FARMERS HELPING STUDENTS AS PART OF A NEW EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME

This article first appeared as a radio interview on Today FM’s Rural Exchange on 17 July 2022.

Farmers across the country are being asked to go back to school as a part of a new educational programme. 

Farmer Time matches farmers with schools through virtual classroom sessions. Beef and Lamb has been running a trial programme over the last six months with eight farmer-teacher pairings across six schools. 

One of the farmers in the trail is Jess Turnbull, who runs a sheep, beef and cropping farm in the Hakataramea valley near Kurow. She spoke to Rural Exchange’s Hamish McKay and Dominic George about the initiative.

Turnbull became involved in the programme through a friend who was in touch with the Beef + Lamb programme coordinator. "I had a look online at how the programme had been run in other countries, like the UK, Australia and Sweden, where it had been going for a few years. It looked like a pretty simple way to show kids who don't always have the opportunity to live on land first-hand. I thought it made sense," Turnbull said.

With different management and ownership opportunities available in today’s modern farming world, the programme is being heralded as a great way of introducing farming to people who might not have had a connection with a farm before.

Turnbull was matched with Edendale Primary School in Auckland, "I have a class of kids up there and I just have a talk to them. We talk over Zoom for about 20 minutes, once a fortnight and they have questions for me. 

"I show them what we're up to on the farm and then, in the in-between times, I take videos of things that I thought might be interesting to them and send them to the teacher. The kids have a look before the class and then ask me questions about that. It was really simple and worked really well."

Feedback from the kids has been overwhelmingly positive, "it was question after question after question! Then if I asked them a question, there were always heaps of hands going up at the back of the class. They were just so interested. 

"I sent up some wool from the farm and some honey that's made just locally here too and they got to have a look at it. The looks on their faces was a huge reward for me. It's so cool."

Listen to the full interview between Jess Turnbull, Hamish McKay and Dominic George above.

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