#Strongwomen. "I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful – for all of it." Kristin Armstrong
I recently found myself in an unpleasant situation after suggesting that we ( the agriculture sector) find ways to ensure that agricultural academic research be more freely available so it can be more widely read and acted upon. In my case the pushback to this idea was very fierce.
It was wonderful to chat to PhD student and Young Farming Champion Francesca Earp today. She is a very smart young woman who is hungry for equality . Our discussion led to a lightbulb moment for me helping me identify the root cause of the big challenge we are facing with our Action4Youth Program (too much happening in too short a time ). It was also great to chat to Franny about the challenges of open access to academic research and its power structures. She drew my attention to recent blog article she had published in the LSE ( London School of Economics and Political Sciences ) Impact Blog
Some poignant points she makes resonated with me
The current state of academic publishing reinforces dominant power structures and perpetuates systemic inequalities. It is crucial that we critically examine and address these issues in order to create a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape that accurately reflects the perspectives and experiences of all communities.
As scholars, we have a responsibility to seek out and engage with diverse perspectives and experiences, regardless of our academic discipline. While it is important to work towards a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape, we cannot simply wait for these changes to be made. We must take proactive steps to challenge the status quo and actively seek out the works of non-Western academics. This not only promotes a more equitable and representative academic landscape, but also enriches our own understanding and perspectives. Francesca Earp March 8th 2023
In this passionate TEDx talk Dr Anika Molesworth implores us to rethink the food system
Farmers for Climate Action are showing us how with their recently released Farming Forever Report. Their research shows ensuring our farmers have the education and information they need is pivotal for them to sustainably provide us with a reliable supply of nutritious food for our families
Not surprising when we live and farm on the hottest, driest continent inhabited continent
In their report Farmers for Climate Action:
has called for more on-ground staff and programs delivering farmers education on climate and carbon.
puts forward a plan for a national climate and agriculture policy, based on a major survey of more than 600 farmers and round table discussions with leading farm stakeholders.
surveys found the vast majority of farmers want to reduce emissions and many want to sell carbon credits, but don’t know how to do so.
93% of farmers willing to shift to low emissions production but just 30% have been in a relevant practical demonstration or “extension” program with other farmers
38% of farmers said they do not sell carbon because they do not know how
Farmers want access to trusted experts via NRM Regions or Landcare
Farmers understand the need to be sustainable to maintain access to vital overseas markets
To me it would seem from the stats below about the access to the Future Drought Fund that the government needs to be constantly reminded 9 out of 10 farmers learn from other farmers
Want to see how innovative our young farmers are? Read this story about Tegan Nock, who co-founded farming start-up Loam Bio in 2019, developing a microbial fungus that when applied to soil might not only improve its health but greatly enhance its ability to store carbon
My post today features a school essay written by Lachlan Moss when he was in Year 11 at High School. Lachie is now one of Australia’s up and coming musical theatre stars
I have known Lachie all his life. He was a star from the day he was born. He featured in many of my early natural resource management promos.
Jaimie Frost and Lachie Moss. Photo Linda Faiers
Lachie essay is a heartbreaking reminder of how our school system is NOT fit for purpose
There are 7.6 billion people living on this planet and no two share the same story. In our lives we are all able to take a different journey, see different sights and think in different ways. This level of variety and individuality is something that humanity is gifted with. It creates our society. It lets us grow, create, learn, share and inspire.
This means there are 7.6 billion stories that can be shared. 7.6 billion different pasts being walked upon. This is society. This is natural. This is what enables us to create a brighter future. So why is it with all this variety could be celebrated, we are all pushed along a path, the same path, a path where we are taught that instead of having 7.6 billion different ways to respond, there is one answer, which is either A, B, C or D.
We are constantly being told to “Think outside the box.”
If this is so important, then why is it we spend most of, if not all, of our childhood being told to fill out only the inside of one of four boxes.
It starts in kindergarten as we color in when we are told to stay inside the line. This concept of finding the answer is the main goal of the public school system. And this used to be okay. We used to live in a world with a simple paradigm, a simple concept.
