This week Young Farming Champion Josh Gilbert was named in Impact 25 alongisde Malcolm Turnbull, Julia Gillard and Rosie Batty
This is only one of many accolades Josh has racked up this year as you can see from his bio below.
Josh Gilbert is one of those rarest of individuals – an unstoppable powerhouse and a force of nature.
In the past three years he has been named in the National Top 50 Young Social Entrepreneurs, is recognised as one of Australia’s Top Six Young Social Entrepreneurs in the “Climate Change, Food Security and Sustainable Energy” field, is a National Earth Hour Ambassador and Chair of NSWFA Young Farmers Council.
“I wake up every day committed to changing the narrative in Australian agri-politics, securing justice for Indigenous Australians, building resilient rural and regional communities and supporting and encouraging Australia’s farmers to embrace the challenges of climate change and move forward.”
The world of agriculture can be a harsh place to put your hand up to drive change. There is a small number of very vocal people who don’t take kindly to people in agriculture who have a vision for agriculture to be seen as exciting and dynamic and full of promise and too often agriculture’s champions feel hounded and alone.
Josh on the other hand belongs to the generation of future influencers who are very vocally and proudly supported by their peers. I see Josh’s selection to the Impact 25 as a wonderful indicator that the change that agriculture needs to happen is happening.
Why you ask. The Impact 25 is elected by your peers. Once you are nominated to be one of 100 people to be up for selection for the Impact 25 the final 25 are selected by people’s choice
I wrote a blog post encouraging the agriculture sector to vote for Josh. That post had 275 Facebook shares. The Impact 25 voting process attracted 13,000 votes and agriculture’s Josh Gilbert made the list because his peers and many other people in agriculture who admire him and what he stands for took the time and voted for him.
Josh’s peers see him for what he is – a selfless, courageous young man who believes in a bright future for agriculture and is doing what ever it takes to start a movement and bring his peers with him on the journey to make it happen. Whatever it takes included Crowd Funding his way to Paris and COP21
How lucky is agriculture that Josh chose us
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