Sustainable food consumption 5-Consumer waste

By the agriculture class

Consumers are the real food wasters!

In a primary school in America, a year 6 teacher has been monitoring the bins for 5 years. They discovered entire pieces of chicken and whole apples in the bin.There is now a partnership between the school and a group called Food for thought.

 

How we can be part of the solution…

We can start by planning the week’s meals, and not buying any more food than you’ll need to. Try to not let food go out of date or waste food you don’t eat. And lastly, try composting, or eating more organic food.

Importance of Innovation in farming 4-Conclusion

Innovative and efficient farming techniques allow farmers to feed more people and earn money. It will help the economy & environment.

Resources used in these blogs;

• 3.The opportunities and threats facing Australian agriculture (key drivers of change)
• http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-17/fred-leirchenmann-speaks-4-major-threats-industrialised-agriculture

Week 8-The final countdown…

By Kirsten (The VD class)

Wow, it is the final week ! our class has been so busy running around doing everything to get this cow ready for the judging. Everything is due by 5pm Friday, and its an absolute challenge to get it all done. This week we had to move quick, stay back after school, stay in at lunch and even spend time out of class, just to finish our beloved T-bone. He is looking great! We have everything planned, and this week was all about finishing everything off, painting the final touches, finishing buildings, boats, people, shopping carts, farmers, cows, houses, water tanks, tree’s , globes, paddocks, blogs, PowerPoint and videos.

Saying that this week was stressful is an understatement, especially since in the last few days we realised there were things missing and things that needed to be completed. Not to mention, the problems we faced throughout the week, such as a whole bucket of paint spilling onto our paddock board, our rocket ship cracking, and all our resources running out and or not working properly.

We added everything on this week, and it was crazy. Things wouldn’t really stick, and we began to worry. Our picnic blanket had to be stiffened 3 times for it to stay, and we had to used LOTS of super glue to stick all the elements onto the cow. (which ended up with us having stuck together fingers.. ouch)

No, that wasn't the last of our week, we had to paint trees, create clothes for the clothes line as well as the people on the blanket, and create a road, ear tag, trucks and shopping trolleys. In fact we had so much stuff to do that we even got a few year 7 students involved on the last day.

Our last day of creating everything was Thursday. That night we stayed back at school til 7pm, just fixing everything up and adding all the bits and pieces onto the cow. It was fun, but at the same time it was so stressful, knowing that everything was due tomorrow. But I have a good feeling that everything is going to turn out okay, even though I am currently writing this blog at 11pm. But that only goes to show how much work was put into the creation of T-bone, as well as the creation of the blogs, PowerPoint and all the photos and videos we took.

On behalf of the whole class, I would say that the archibull prize was a great activity for us all to engage in. Not only did we learn a lot about the beef industry, but our artistic skills were developed, and we all now have a larger and more confident knowledge of the Visual Arts and designs. On top of that, us as classes grew closer, and we made friends and found out interesting things about people we never would of expected to be friends with. We all get along and bond so well. The archibull has been an amazing experience, and I’m sure many of us would love to do it again.

Sustainable food consumption 4-Food waste in supermarkets

All around the world, an average of 40% of garbage wastes are filled with food. Australians waste over 400 million tonnes of food each year, equivalent to over 178 Kg per person.

When you throw out food you are not only wasting the food, you are wasting the resources required to make it, including all elements of production, processing, storage, shipping and refrigeration.

Innovations in farming 4-Pest management

What is it?
Integrated Pest Management(IPM) is an effective and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a combination of common-sense practices

Why is it needed?
Integrated Pest Management is needed for farmers to stop damage to the land and crops.
It adds in diseases from spreading from feral animals to farm animals.
some benefits of this are:

Early detection of potential problems as a result of regular crop monitoring.
Maintaining effectiveness of chemicals by delaying resistance.
Encouraging natural enemies to help manage pests.
Development of a more robust cropping system since it doesn't rely on one control method.
Saving money while producing a high quality product

What has been it's impact?
There is very little impact. If you control them by randomly spraying lots of toxic chemicals, there can be a lot (environmentally).

http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/factsheets/ipm.htm
http://www.extension.umn.edu/pesticides/pat/ppatman/18_3_manual/18_3_1_IPM.pdf
http://www.sardi.sa.gov.au/pestsdiseases/horticulture/horticultural_pests/diamondback_moth/integrated_pest_management

Stephanie Fowler visits Muirfield High School

Monday 22^nd October sees the year 9 visual design and the year 9 agriculture classes talking to Stephanie Fowler, young farming champion and meat scientist.

