 OK, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the University of Adelaide. Welcome to Open Day, and welcome to this talk about careers and degrees offered by the School of Agriculture, Food, and Wine, based at the Wake campus. As you can see, my name is Chris Ford. I'm deputy head of school responsible for learning and teaching matters. So what we're going to do this morning is to talk a little bit about agriculture, food, wine, where it sits, talk about some of the degrees that we have, give some examples of students who've been through our program. And then when I've done that, I'm going to hand over to one of our existing students who will tell you all a little bit about what life is like for him as a student out at the Wake campus doing agricultural sciences. Leaving in droves already, it was a good sign. OK, so I guess we're all aware of this. Thank you for staying, the rest of you. Agriculture is something that is clearly a global enterprise. It happens wherever there are people. It happens because there are people there. Because there is agriculture, whether it's this vast sort of prairie type agriculture that we might be familiar with here in Australia across the United States, Europe, or more subsistence type farming, or the sort of classical European view. This is a chateau somewhere in France producing, I'm guessing, some of the great wines of the world. So on the one hand, this is a massive global enterprise, increasingly so in terms of the business and the economics and the financial side of the business. At the same time, it is, of course, here today a very local enterprise. There may be some of you here in the room who are part of that enterprise. We've got some examples up there of local companies that are either based here in South Australia and wholly owned by South Australian entities or a part of much larger national, transnational, global organisations that are all to do with agriculture, but based here and with a representation here in the state. So it's a very big part of what we do. It's one of the biggest enterprises there is out there. And of course, it's a continuing one. And I guess you could say this is the problem we face. But if you look across the bottom of this graph, and this is a university, we're part of the Faculty of Sciences, so there's going to be the odd graph, but I won't be testing you on it too much. If you look across the bottom here, going back to 160,000 years ago, there really weren't that many people. In fact, 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, there really weren't that many people on the planet. And then all of a sudden, we started getting really good at something. It wasn't what you think, because we've always been doing that. But what it is, of course, is we're getting really good at not dying. We're getting good at living longer and longer and longer. And then you add into that the fact that we're also getting really good at producing food. So we know, as you'll be aware, have a population of around 7, 8 billion on the planet, and that is only going to increase. And what we need to do is to think of ways of how we're going to grow that. This is not a problem for the distant future. It's a problem for the immediate future. It's an opportunity, perhaps, for the immediate future as well. So many of you in the room here will be at the start of what can be 50, 60 years of careers working before you get to the point of hopefully being able to retire and go fishing or whatever. And in that time, we're going to see this population climb up there. This is not something for the dim and distant future. This is something that is really going to happen pretty soon. So agriculture, of course, will provide the way in which we come up with the food so that we can all have a happy and fulfilling life. Now, here in South Australia, we have a lot of enterprises that are associated with food and agricultural production. And I've just used one example here from the wine industry. And some of you might be aware that here in South Australia, we are kind of the home of the Australian wine industry in terms of the value of production, in terms of the history of the place we've been teaching winemaking here at the University of Adelaide at the Roseworthy Agricultural College for nearly 100 years now. And of course, all around the state here, we have regions that are known around the world for their winemaking capabilities, whether it's the sort of fine wines that are places like the Clare Valley, the Barossa Valley, the Kunawara, the more production-oriented regions like the Riverland or perhaps Padtaway, those closer to the city like the McLaren Vale. So we're very well placed here in South Australia to provide a very focused education in all aspects of agriculture. As I say, this is just the grape and wine perspective of it because we are very much at the heart of where a lot of that activity happens here in Australia and particularly with respect to the wine industry, this is kind of where most of it is at. So in recognition of that, we have, within the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, four undergraduate degree offerings. We have the Bachelor of Agricultural Sciences, the Bachelor of Food and Nutrition Science, Bachelor of Viticulture and Enology, and a new degree that we started only in 2015, the Bachelor of Applied Biology. And what I'm going to do is briefly talk about each of those four as we go through the morning. And it's important that you realise, as I mentioned once before, this is a science