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 Try to not let food go out of date or waste food you don’t eat.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.