This week, almost 300 people gathered in Launceston for the national Nuffield conference. The three day program included a range of thought-provoking speakers, including many Nuffield Scholars. Delegates came from across Australia and also from overseas.
It was another great opportunity to share Tasmania’s amazing farming environment and to showcase the best and the brightest of our industry to a wider audience.
To the outside world, it probably meant little, but to those involved in agriculture it is probably one of the most inspiring events on the calendar.
The origin of this organisation exemplifies what this is all about.
William Morris was born in 1877 in Worcester in the UK, not far from the university town of Oxford. The grandson of a farmer, and not university educated himself, Morris progressed from repairing graduates’ bicycles and their early model cars to producing his own cars, starting with the Morris Cowley.
Morris took on Henry Ford, improving all the time through what he and his employees earned from their travel and observations. He was given the title of Lord Nuffield and in 1943 established the Nuffield Foundation to help the elderly and the poor. It was expanded four years later to include agricultural advancement. In 1950, the Nuffield Foundation started a parallel scheme covering overseas farmers, including those in Australia.
Nuffield Australia Farming Scholarships is a unique program that awards primary producers with a life-changing scholarship to travel overseas and study an agricultural topic of choice.
Nuffield has been selecting primary producers for over 60 years and it is the leading program for primary producers in Australia. Scholars are selected annually on merit as people who are committed and passionate about farming or fishing, are at the leading edge of technology uptake and potential future leaders in the industry.
There are approximately 300 Nuffield scholars in Australia who, through their Nuffield scholarship, have had a world experience into global agriculture to enhance their knowledge and skills. Scholars represent a wide number of rural industries and have returned to Australia to adopt best management practice so that excellence in all aspects of agricultural production is achieved.
Nuffield Australia is also part of a unique global network of 1,250 Nuffield Scholars from seven countries which also award Nuffield Farming Scholarships annually.
As a Nuffield Scholar, the learning process continues for life with state-based, national and international Nuffield tours and conferences. Scholars are encouraged to communicate new knowledge and ideas to both the alumni and to the wider agricultural industry.
That is the key to the success of the Nuffield program: Scholars travel and learn from peers across the world; then they spread the word about what they have discovered. The expanding network of people with ideas, imagination and the ability to implement what they have learned is invaluable.
The Nuffield network extends world-wide; and the mention of the program opens doors at all levels. This collegiate nature of the Nuffield concept is indeed its strength.
Australian Nuffield chairman Andrew Johnson says, “the long-term capacity of Australian agriculture to compete and succeed internationally will be determined by the ability of Australian farmers to recognise changing consumer preferences, adopt new technologies and production practices and maintain the sustainability of their operations by protecting their production environment”.
The Nuffield farming scholarship program is a very targeted and proven way of investing directly into the advancement of Australian agriculture.
An oft-repeated theme of mine is that we have to be more optimistic in Tasmania. We have to back those who can make a difference; rather than adopt the view that only outside assistance will save us. When you live on an island, your first priority has to be self-sufficiency.
The Nuffield scholarships have a fertile base here. We punch above our weight in innovation, ingenuity and enterprise. I’m not going to embarrass any individuals by naming them; and it would take too long to list them all here. Suffice to say that Nuffield scholars – past, present and aspiring – are at the leading edge of our industry. They are the ones pushing the boundaries, the ones that others watch over the fence.
When you add that spirit of inquiry to the importance of agriculture in Tasmania, you have a winning formula for success and growth.
TFGA chief executive Jan Davis
