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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-09-15 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

AGRICULTURE EDUCATION

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (15:20): I want today to speak on a matter very close to my heart, that is, agriculture, and specifically the importance of choices for young people to study and to obtain an education in agriculture if they wish that. The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority recently undertook a period of consultation of the draft Senior Secondary Australian Curriculum.

I provided feedback to this authority regarding the omission of any reference to agriculture education in the draft curriculum, which, as a farmer, has caused me a great deal of concern, particularly in relation to what I said yesterday in the house and also three or four weeks ago in relation to food security.

Agriculture is an extremely important industry—or at least it has been in the past history of South Australia—to Australia and, indeed, to our state for food security, employment and as a major earner of export dollars. If this subject were to be omitted from any national education plan, I believe that it would be of great detriment to our country.

Future generations must have the choice to study agriculture at school if this industry is to survive and be the world's best, as we have been for many years. The reality of modern farming is that considerable technical and scientific skills are required to operate equipment and machinery, to maximise crop and animal yields and to meet all the relevant Australian and international standards for food quality and safety.

I know that at home, on my family's farm, I do not have too much idea now about how to operate the modern equipment, because I have been in this place for too long and technology has moved on. I have great difficulty, apart from sitting there and taking instructions over the radio, about what has to be done. Computerised systems now have changed farming entirely in the last five to 10 years, and people such as me need to be re-educated to stay in the workforce on the farms.

More and more the public demand is for home-grown food and not imports, and imports are an extreme worry, particularly the imports from Asia. Fancy importing food from countries such as China when we have the highest food standards in the world here. If children do not have the choice to undertake education about farming and agriculture we will not be able to continue to produce our own food into the future.

Australia has the reputation of having the most efficient and environmentally-conscious farmers in the world growing the highest quality food. That is a reputation that we have worked hard for and we have earnt it. We do not have to sell it because everyone in the world knows, especially in grains. To keep this reputation, we need to ensure that we have access to the new generation of young and highly-qualified agricultural scientists and advisers, particularly agronomists, because agronomists are the people who put the information out there.

When I was farming in my most active years it was the department of agriculture's agronomists who I depended on most of all, because they are the people with the expertise and they were great. It is a pity that we do not seem to have them now like we used to. I am extremely concerned that, if agriculture is omitted entirely in the national curriculum, it will be the demise of the industry forever.

I believe that some form of agriculture education should be mandatory from K-12, whether in the early schooling years it be in the form of something as simple as looking after a vegetable patch. I know that when I went to school we did just that: we had the school vegie patch, and it taught us how to grow. You teach a man how to grow, you feed him forever.

The National Farmers Federation recently determined that nationally there will be a shortfall of at least 10,000 to 20,000 positions per year either on the farm or in the food supply chain—a prime example of why agriculture must have a place in any national curriculum.

I hope that the Australian Assessment and Reporting Authority review the draft plan and ensure that agriculture remains where it should be—as part of all Australian children's education. How can this be? How can it happen? Who is making decisions such as these? Food, food production and the quality and the supply, is surely the most important issue facing this parliament or any parliament in Australia, and this is the priority we must give it. We must give it the highest priority. All I can say to members and the public and those who are making these decisions: please, wake up before it is too late.

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