The theme at the Fieldays event at Mystery Creek was "growing our capability in agribusiness" and there were some interesting ideas to attract workers.
St Paul’s Collegiate School held a seminar about the agribusiness programme they had been running in their school and the shift for it to be practised across New Zealand high schools.
St Paul’s deputy headmaster Peter Hampton said the purpose for creating the programme was to encourage students in to a career that was crying out for degree-qualified workers.
"The New Zealand government estimates we'll need about 50,000 more people into agribusiness jobs by 2025," he said.
"The current New Zealand school systems doesn't have an agribusiness course that focuses on 'beyond the farm gate'. Hampton said the current horticulture studies are not seen as a course for "able students".
"That’s a misfortune but that’s the reality, this programme we're working on focuses on beyond the farm gate," he said.
"What’s really interesting is that young people don't realise when you work in the agribusiness sector that you get the same rewards that you gain financially as if you were lawyers and doctors and dentists, they pay a lot so a large part of the programme is for them to find out about that."
Year 13 student agribusiness student at St Paul’s Collegiate, Nick Simpson, 17, said he grew up on a farm near Port Waikato so he always knew he wanted to work in the agricultural industry.
"I always wanted to do this as a career, [agribusiness] is good because there are different types of directions I can take," he said.
"I don't think I would have gone to university if I didn't take this subject, I would have gone straight on to the farm [from high school]."
Nick said he would eventually like to work on a sheep or beef farm but he was excited to know he had options by studying further at university.
"When we first started, people looked down on the [agribusiness] students but now, in the second year [of the pilot] there are double the students, we now have 88 and kids from other schools have come here just for it.
"It’s not a career that people look down on now."
Wintec researchers Dave Snell, Jeremy Suisted and Gert Hattingh said their exhibition was about encouraging people and businesses to pose research questions.
Some interesting questions were "What’s the best way to keep track of my nitrate leech?" and "What are drought effects doing to water systems?".
Hattingh said some of the questions posed could win up to $5000 worth of research vouchers, which would go towards researching ideas to help businesses grow.
A research project Hattingh had worked on for a Whangarei business was about showing the next generation of farmers how to make sustainable decisions and the effect on their profits and environment.
"We created an interactive software platform... the programme visualises a low carbon footprint farm," he said.
"The students can change a variable on the touch-screen farm and increase the size of the herd, introduce more nitrate... and instantly see the impact of the farm in the future."