Go to school, work hard, do well, go to university, get a job and gain some level of success and security.
This simplified linear path is no longer the case and no longer believed by students. The problem that this brings with it is motivation is lost in the eyes of the student. The education system was never designed to inspire the longing for education. It was created to inspire success and now that we live in the environment where this success is harder to achieve, we have a lack of motivated learners. This has to change. A job is no longer defined by a degree, so why learn? Schools should be an environment that celebrate all types of learning and that encourage students to learn in their way.
Not only this, but a teacher should be recognized as one of the most influential roles in this environment. They have the ability to sculpt the minds of these children into our future doctors, lawyers, and presidents. They have the ability to inspire students, making them ask, “Why?” instead of forcing such questions upon them. A teacher should be able to facilitate for all learning styles, as it is these styles of learning that will increase the boundaries of how we perceive the world.
A good teacher will reach the minds of students, but a great teacher can touch a heart.
A great teacher is able to find the genius in everyone. “Everyone is a genius, but if we judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life feeling it’s stupid.” This is a quote from Albert Einstein, a genius in his own right and he is correct. We live in a world that is turning into a fishbowl and we are beginning to drown in questions that we can’t answer. This is because we are teaching the fish, the people capable of seeing the problems in a different light, to fit into our idea of what is normal.
Why? Walk down the path when there’s a river that can take these fish to greatness? Variety and different ways of thinking are our most useful tool. We have the power as a race to look at things from different perspectives. Why are we cutting off the fins of our creative thinkers and forcing them to walk along a path where they’re struggling to breathe. They are losing their maximum learning capacity and more importantly, losing their creativity.
Don’t take my word for it. There was a book released in 1992 called Break Point and Beyond, and inside this book is a test you can take that determines whether or not you are classified as a divergent thinking genius. Of the 1,600 students, children aged between three and five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent or creative ways by the time they were aged eight to ten, 32% could think this way. When the same test was applied to thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, only 10% could think this way. And when the test was used with 200,000, twenty-five-year-olds, only 2% were classified as divergent thinking geniuses.
We’ve created a system that kills creativity. Ask a sixth grader to draw a bird. They will draw a lower case m, do it in kindergarten and you’ll get 300 drawings that may look completely different, full of that sought after color and creativity.
Imagine a world where instead of being pushed through a bottleneck, we push the boundaries of human knowledge. Instead of feeling stupid, we feel we have the power to change the world through inspiration and the variety we bring. Instead of climbing up a mountain, we swim down a stream.
School is a factory, a world where we’re all forced to sit in lines, put our hands up to speak, listen to a ringing bells and get a small 20 to 40 minute breaks. We don’t learn because we want to learn. We learn because we have to. We specialize education into different sectors of faculties. We still pump out graduates in batches, which we call year groups, and we grade our students with letters and numbers.
This obsession with statistics, grades and quantifying one’s knowledge is so obscure. Where else do we do this? Do we quantify love? Do we quantify sorrow? What number of letter represents your first kiss? How about your first heartbreak? What aspect of humanity is honestly, quantifiable? Sure, he may be bad at writing an essay on World War Two, but he may be able to tell a story that conveys an understanding of the hardships and despair that could put any essay to shame. We give letters and grades of quality to things like produce to the quality of meat, not the contents of one’s mind. We lock these creative thinkers in a box, where in the worst case, creativity is constricted until they are removed from the colors of creativity and met with the shades of grey.
Instead of having a set of keys to unlock their true potential, they have one key that opens the box and throws them into a world where they are taught to believe they are stupid, where they are the piece that doesn’t fit and have to change themselves to do so. If given the opportunity, schools can become an environment where all the avenues of education can be explored, when we can step off the forced path and find our own way, allowing new pathways to be followed. This is the only way we can move towards the future because here is a statistic that matters.
There are 1.9 billion children in the world and that is 27% of the world population, but they are 100% of the future.
Lachie is not alone in asking the question if our education system is fit for purpose
How we recognise learning at the end of secondary schooling is important because it determines post school pathways to further learning and work and has a flow on effect into what we teach (curriculum) and what and how we assess young people at school.
