Saturday, March 30, 2024

School and trust boost farming

Neal Wallace
Students at Wairarapa College are to get more farm training and career opportunities following an initiative with a Masterton community trust. The Masterton Trust Lands Trust has provided 14ha next to the college for agricultural training for 64 years but is taking it a step further by establishing an advisory panel of local industry leaders to provide advice and expertise for the course.
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More than 330 years nine to 13 students, a third of the roll, are studying agriculture this year and trust chairman Karl Taucher says the advisory panel will ensure teaching and skills developed on the farm are in line with what the industry needs.

“This new approach will make the most of this significant community asset as a training base for local students and potentially the starting point in their farming career.”

The college’s agriculture head Dan Grace says the advisory panel will provide input into the curriculum, ideas on how to further develop the farm and work with students.

“Agriculture is one of the main industries in Wairarapa and we need skilled people to be employed in that sector.”

The farm, which includes 9ha of college land, is 23ha in total and Grace says it aims to provide practical tuition using modern technology.

The students have studied and developed their own sheep breed, a four-way cross of Romney, Suffolk, Texel and Dorset Down, 170 olive trees were recently planted, they are studying the merits of various pasture mixes for regrassing and consideration is under way to use electronic identification on their 140 ewes and 30 replacements.

Students can now study beekeeping and are taught to shear, with eight former students competing at the recent Golden Shears competition.

Taratahi students used to pen sheep for the event but following its collapse Grace says college students did that work at the recent event.

He has former students involved in all aspects of agriculture from shearing and truck driving to banking, farm management and ownership.

“Our goal is it to have more young people who want to work in rural industries and to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to do that, as well as provide a stepping stone to further education.”

The trust is a community-owned property trust established in 1871 to own and manage surplus land not sold to Masterton’s working-class settlers.

Its original £165 parcel has grown into a holding of 80 commercial plots and buildings in and around the centre of Masterton, valued at more than $68 million.  

Income from property rentals is returned to the community with grants for educational, cultural and community activities.

The new college farm advisory board is BakerAg shareholder and farmer Sully Alsop, Ravensdown adviser Greig McLeod, Harewood Estate owner Paul Adamson, Ben Priestley from Kahu Honey, college principal Shelley Power, board member Hamish Taylor, trust manager Andrew Croskery, Grace and Taucher.

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