She showed us her videos and explained a little about what it is that she actually does. She has been a jillaroo in the northern territory and a farm hand in Wagga, but currently she is at a university in Wagga training to become Dr. Steph. She was originally drawn into the world of Ag due to her love of animals and that is something that she has taken through all her jobs to even the one she has currently. She’s had so many jobs in Agriculture because until recently she’s never really found what she wants to do but now she’s using a laser to try to determine the quality of cuts of meat without having to taste them. In the future she wants to have a probe created that will be able to determine the tenderness, juiciness and flavour of a cut of meat without doing anything to it. Her personality is fun-loving and she loves the animals she works with, both dead and alive.

Of all the jobs she’s had her favourite was being a paddy stacker ‘cause it’s put all of her jobs in perspective. The strangest job she’s had was an alpaca shearer, where she had to actually catch the alpacas then tie them down and then begin shearing them. Her most interesting job is her current job as a meat scientist, and there aren’t that many meat scientists in Australia at all, just about 10-15. A lot of farmers are big twitter users and Steph is definitely no exception, but she does take time away from her social media to think about everything that matters to her.

As a Young Farming Champion she has talked to us as an Ag graduate, meat scientist and a real person and the messages she’s given us as a Young Farming Champion are:

1) Agriculture can take you anywhere; it’s not just about being a farmer

And

2) Australian beef producers are some of the best in the world because they are innovative and look for ways to become more efficient.

All up Stephanie Fowler is a fun-loving meat scientist, who knows how to motivate school kids to be more interested in learning in learning and Ag.

Week 7-PANIC MODE ENGAGED!

By Kirsten (The VD class)

So this all ends next week. Its crazy how close we are to the deadline, and we are all beginning to freak out about this cow, and we are all worried that we may not finish. The challenges we faced this week were huge. We realised that we had so much to do, and we weren’t sure on how to do things. We all had to brainstorm, and actually use our brains to figure out what to do and personally I can say, I feel the class has grown artistically.

 

So this week we covered a lot. We got most of T-bone painted, and our paddocks were all put together onto the one board. We had to then make some extras for that, these included the little cows that’s are grazing, the trees and the ninja farmer man. This week we also put the BBQ into the cow.

We had to spraypaint everything and then place it in so we could get on with the rest of the cow. We had a few complications,, including not having enough material and stabalisng the bbq.

Later in the week we added more details onto the paintings on the cow, the muscles, the flowers and the grapes now look amazing. We also got really stuck into our blogs. There was quite a few people who hadn’t yet done their assigned blogs, so we really needed them to do them. Luckily they finally got around to it.

We also completed our calf this week, as well as painting the details onto our farmer lady. We also added texture to the cow this week, its meant to look just like hair. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, but there is still A LOT to do.

Young farming champ visit

By Kelly. (The VD class)

Stefanie Fowler came to visit us today! The 9 Visual Design and Agriculture class crowded into the art room to listen raptly to our enthusiastic and young farmer lady, Steph (so many of us assume farmers as blokes and old(men)!).

We gained heaps of insight into her role as an innovative ‘laser bearing’ meat scientist…A key thing she showed us was how many varied by-products from various parts of cattle are actually used (minus the cow’s ‘moo’ that hasn’t been captured yet to create a product from …well, as yet!)

We told Steph about our plans for Archibull and showed her our sketches. She commented on it and advised us to talk to other farmers.

She told us how she loved using Twitter (and made tweet buddies with our keen student and twitter enthusiast, Kristen). She also described how lots of farmers find it great as Tweets convey messages effectively because they are so short and to the point. She described AgChatOz as an example of a similar site that is for Australian farmers to communicate and discuss ideas, thoughts and issues.

Steph gave us lots of ideas to include in our Archibull Project!

Importance of Innovation in farming 3-Obstacles to innovation

• Land mass
• When it comes to food most people want it done the old fashion way.
• Complaints from neighbours about the smell and noise of farm gate sales.
• Lack of knowledge of innovating farming techniques.
• Environmental protection agency regulations.
• Water availability.
• Increases in energy and water cuts
• Climate changes
• Ecological degradation - Destruction of biodiversity
• Natural resource decline:
  • Soil loss increase
  • Drought

Designing the cow part 2

With the other side we have the flowers and the grapes for the manure as manure factory produces fertiliser and fertiliser is used to grow crops and plants, we have one glove and a shovel as often use as farming equipment’s .On the left side of T-Bone’s head you can see that we have a drawn up twitter sign to represent social and modern day network. We also have a science laboratory for all the livestock and meat research before it gets on the market to your dinner table.

