Scholarships seed agricultural careers

By Alistair Jones

Your country needs you and so does the planet. That’s the message from Queensland, where not enough university students are enrolling in agriculture degrees. But it’s also a national problem: in a 2009 submission to the federal government, the Australian Council of Deans of Agriculture warned the number of agriculture graduates being produced nationally was only about one-sixth of the sector’s estimated needs.

In this context, the University of Queensland is offering 10 merit scholarships worth $6000 to high-achieving secondary school students who choose either UQ’s bachelor of agricultural science or its bachelor of agribusiness as a first preference on Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre applications.

Both the UQ programs are presently turning out 25 or so graduates a year, about half of what they produced in the past. Not surprisingly, graduates are snapped up by employers, particularly from the agribusiness program.

It’s hoped the scholarship scheme will help revive student numbers and is part of a wider push in Queensland to champion opportunities in agriculture, such as the Gateway Schools Agribusiness program, an initiative of the Queensland Department of Education and Training that targets high school students with information, excursions and exposure to the possibilities of a future career in agriculture.

UQ associate dean Glen Coleman admits there’s no simple explanation why student interest in agriculture has waned. One theory is that a booming and better-paid mining industry is luring students. The media highlights the plight of farmers facing environmental and climate challenges, suggesting agriculture is in decline.

Yet, according to Coleman, nothing is more crucial than agriculture. “When you think about the problems facing the world today, you’ve got a burgeoning population, you’ve got real concerns about climate change, and as part of that a lot of land that’s previously been used for food is being converted to bio-fuel production,” he says.

“You’ve got issues like water management, issues like major population areas such as Southeast Asia where, as they become more wealthy, they’re eating more animal protein, which requires more land to produce it. And yet we don’t have any more farming land. These are the planet’s biggest challenges.”

UQ’s three-year bachelor of agribusiness is about supply chain management, the “business and management of agriculture from the farm through to retail”, Coleman says. The banking sector, sales and marketing, business management, consultancy and commodities trading are all areas where graduates have found employment, nationally and internationally. Some have started their own businesses.

The four-year bachelor of agricultural science is “very much a pure academic degree”, Coleman says. “We’re really training professional people with professional abilities to critically analyse, to think and communicate, do research, and who are able to be familiar enough with the agricultural industry and the issues confronting [it] to bring the latest scientific discoveries together and to make sense of them for people working in the area.”

The course includes a 16-week industry placement, usually with a large pastoral company, which is the basis of a research project.

“Part of our challenge is making potential students aware of all the many different pathways available to our graduates,” Coleman says.

Scholarship applications, via the UQ website, close at 5pm on Monday.

Article from The Australian, October 30, 2010.