faculty, whether faculty of sciences, everything we teach, whether it's wine making, whether it's applied biology, whether it's food and nutrition, agriculture, has its underpinnings in science. So we expect, we hope all of our students are interested in science. It's kind of the fundamental of what we do, and all of our first year is taught here at North Terrace. So students all undertake, as it says up there, core courses, basic foundation courses in biology and in chemistry, and little bit of statistics, things like that. And then on top of that, we build from first year courses that are specific to the particular degrees they're doing. So agricultural students do agricultural science courses in the first year of the degree, so on and so forth. But everyone gets this core of underpinning science that provides that important foundation to build on as they go through the next few years. So our Bachelor of Agricultural Sciences degree, it says up there what you learn, all around how the industry and how the whole business of producing food in a huge operation, small operation, family businesses, whatever they are, how that is undertaken and how that is managed. And of course, a large part of that is understanding the agricultural systems, the paddocks, the whole systems of irrigation, farm management, whatever it is that underpin those processes. So that's the sort of knowledge that our students gain over the three or four years, or three years of that particular degree. Implicit in the agricultural science degree is a period of time spent doing work placement, and I'm hopeful when Jordy talks, he might tell us a little bit about some of his work placement opportunities there. And leading on from that degree, we've had students go into all of these sorts of areas as our graduates, so clearly agriculture is gonna be a pretty big destination for students from the program. But a lot of them go into the science side of agriculture, working for government agencies or working for organizations and companies for whom some particular part of the science of agriculture is their core business. We have a lot of agronomists, consultants. I was talking two weeks ago to representatives from one of the major Australian banks. They are massively keen to take on our graduates from the agricultural degree. They will train them in the financial and the sort of business side of what the NAB does, but what they need are people who understand, I guess, the difference between a pig and a sheep or whatever it is, the decision they're making. To guide them in their decision-making processes. And these people find themselves working, the lady I was talking to has worked in every state of Australia over the last eight years or 10 years of her career, following agricultural businesses through the various branches of the organizations you work for, that particular bank. So an ag degree is potentially very broad in its application and we've got a range of other opportunities you can see on the right hand side there, where all of our, some of our students have ended up over the past few years. Now this, if this works, this is a video. Click on what? Yeah, it does work. Yeah, I'm Edward Scott. I work as a soil scientist with Injective Field Systems here in Adelaide. So we're a private soil consultancy group consulting to large broad-acre farmers across Australia. For me, yeah, my ultimate day is being out in the field, being able to jump into a soil pit and get a whole new soil profile, but also about to jump in and have confidence in knowing that, right, I know I can build production and productivity for this farmer. Yeah, for me, especially stepping into the science program, you realize, like I was saying, with the agricultural science course, you're based over three campuses, so you get quite a dynamic view of different approaches to production, but for that first year, you are, yeah, certainly focused on that North Terrace you're in with the med students, the engineering students. You're in a world where you might not be thinking, well, how is this actually going to link to my end goal? I'm here learning about ferns, and I actually just want to grow wheat, but you've got to take it upon yourself to find those linkages to say, right, I'm sitting here in this chemistry class, this physics class, this biology class, and it is going to lead to me making a difference down the track. My name is Bonnie Maynard, and I work as a community team leader for the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. As a community team leader, my role focuses on building the capacity of the communities in the Lower and Mid-North District to help them deliver natural resource management outcomes and sustainable practices through things like engagement, involvement, and education. Day in the life of is hard to explain because I'm really lucky that I get exposure to such a variety of different areas and a good variety of different roles in my position. So one of the most... Well, one of the greatest achievements since I started in my role is our Young Environmental Leaders Program. That involves 12 schools in our district, so when I started, we only had four, and I'm quite proud that we've now got that up to 12 schools participating. Connecting young people to nature and helping them to value the native environment is really where my passion is. It's probably important for people entering science degrees in particular to understand that your career pathway isn't always straightforward. There's going to be bends, there's going to