To the left of the laboratory be have a building of abattoir were our cows gets processed into meat. Just below the abattoir we have a manufacturing plant where we make product out of our cows such as clothing, plastic, leather and many other things, you can see that because we have a clothes lines coming out of the manufacturing factory.

In between of all the factories we have a truck coming upwards from our little farm where we have a farmer sitting next to the cow. Our little farm contains 8 fields all around the field we have small cows around everywhere to show what an everyday farming looks like and what you would need.

Week 6-Deadline closer than it may appear!

By Kirsten (The VD class)

This week was a very big week. We did so much ! But that was only because we started staying back after school ! We had realised that the deadline was a lot closer than we expected, and made the decision to stay after school and come in to do our work at lunchtimes.

During this time we started on our board which has the farmer sitting on it. This board also has 7 different sections to it. They are paddocks and they show the different aspects and parts of a farm, which is why the farmer is sitting there. She sits there, and it’s like she is watching over the animals and tending to the farm before her. Some of the paddocks represent land that the cows are grazing on, one displays a weed that makes the cows sick, and to stop that from happening we have created to a mini ‘ninja’ farmer to help fight them. The is a replenished land section, a section for a farm house, a section for a water tank and even a section to put a silo.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE INSERT PICTURE OF BOARD HERE!

This week we also made and completed some more houses and buildings and also started painting the world onto T-bone. I would say that we are really coming along and making great progress. Our class as well as everybody who helped is getting so excited to see the end result ! :D

Sustainable food consumption 3-The Crawford fund

The Crawford fund has an ongoing interest in food security and encourages national attention through policy work and media efforts to issues related to food security.

The three key areas that the Crawford fund focuses on in their work, is to provide favoured sources of information, discuss on the issues related to agricultural research and to food security conferences. The 2007/2008 task force on food security currently have an international project called "A wider cause for international research."

Innovations in farming 3-The NLIS

The national livestock identification system:

• Is Australia's system for Identification and traceability of livestock.
• Since it's creation it has expanded to cattle sheep and goats to be tracked from property of birth to place of slaughter for:
  • Biosecurity
  • Meat safety
  • Product integrity
  • and market success
• It is important because you need to be able to identify the animal to ensure the quality of the meat, the welfare of the animal and to track and control diseases.
• This system has a great impact as it has helped farmers to easily track and control their stock.

Designing the cow

The cow was designed slowly and in a complicating process. At first everyone had put out their ideas to the class. Afterwards we had put them all together onto two big pieces of paper. It was then transferred onto the computer.

There were two sides of the cow. The first side was the barbeque. The design for this side of the cow would be to have a barbeque that was built into the cow. You could open the door where there would be a hole cut into the cow. This barbeque would have meat placed into them. The meat would then have the status of the meat production. The world drawn on would focus on the main countries that Australia exports livestock and beef into. A clothesline connecting from the other side of the cow would be connected to the barbeque.

Then we would have a blanket that was stiffened and add all sorts of models like a homeless person and little people to represent the community, falling out of the blanket. Miss King’s idea was to have the homeless girl hanging onto the blanket to represent the organisations that were using donations and etc. to ensure the homeless were fed and clothed properly. The people who were falling out of the blanket would also represent the variety of members of the community. We designed for the people to be elderly, mums and dads, little children and a high school student.

There would also be ships and worlds falling out of the blanket. The countries would represent the wider community of exports of livestock, beef and veal. We researched the countries with the highest percentage of beef exports. Those three countries were America, Japan and Korea. Roads were designed for trucks and trolleys. The trucks and trolleys would show the products that would help and feed our local community. The trolleys would be designed to have by-products made from cows like soap, brushes, etc. Buildings that help with selling products would be made and stuck onto. We thought of exaggerating the buildings. The main sellers of Australia are Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and Costco. Muscles were designed to be painted on the legs. This was because the main part that we eat for meat on a cow is the muscles.

The roads will be continuing from the other side of the cow to represent that the two sides of the cow are connected in sustainably feeding and farming a community for one day. We took advantage of the cow looking forwards to represent the future. The cow would have a space station and a rocket taking cows to the moon. We would have Ag Chat Oz as farmer’s use social media technologies to be able to talk to each other and they can tell each other information about sustainable farming.

Week 5-A busy week!

