Perspective 2025  - engaging with youth and why it is crucial going forward

 Katie Milne speaking at Palmerston North, March 18, 2016

The importance of being able to communicate intelligently and sensitively with the masses and especially the young is going to become more and more important as society is evolving  further away from our agricultural beginnings.  

I'm sure many of you will have heard the story on social media along the lines of:  #Why can't those cruel, inhumane hunters buy their meat at the supermarkets like the rest of us instead of killing animals... Farming livestock is seen in the same light by some.  Buying food at the supermarket is the norm - younger generations now think literally that's where food comes from and a lot have no idea how it is produced.  

That lack of understanding of our food chain is a threat that will rear up and bite us regularly and will require sensible and cool heads to sensitively enlighten people as to why certain things happen the way they do on farms when issues arise.  As Isaac Asimov said - in the modern democracy why is it that your ignorance is treated as being equal to my knowledge and experience?  

Social media is able to bring about a will for change within hours on issues that are very complex and deserve careful and full consideration.  The power of numbers has often overridden good and bad principals throughout history but never at the speed at which it happens now.   Youth are inherently savvy in this digital social media space.

Being able to present the case for the advances in agricultural production that are required to feed a growing population in a clear, intelligent, inclusive and respectful way will be needed to gain permission to proceed - we have all heard about social licence to farm...

One of the ways to do this is through engaging with schools to get agriculture back onto the curriculum via science, and growing things in the playgrounds as is now happening more and more.  Producing good resources that easily clip into the school systems is a key way to do this and many are under development.  

They are wide ranging from what good health and safety looks like on farms through to soil and its role in growing food.  There is an opportunity right now to do more of this as interest in food and where it comes from and growing it yourself is on the edge of a renaissance on the back of the likes of Jamie Oliver, master chef, and river cottage.

This will hopefully help change the way agriculture is viewed by youth from being alien to a more mainstream and understood part of life again.  It needs to be cool.

Attracting more youth back into agriculture at all levels will help accelerate the technological advances we need to help feed the world.  Those who are growing up with ever changing technology hold the key.  

We all know how bright young people can be - millionaires and billionaires are created by the digital revolution daily and all before reaching the age of 25 in some cases.  Imagine if we could harness more of that potential for agriculture.

We need to get the message across about just how exciting it is to be farming in these times.  It is hard to do with the amount of doom and gloom that gets picked up by the media.  The current slump in dairy prices has the potential to turn away many of our brightest young people who may have been thinking about entering the industry just when we need them jump in.

The opportunities for yet to be invented technology are endless and only limited by the imagination.

Some of the advances we could make right now are controversial and that's another reason we need modern future focussed people to enter agriculture.

Other countries are leaping ahead of us with what they can do as there is the odd barrier here that needs to be thoughtfully and carefully modified to allow us to take advantage in those fields as well.

GMO right now could allow NZ Inc to make massive progress in the areas of animal welfare, environmental management, and fertiliser utilisation.  Gene editing is in some cases just like speeding up selective breeding which we have been using ever since agriculture was invented by the first caveman who thought to put some seeds into soil deliberately.  

 Being able to switch off the genes in cattle that grow horns is a great example of this.  It would be a huge cost saving to farmers as well as providing an animal welfare benefit, let alone health and safety benefits.

Finally - Attracting young people into agriculture to not only become our future farmers but future leaders is of the utmost importance.   The rate of change that is happening through out the world is mind boggling and so we need people who have grown up with the Internet and the digital world as they will have the advantage over those who did not.  

Their views and ideas of what the future is and where it could, and should go and how to do it will be quite different to current thinking so they need to be stepping in now and help set the future direction.  
We need them to "seize the day" and lead the next agricultural revolution.  Or in modern speak :
#futurefarmerskillinitmassive.!  And I'm sure that is well put of date...