be dips, there's going to be rises, and that's okay. I mentioned right at the beginning that agriculture is a global activity these days, and in recognition of that, we're now starting to do more and more tours and visits for our students, and this is an example where the guy in the middle there, Professor Mike Keller, he's our head of school, and each year, for the past four years, he's taken a group of undergraduate students over to China for a three-week tour in the middle part of the year to see farming systems there, to see farms there, collective farms, big farms, small farms, to see how research is undertaken into agriculture in China and give these students kind of a brief but very intensive immersion into an utterly different system of agriculture. Clearly, of course, one which is likely to be a growing partner of ours when it comes to selling our food on the export markets. So these sorts of experiences for our students really provide a big picture, as the first speaker said this morning. Some of the stuff may not seem relevant. You've got to sort of put yourself out there and think, how does it all fit in? And these sort of opportunities build on that. Now, second of our degrees, the Bachelor of Food and Nutrition Science takes students on a journey, if you like, learning all about food and nutrition, learning about food technology. Quite a bit of this is taught up at Regency College of TAFE where they've got all sorts of huge food processing equipment, food technology equipment, and, of course, they've got the expertise in that area that we don't have. And we've worked with TAFE for probably the past 10 years in building up what is now a very successful degree program with them. And in addition to that, we have an increasing interest in that program in nutrition and now in public health nutrition. So a lot of our students come and take a nutrition-focused stream through the program and then can go on and do master's programs elsewhere in dietetics if they wish to do that. Again, as with the ACT degree, as with all of our degrees, the key part of the nutrition program and the Food and Nutrition Science program is to have a period of placement working out in industry. We have students working in a number of different food-based operations around the state and also in clinical trials design and that sort of thing in a number of the local hospitals. So again, the obvious sorts of career opportunities and these are the places our students have ended up in over the years, a lot of them are food technologists, product development, so on and so forth. And some of them have set their own businesses up. So we've got students who graduated from us coming up 10 years ago now or a bit less than that all set up together working in this company, Mexican Express, which produces things like liquid cheese. It doesn't really bear thinking about, but they produce liquid cheese, which has massive application in various parts of the processed food industry. Okay, the Bachelor of Viticulture and Enology is the current iteration of a degree that's been around at the Roseworthy Agricultural campus, college campus for, as I say, approaching 100 years. We've been teaching it exclusively at the weight, so there is no more wine making, tort, no more grape growing, undergone at the Roseworthy campus. It's all been done at the weight since the mid 1990s. We have a huge state of the art winery there specifically designed for teaching purposes where students work to produce wine from one tonne quantities of white grapes and one tonne quantities of red grapes. So it's a substantial piece of work they undertake. And through the four years of that degree program, students learn white wine making, red wine making, sparkling wine making, fortified wine making, distillation. And we're also gonna be offering an elective in brewing and beer technology come next year. So that'll prove to be very popular. I'll mention that in a moment as well. And again, integral part of the degree is to get out into the industry and work. So we build that into the start of the fourth year of the degree for the students that are focusing specifically on inology. They do an entire 10-week vintage working somewhere in Australia, making wine over that period of the year. Now, you'll notice this is called the Bachelor of Viticulture and Inology. We used to have degrees in both areas, but the wine industry has changed a lot in the past decade. And nearly always the case now that the winemaker wants to know exactly what's happened to the grapes in the vineyard and wants to dictate what should happen to those grapes. And similarly, the grape grower needs to know what he or she has to do in order to produce the particular styles of wine that their customer is seeking. So we offer this single degree Bachelor of Viticulture and Inology where all of the students come out with a very strong knowledge of both parts of the industry. And that's pretty obvious what the career opportunities are there. Winemakers and viticulturists head the list. We wouldn't be doing our job well if they didn't. But over the years, we've seen that some of our students will change from being practicing winemakers to working for the government agencies in terms of auditing. That's a tremendously important part of the industry because everything's based on reputation. We have to sell our wines around the world. So we have to be absolutely certain that what leaves Australian shores is not in any way compromised. So auditing is a terribly important part of that. And