By Kirsten (The VD class)

This week was a pretty busy week. It was our first week back at school and we realised we had A LOT of work to do. We hadn’t even started painting our cow yet, and had barley got outlines of shapes for our extra elements. So this week we really had to get our act together. We really got into finalising our plans and we got together all our materials. We were freaking out about these blogs we have to write, the agriculture class was helping us do the mandatory blogs, so we are finally getting them done.

This week we also put together our farmer and calf. We plastered all the different parts, and put them together to dry. Saying that plastering was messy is definitely an understatement.

For another thing, we also worked on the buildings and other structures that we would place on our cow. We also started creating our weber barbeque during this week, we had the side of T-Bone cut out, so now he can fit a mini barbeque inside him. There is even a door we can lift up to get inside. We had to plaster a few things there, which was slightly time consuming, but it was ok, because now it looks great!

 

So overall, this week we accomplished quite a bit, especially in the finalising ideas department. We even managed to get our final design drawn onto T-Bone.

Importance of innovation in farming 2-Glossary

Efficiency

- The state or quality of being Efficient; competency in performance.

Intensification

- To make into a high or extreme degree

Quality of life

- An essential or distinctive character, property or attribute.

Productivity

- The quality, state or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance or bring forth goods and services.

Sustainably feed and clothe your community 2-Crunch the numbers!

 

This table shows how many animal/plants/beats it takes to sustainably feed and clothe your community – for ONE day!

Keep in mind that our local community is only 3.5% of all of Sydney!

Week 4-Creating the extras

WHAT WE DID

This week our class began creating all the extra’s that would be placed around and on the cow. We had planned our design and had decided that we would create a farmer, calf, homeless man and other little things such as trucks, cars and buildings to place on and around our cow.

HOW WE DID IT

The creation of these props has been a bit of a long process. We had to track down many different materials and put a lot of stuff together to get the right effect. To create our farmer and calf we used Styrofoam, metal rods, and plaster. We used fabric and stuffing to create our homeless man and used cardboard and paint to create our cars and buildings.

WHY DID WE DO IT ?

So we didn’t just make these things to look good. We actually had a bit of reasoning behind our creative madness. Firstly, the cars, trucks and buildings, well we made these to represent the exports of Australian beef industry. The buildings are being used as factories and outlets, where the trucks and cars are taking the beef away to the consumers.
The reason behind the calf was selective breeding. By this we mean that farmers selectively mix and match certain cows, (young cows, older cows and different breeds) so that when they breed with each other their offspring don’t release as much methane gas.

Now the farmer, we created the farmer for a few reasons. Our reasons are that farmers play a massive role in the beef industry. They don’t only breed the cows, but they look after them too, as well as many other animals. This is why he is such a big part of our display. To show that farmers take care of the animals. Not only that, but because farmers are breeding the cows, they play a major role in feeding and clothing the community.

Finally, the homeless man. As a class we decided to incorporate a homeless man to show that the community stretches out to everyone and isn’t limited to everyday people. A community includes everyone, even if they can’t sustainably feed and clothe themselves. The homeless man is also used to emphasise the fact that cows can be used in food and clothing, and that these products can be exported around the world and to all kinds of people.

Innovations in farming 2-New ways to water

A new technology being trialled in the southeast united states looks to increase water usage efficiency to reduce the extra 45% that is said to be needed to account for the demand in food. But farmers are looking to avoid this giant cost with a new water efficiency system.

A new innovation on a classic farm system, this system adds a valve to the classic 360 nozzle, the one that just sprays water all over the place in a circle. But the problem is that it sprays water all over the place. so a lot of the time it they spray on crops that are already watered or on paths between crops.

But with these valves water can be saved, by a computer precisely opening and closing the valves to ensure water only lands on crops, saving water. This is a very original and useful idea, as though both technologies aren't very new, combining them is extremely useful.

This Technology has had a very positive impact on society and will benefit all people, not just farmers, as water usage is reduced, helping the environment and saving people money on increased pricing for agricultural products.
So overall, this new technology will benefit everybody!

Sustainable food consumption 2-India’s lunch program

By the agriculture class

Out of a whole school of 300 students only 5 are able to bring lunch from home.

Anywhere from a third to 40% of the world's under-nourished children live in India. About half of all children there have stunted growth.

In 2005 India's supreme court ruled for civil activists that every child receives a cooked meal at school.

Week 3–What on earth are we doing?