The ATAR is the dominant representation of success in schooling. It was designed in an era where only 11% of the population attended higher education, and then most were from higher socio-economic groups.
Today, only 26% of university entrants actually use an ATAR to pursue further learning. It is not utilised in any other post school pathway.
In spite of this narrow utilisation, the ATAR has a disproportionate impact on secondary schooling curriculum and assessment. Our school system is geared to ATAR outcomes even if these are not sufficient indicators of a young person’s potential for recruiters and employers. Source
Les has made an artform out of making behaviour change simple and he is showing teachers involved in the Action4Agriculture Young Environmental Champions program how to support their students to become behaviour change specialists.
Josh Farr from Campus Consultancy is showing the students all the skills sets they need to use their behavior change skills to thrive in a green jobs future
This week it was Robertson Show where I was fascinated by the ring announcers and the variety of ways that locals could test their fitness
It was a very hot day but this didn’t seem to dampen the community spirit nor the punters with the Famous Robertson Show’s Australian Championship Potato Race the highlight
Two women and 29 men lined up to tackle the Famous Robertson Show’s Australian Championship Potato Race under the beating sun. Matty Hammond from Robertson ran a strong race snatching first place followed by Max Mauger from Robertson in second place and Nigel Scannell from Bowral in third. Source
Then there was the harness races where people replaced horses in front of the sulky
The exhibits in the pavilion where stunning
and once again the Rural Ambassador program was a huge success with Angela Hughes declared the winner. Photo source
Congratulations Ryan you are creating a movement of young people who are role models for youth volunteering
In the last 12 months thanks to the brilliance of Professor Felicity Blackstock ability to write funding applications, Action4Agriculture has had the opportunity to co-design and deliver with our stakeholder partners two new projects to shine a light on the agriculture sector.
We had a budget with the potential to hire experts to do all the work I have been doing pro bono for agriculture for the last 15 years. In some cases we had no idea just how much those people charge and I had to step up and fill some gaps
I am confident the people that get the big bucks never forget the plates for the food. Face palm Lynne, but its not called finger food for nothing is it and when the food is really good no-one seems to mind. Thank you Decadence Nowra, today’s food was divine
Thank you Bomaderry High School, you made us feel so welcome. The library and careers team went out of their way to make agriculture front and centre.
Thank you Become Education, what a great reminder to agriculture we don’t have to do it alone. There is a whole sector dedicated to careers exploration. We just have to partner with them.
School offices are interesting places. Anyone who visits a school these days will spend quite some time there, the admin team have so much red tape they have to put you through before they can let you into the school
At Bomaderry High School there are the traditional honour boards and there is this sign. It had me thinking what is my secret sauce
After the last two weeks working with Josh Farr from Campus Consultancy and Liv Pennie and team from Become Education, I think it might be identifying excellence in others.
But it wasn’t just the people at the front of the room, who made it all worth while. In the Hunter last week it was the support team who turned up. The people from council, the people from the NSW Office of Regional Youth, the people from Local Land Services, the people from NSW DPI who popped in to say G’Day, the Tocal team.
Today again people from council, people from Office for Regional Youth, Young Farming Champion Danni Fordham who did an 8 hour round trip, the people from the National Careers Institute, MP Fiona Phillips who shared her story and all the amazing teachers and their support networks.
The only people missing from the room was representatives from the agriculture sector.
We are all born with the capacity to do things we are naturally good at
In today’s world you need a lot of skills sets I didn’t get a chance to hone in the first 45 years of my life
You are only as good as the people you surround yourself. When I came back to the farm I discovered I wasn’t very good at milking cows and that was OK because we had plenty of people who were.
When I started a charity, I didn’t have a team of people and I had to learn a lot of stuff. Stuff I didn’t enjoy very much.
After 2o years of spending a great deal of time doing stuff that doesn’t come naturally, I am determined to spend the rest of my life doing the stuff that does.
Your niche is that absolute sweet spot where what you are fabulous that overlaps with what you love doing, and it is something that other people value and will pay you for.
