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Agriculture will soon be worth\u00a0A$100 billion<\/a>\u00a0a year to Australia. The industry employs more than\u00a0250,000 people<\/a>, stewards\u00a080% of our land area<\/a>\u00a0and drives world-class agribusiness and food sectors. In an uncertain employment market, every new agriculture graduate has a\u00a0choice of six job opportunities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Agriculture today is fast-paced, global, diverse, reliant on high-end scientific discovery and increasingly responsive to consumers\u2019 concerns about provenance, ethics and health. Despite all this, agriculture still fails to grip the imagination of many of our brightest students.<\/p>\n In Australia about\u00a0300 to 400 students<\/a>\u00a0graduate with some form of agriculture degree each year. With 17 universities offering significant agriculture studies, this would amount to only 23 students per university each year. And the numbers are declining.<\/p>\n As a growth sector with many jobs on offer, why does it lack appeal for students? Do we have the right model to attract the school leavers agriculture needs?<\/p>\n Part of the problem is social: agriculture doesn\u2019t attract much attention apart from when Australia is on fire, covered in dust, flooded by water or when crops are dying of thirst. Parents and students associate agriculture with rural parched landscapes and struggling farmers, not high-technology science and genetics to produce the best meat or crops.<\/p>\n The world of agriculture may start in a rural town far from Sydney Harbour, but it ends up in the commodity markets of London, Paris and New York and underpins some of the world\u2019s most successful companies. And it does this with the help of some of our most innovative scientists.<\/p>\n To attract the best school leavers, it is vital that what we offer students is as exciting, diverse and challenging as the sector is becoming. To borrow a federal government term, the job-ready (agriculture) graduate of tomorrow needs to experience and understand best-practice regional farming systems. This is agriculture that\u2019s in sync with a diverse landscape and\u00a0resilient to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n Students\u2019 knowledge needs to be across the many ways to practise agriculture. These range from organic and\u00a0regenerative agricultural<\/a>\u00a0practices, focused on replicating natural processes, through to technology-driven\u00a0precision farming<\/a>\u00a0and the emerging trend of using locally sourced inputs in\u00a0circular farming systems<\/a>.<\/p>\n The days of simply shearing and shipping are over. The importance of provenance now goes right through the supply chain \u2013 we need to be able to trace food from paddock to plate.<\/p>\n Graduates will also need strong statistical and experimental design skills to manage the science and economics of agriculture. Since the emergence of\u00a0precision agriculture<\/a>\u00a0the quantitative skills graduates need have been totally transformed. They\u2019ll have to manage big data sets to make informed decisions and optimise farm production.<\/p>\n Agriculture demands ever-increasing technological skills. David Mariuz\/AAP<\/p><\/div>\n The curriculum has had to expand beyond its historical focus on experimental design to include teaching\u00a0spatial and temporal data<\/a>\u00a0combined with ecological statistics. Farmers want data in real time and mapped across their farm to optimise management and make spatially mapped yield predictions.<\/p>\n The impact of producing food is under increasing scrutiny, too, exemplified by recent films\u00a0Kiss the Ground<\/a>\u00a0and David Attenborough\u2019s\u00a0A Life on Our Planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n Consumers are demanding more of food producers. They are represented by groups concerned with better health and nutrition, more diverse diets, or advocates for differing ethical opinions.<\/p>\nWhat do students need to know?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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A rising awareness of ethics<\/strong><\/h4>\n