Wow! This week has been so busy! It’s T-bones three week anniversary with us so we decided to learn a little bit more about her. In the first day we decided to break down the question so we would fully understand what it means. Everyone was split into groups to discuss their topic and give us a simple definition about it and what it means, the topics were sustainably, feed, clothing and community. After we were all finished researching our topic Kirsten the leader of the blogs wrote everything we researched on the whiteboard. Miss King went into a little bit more depth of the subject before we decided to move onto the next subject feeling content that we all now fully understood the question

Sustainably feed and clothe your community 1-Farming life FAQ

Does it make lots of money?

To run a commercial farm there are many costs involved. Feed for the animals, maintenance of the farm, water/electricity bills, etc. All these costs add up and farmers only get a small amount for the products they make.

To sustainably feed and clothe our communality we need sustainable farming and practises to take place.

• Not wasting any part of the animal.
• Using specific types of feed
• Using water tanks
• And many other things...

The importance of innovation 1-Introduction

Agriculture is always changing. Sometimes the change offers oportunities for innovation and improvement though there are always some obstacles to overcome.
For example - Bill and Bess have 20 years of farming knowledge, yet they must learn about innovative farming and new techniques as they lack knowledge on the subject.
Resources used in these blogs:

• 3.The opportunities and threats facing Australian agriculture (key drivers of change)
• http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-17/fred-leirchenmann-speaks-4-major-threats-industrialised-agriculture

Week 2–Meet the VD class and Judging Criteria

So, it is T-Bone’s second week at Muirfield. Our Visual Design class was extremely excited to start working on the cow, so we decided to have a look at the Judging Criteria, and that gave us a bit more information on the work that we had to cover. After we saw all the work we had to do, we got separated into groups based on our skills and interests, and voted for a team captain and their assistants. Tiana is the most responsible in our class, so she was voted the captain, and Rachel as her assistant.

We then needed a group of people that wanted to help create our blog. We also needed groups for designing the cow, researching information about cows, taking pictures for our blog. We were all pretty happy with the things we covered this week.

Sustainable food consumption 1-Youth education farms

Youth education farms

A video on youth education farms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDybrJAIFA

The youth education farmers are helping to educate the children in sustainable food consumption. In 2009 they built YEF farm 1. In 2010 they builat a farm more than double the size of YEF farm 1. They created one of the first poultry farms for orphans!

Innovations in farming 1-Cell grazing

By the agriculture class

1) What is it?
Cell grazing is a time-management system that helps with beef production and
improve animal and pasture production as well as increase soil carbon deduction.
SITE: http://www.nt.gov.au/d/Primary_Industry/index.cfm?Header=Cell%20Grazing%20for%20Better%20Productivity%20and%20Carbon%20Sequestration

2) Why is it needed?
Cell Grazing is needed because it will allow rainfall to be more effective by making
better seed bed's for new plants.Ecologically it increases the efficiency of water, sunlight
and mineral use.
SITE: http://www.abc.net.au/landline/stories/s652286.htm

3) What has been it's impact?
The impact of Cell Grazing is that it has a rotational nature of a cell grazing system
which causes root hairs to slough off after each graze and be replaced during the
regrowth process. This effectively acts as a carbon pump during the growing season.
SITE: http://www.carbonlink.com.au/farmers/cells/index.htm

Week 1 – Meet the cow

By Kirsten

One sunny day, at Muirfield high school, an unexpected visitor arrived in the year 9 Visual Design classroom. When year 9 walked into their class that morning, they were surprised by the unexpected sight of what looked like a real life cow. Only he was white and covered in bubble wrap. Everyone was baffled by his arrival but had decided to make the most of it. But of course, the first thing year 9 needed to do was to figure out the cows name and why he was here. To start off, they sat him down and tried to work out his name, considering that he would not talk to them. The class gathered around the white board and wrote down many suggestions. Some smart, and some so far fetched that they were silly. We were all stuck at and end, until we heard a voice coming from the back of the room, “T-BONE” they heard. Everyone’s head turned, and looked towards the cow. It was as if he was yelling his name. But then their eyes travelled to the door, where the schools youth worker was standing. The children all loved the name, and the cow seemed to agree. They had officially named their new visitor T-bone.

The next step the class took was to unwrap their new friend, and make him feel more comfortable and happy in his new environment. The class took T-Bone for a tour around the school so he got to be familiar with his surroundings. The class took him to the front of the school and everything, so that he could an official photo infront of the school sign, where a special welcoming message was awaiting him. He was then taken for a full tour around the school, where he had many different pictures taken doing various school activities. At the end of the day he even managed to score a photo with the entire year 9 Visual Design class.