horticultural department.
There’s an exciting future ahead for those wanting to be involved in the food and fibre sectors in New Zealand and internationally. Students are seeing studying ag/hort science, agribusiness and primary industry courses at St Peter’s College in Cambridge as worthwhile options as the continued labour shortage becomes more evident.
Gone are the days when ag/hort was known as a drop-out subject and you were “just a farmer”. The non-farmers are starting to appreciate the plethora of skills needed to own, operate, manage and work in any primary sector business.
At St Peter’s and many other secondary schools in NZ, specific courses are being designed to give students the opportunity to understand what the different primary sector involves. Practical skills, research, innovation, field trips, competitions and work experience opportunities are a few of the aspects of the different courses.
As more students choose ag/hort as an option in the junior years, it has become evident at St Peter’s that appropriate courses need to be designed to cater for student needs and interests and to show the many different employment opportunities that are available post school.
St Peter’s currently offers 10 curriculums over 16 classes to 330 students ranging from ag/hort science as an option in years nine to 13; agribusiness options in years 12 to 13; and a practical primary industry skills option in the same senior years.
Some students choose to complete several of these options at the same time as they are determined to be part of the primary industries once they leave school. It is important that there’s an opportunity to be both practical and academic. Supporting students for after-school decisions is an important aspect of our philosophy at the agri centre. The extensive pathways we offer are driven by industry demand.
Currently the demand for motivated, hardworking and educated people in these industries is very large, both within New Zealand and internationally, as the stress of feeding an expanding population continues to grow.
Whether students choose a more hands-on after-school education such as Growing Future Farmers or are university oriented, we try to support them by giving them experiences inside and outside the classroom.
Tertiary institutions are promoting new courses to encourage students into agribusiness industries. Students tend to merge to Lincoln and Massey universities to continue with their agri studies.
Choosing a pathway post school for students can be incredibly daunting and students are challenged with finding information from so many different sources over so many industries. Marketing and social media seem to have a huge influence over the pathway they take.
This is a space that needs to be worked on by industries to promote the opportunities and more importantly the pathways that their industries offer. It is a competitive market. Students are wanting to be part of the food and fibre sectors, but at the moment the pathways are hard to find.
An initiative we are exploring at the moment is getting students on working placement on local dairy farms. This may be a short stint for simple exposure for a student who may not have been on a dairy farm, or a longer stint throughout a term for a student who is more experienced and wants to learn the everyday running of the farm.
We have started this experience on Owl Farm for selected students and have had other farmers and industries approach us to be part of this initiative. It would be great to have this offering for the majority of industries. Students’ choosing university or going straight onto the farm or into the orchard is a decision they do not take lightly. For either decision, it is helpful for them to have some experience of how the product is produced, paddock to plate.
Having Owl Farm on our classroom doorstep helps students identify and understand the theory they are taught in the classroom with the practical application. We are very lucky to have this and are continually tweaking courses to make the most of the farm. For example, this year the farm introduced the Halter technology. Students got to study the technology, see it in action, study the major influences of investing in such a technology and got to use the app and shift the virtual fences and release the cows onto their new break.
They also get to see traditional management practices such as weighing, vaccinating and drenching and the importance of such practices in meeting weight targets and budgets.
The agribusiness programme we offer gives students opportunities to understand and see in real life some of the decisions agribusinesses have to make. Understanding future-proofing ideas, creating cash flows and looking at innovations to help farm sustainably are some of the units we cover.
We offer substantial programmes at St Peter’s to support the future of the food and fibre sectors New Zealand relies on for domestic and export products. The labour shortage currently being experienced in the primary industries is an indication of where possible employment opportunities will be for our students both in NZ and internationally.
From practical hands-on experiences to in-depth studies on sustainable farming practises and innovation, our students have many pathways to experience.