It is not a simple thing to define…and many professionals fall into the trap of doing what all the other professionals do, and doing it the way they do it, simply because it LOOKS successful and that is “how things are done”. Too little thought is given to defining what success is to us personally. So we spend a lot of time making a living the way other people do, and believe that is “successful”. Source
How do we set young people up to be active and resilient citizens in their communities?
This is a challenge put to the Action4Agriculture team last year, initially by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) and also by the Office for Regional Youth.
VFFF commissioned Environmental Leadership Australia and Foundation for Young Australians to understand the issues for young people and make recommendations on how they can best be supported. See research outcomes here
Both organisations have youth advisory bodies and Action4Agriculture has youth representatives on both.
Action4Agriculture has been working with young people in primary, secondary and tertiary education for close to 20 years. We also have extensive insights into this demographic.
Building on our knowledge and insights plus that of our funding partners the Empowering Young Environmental Champions (YEC) program was born. We are very grateful to insights of Professor Felicity Blackstock and Tanya Jackson Vaughan in developing the model
The YEC are identified young people completing their Australian primary, secondary and tertiary education, who are supported to act on environmental and social issues important to them, their schools and their communities. Through the YEC project, these young people and their communities are connected with the best minds and ideas in government, education, industry, not for profits and the research sector to sustainably translate complex challenges into concrete problems and feel empowered to solve real world issues at a local, state or national level.
This bespoke program supports young Australians to be agents of change creating a movement to embed sustainability thinking and actions in our way of life.
The program is open to young people in Stage 3 to Stage 5 in primary and secondary schools and TAFE/Uni students in the following regions in 2023.
We believe change can only happen when people work together, which is why partnerships with the broader community and organisations nationally are a cornerstone of BSL. Source
Action4Youth is a vision to create a workforce attract, support and thrive model that can be scaled and replicated by any industry
It is the result of 20 years of applied research by many people investigating and trialing frameworks that understand the wants, needs and pain points of the people it aims to serve.
The model has three phases – EXPLORE_CONNECT_SUPPORT
It began with identifying who are the right people to bring to the table to support the vision.
It acknowledges you need place based models with resources for local solutions
Step Three. Identify and focus on the Top Three Modes of Influence
Step Four. Co-design a model that is participant ( teachers/career advisors, students, employers) centric
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Step Five. Identify and Engage Vocational Exploration Psychology Organisation to support educators and give them confidence they can support students to identify their values and explore careers
We have pressed the launch button and just when everything was going wonderfully the government in their wisdom moved NAPLAN from May to March 😊The things that you just cant account for in a project risk assessment 😊
The leadership journey begins with knowing how to lead yourself, then to lead teams and finally to lead systems. I believe Ryan has the capacity to not only lead systems but to drive meaningful change within Australian agriculture. He has the skills to create a movement and also the skills to gather around him the role models, mentors, champions and funding partners that he needs to be successful,” Source
The world is crying out for more youth led organisations and more youth led projects. Our research has shown us a lot more consideration could be being given to how much a young person’s life can change between the ages of 12 to 30.
They transition from education to work, they fall in love, they make decisions about careers or children and whether they can have both.
This year our youth led leadership team trialed holacracy. The person who put their hand up to be convenor suddenly found herself with a not to be missed opportunity to study in London and her PhD studies relocating her to Laos for 12 months. Life is full on when you are young
In talking to Ryan, one of my key interests in asking our wonderful journalist Mandy McKeesick to interview him and his “fan” club was the pivotal role his employer BlueScope is playing in nurturing his leadership journey. If BlueScope see the wisdom in providing Ryan with flexibility, champions and funding through their Community Foundation partnership with WIN4 then surely they too are setting a workplace culture benchmark all organisations can aspire to have.
Watch this space – Ryan has started a conversation in our team and with other people and organisations who want to support young people to be part of the youth leadership co-design process
Image source 
Source 
Want to see how innovative our young farmers are? Read 
After 2o years of spending a great deal of time doing stuff that doesn’t come naturally, I am determined to spend the rest of my life doing the stuff that does.
