Study at Southern Cross University

As a part of the unit we have on-farm residentials and field-based studies that are part of the regenerative agriculture courses here at Southern Cross University and part of that is meeting with farmers and practitioners in their fields so students get to see firsthand these practices and principles of regenerative agriculture and best farming practices. So looking at farming systems, working out what's working well and what's not and there really is no substitute for these students to be able to actually get out there, meet their peers, meet people in the industry and key researchers here at the University.

Being able to put names to faces and like ask questions in person with our lecturer is especially good. This morning with the custard apple farm like just learning how he integrates both like conventional practices with best practice and regenerative things like it was really inspiring.

So the regenerative agriculture courses here at Southern Cross University are aimed at students who are interested in pursuing a career in this field and many are already working as practitioners and in some capacity as farmers or in industries that are connected with food – agriculture, broad acre, livestock, production systems.

So I was particularly interested in embracing low-energy means of farming and you know figuring out how to feed people without damaging the earth at the same time.

Just being able to get out there and speak to farmers directly and hear their problems to hear the complexity of the issues that are in that sort of thing. I think quite often a lot of people come to this we're coming from maybe a quite an environmental perspective all that sort of thing and they're quite simplistic models about how things function and maybe solutions seem quite simple to us but in reality they're a lot more complex and it's nice to be able to understand that complexity. And I think we've just been lucky to be exposed to some really innovative farmers.

That's a real strength that we have at the University particularly within this degree students are able to connect with these key farmers and learn core skills that are going to be valuable to them on their farming enterprises and also in achieving the jobs that they want to get in the future.

I see a lot of potential for the change that's needed in the food system globally to happen in the in the farming systems and I'd like to be a part of that. Just basically seeing how things are put together and how and how they work I think is massively important to a lot of people there's only so much you can learn from watching, getting in is really key.