When our kids look out the bus window at cane fields while heading to school, what do they see? Do they see opportunity and renewability, or just another problem around chemicals and the reef?
In a lot of ways, it comes down to education: from schools, from the media, in the home.
CANEGROWERS Mackay can see a growing future for cane. We have a whole host of possibilities open to us as an industry, across farming, agronomy, science and technology, engineering and manufacturing as we begin to reach into biofutures. There are opportunities across renewable energy and fuels, food and fabrication.
Sugar Plus is the Sugar Industry Roadmap, developed in collaboration across milling, research, government and grower representative organisations.
But it isn’t just about the sugar industry. It’s not just about growers, or millers, or innovators
It’s a journey for our whole regional community, proud of our industry.
If we want to see a regional economy that has diversity, we need generations of young people to see the positivity and possibility of the cane industry for our region, and want to work within it, whether it’s in the field, in processing, in the lab.
That comes down to education. Our industry is working to support teachers, not just in the agricultural education courses, but across the spectrum, helping young people learn about our industry, how we grow and what we are doing in terms of Best Practice, and its place in the economy.
There are programs such as the geography/science curriculum-aligned resource Sugarcane: One Plant, Many Products. Designed for Years 5-8, the six-lesson resource is a collaboration between CANEGROWERS and the Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia (PIEFA). It combines information about how the sugarcane industry works, but also the place of value-add products.
If teachers or parents are interested in this free resource, head to www.canegrowers.com.au and find student resources under the Resources menu.
Also available there are videos and factsheets that can be useful for careers advice or as source materials useful to many subject areas that offer insight into our industry.
We are pleased to say that by December, CANEGROWERS and PIEFA will release a Year 9-12 resource
This curriculum-aligned teaching resource will be joinedby one aimed at senior secondary students later this year. Picture: Contributed
