Study Agriculture

 To me, it's about trying to make sure that Australia, and the wider world, is able to produce food for my grandchildren's generation without destroying the planet, and I'm really excited to be a part of that. 
Hello, my name's Greg Colton, and I'm studying for a Bachelor of Science specialising in Regenerative Agriculture at Southern Cross University.

What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture isn't actually defined, which makes it so exciting, but in essence, it's working in harmony with ecosystems for the profitable production of food or fiber. So, it's a holistic way of farming in harmony with nature rather than against it. Being an online student, Residentials are one of the real highlights is coming to the university for residentials. We have two or three residentials a year that we've come to, and that includes a lot of time farm visits, and we've visited a whole range of farms across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales from strawberry farms to cotton farms, beef enterprises, uh, horticulture.  And that gives us a real opportunity to speak to real farmers who are actually putting into practice what we're learning.

In my second year, I was really lucky and fortunate to be awarded the VRM Biologik  

Scholarship Future Leaders Scholarship. And that allowed me to keep studying. As a student, receiving a scholarship from a company like VRM Biologik, and receiving the mentoring from them as well, not only has helped me through, um, the last couple of years at university, but it's really given me an injection to go forward into the workforce afterwards.

My wife and I have a small 100-acre farm in the Snowy Monaro region, and it's been great putting into practice some of the things that we’ve learned on the course. We have over 200 fruit trees, mainly cider apple varieties to create a cider brand. But also, we rotationally graze paddocks for the horses that my wife uses in her equine assisted learning business.

And being able to put that into practice on the farm and see the changes just in the last three years of the ecosystem, uh, we've put in over 200 natives to connect up wildlife corridors, and I know now that that's not only good for the environment, but actually, that has benefits for our farming practices as well.

I'm not quite sure what the future, holds after the end of this degree, but what I do know is that I'm really excited about taking what I've known forward, not only into my own farm, but into my local community.