Young Farmers Questioned

ENCOURAGING more young people into agriculture is the focus of a new survey to understand what barriers exist for a career in farming and what inspires young people to go into farming.

One such young farmer is Tom Hunt, a 25 year old who manages Inverary a property 35 kilometres west of Scone near Kars Springs, who said he is motivated by innovations in farming and sees a bright future for Australian agriculture.

“Agriculture as a whole has had a negative outlook on it, when people talk about being a farmer and it being hard and that’s had a fair impact on a lot of young people when they leave home,” Mr Hunt said.

“I think creating awareness about the good things that happen in agriculture and take that negative outlook and turn it around through education,” he said.

“We’ve seen the coal industry go through an up and now a down, so I think in the next 15 years we’ll really see agriculture come through now, just the world population getting bigger and bigger and a lot of countries overseas are eating a lot more red meat and Australia is in the box seat to be able to produce that, our whole agricultural economy can benefit from that,” he said.

“Technology in agriculture has also come along way making things a lot more accessible, using drones to check crops and water supplies,” he said.

“Just doing what your father did and your grandfather did just doesn’t cut it anymore because there are so many smart technologies to utilise your time better and make you more efficient,” Tom Hunt said.

Tom said he wants to see farming done in a more sustainable way for better yields.

“Years and years of conventional farming has had a big impact on the land itself and it’s not as productive as it should be,” he said.

“The use of district drilling and native pastures and utilising our rainfall better; at the moment we are only using 20 to 30 percent of our rainfall.

“I’d also like to see the producers who are putting a lot of work into genetics and their beef to get certain traits and higher yields to get more recognition,” he said.

“Most beef producers are price takers, not price makers and I’m not sure how that can happen but more control over that would be good for farmers,” Tom Hunt said.

The Survey

The survey is an initiative between the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, New South Wales Young Farmers and New South Wales Farmers Association and closes on June 30.

Young farmers between the age of 18 and 35 are encouraged to participate: Young Farmer Business Project Survey.