government microbiologists so on and so forth. Melanie Chester, some of you may have heard of Melanie. She was the gourmet traveller wine young maker of the year last year. Melanie left us in 2010. So in terms of meteoric careers, this is truly one of those. Melanie was a really good student when she was with us and she has just had a stellar career since then and that's been recognized by peers in the industry just five years out of graduation. So that's pretty impressive. On top of that, the big guns, the big Australian winemaker of the year, we're not modest, we'll claim all of these as our own. These are students that have all been through University of Adelaide or before that Roseworthy agricultural degree and they've all been recognized as Australian winemaker of the year. Okay, now in 2015, we started the Bachelor of Applied Biology. This is a new degree and the idea, the idea is kind of twofold. We want to get students excited about the biological science opportunities that we have on offer at the weight campus for undertaking honors and research with us but at the same time, we recognize that a lot of students are going to do a degree and graduate and move into industry, move into other aspects of work that are not academic. So we've set up the applied biology with those two ideas in mind. So it's a degree that's focused by the virtue of the name on biology. So you can study biochemistry, genetics and microbiology, the standard sorts of options in any biology degree and those are majors taken directly from our Bachelor of Science degree here. You can also study what we're calling plant product development and that's a suite of courses that we've put together including our new brewing technology and beer production course out at the weight campus. So students will take those in the third year of their study and get what we hope will be a very good overview of the various opportunities out there to use plant products in a production context. The great part about the applied biology degree is this opportunity it offers students for a slightly different experience of just doing a science degree. So we spread it over four years which gives us an opportunity to put students overseas for half of a year. So one semester we've got the first four applied biology students are presently over in North Carolina just starting their full semester of studies over there. That's tremendously exciting because that's the sort of degree we put together and now there are four people over there because we made it happen. So pretty excited about that. And when they come back they'll join the others in the course and what will happen is they'll do a full year of study with us to complete their third year and then they go out and do an internship somewhere in industry or a laboratory anywhere in Australia in fact anywhere in the world getting more experience so that when they graduate they've got all of the academic qualification plus this broadening experience of traveling and studying and living and working overseas and doing some form of internship somewhere in industry. So these are the sort of careers these people we hope are gonna have. Okay, I'm gonna hand over to Jordy now and he's gonna tell you what it's really like to be a student here at the university and we're just gonna swap slides. Good day everyone, my name's Jordy Kitsky I'm from Jamestown in the Mid-North about three hours north of here. I'm in my last year of Ag Science so a few months ago. I didn't know this but Ed who was speaking before he's my work mate. So I work for a company called Inject Field Systems one day a week while I've been at uni and I think it's things like that that are really important throughout the degree. You can work somewhere else and sort of apply the knowledge that you're learning in the classroom and then it sort of backs it up and helps you understand things better in the classroom. So I've been all around Australia in soil pits with them and I also run the app called Soil Expedition commuting, communicating soils research to farmers which we thought was a gap in the industry. So I just quickly run you through around where I've been so the uni Tucsoner tour through the Darling Downs for a week earlier this year, similar to the China trip. I worked at WA in a pasture management system where that's Armadale on the smart farm so I went to a youth leadership conference. So the story behind that is sort of the industry is dying for young people in agriculture and they're just pumping so much money into developing leaders in the industry. So there's so much opportunity around that. Through the Air Peninsula, Dingsil Pits, Sydney for an agribusiness conference a couple of weeks ago. That's my farm at home. The Mali Dings Pits, Damora in New South Wales for a competition. Aubrey, I got back five o'clock yesterday morning from a lamb conference. Wagga Wagga for a meat judging competition a couple of weeks ago. All of these things, companies are pretty much paying young people to go to them because they just want to develop them. So I've hardly had to pay off a cent for all this experience. That's Melbourne on a grain trading desk where her bloke's just clicking a button to train millions of dollars worth of grain every day. That's Tasmania on a dairy farm where I was lucky enough to get covered in shit for about a week. And look at how happy I am. If you're an industry where you're getting covered in shit and you're that happy, you're asking pretty happy. So as I'm sure you're aware, farmers aren't just all bloke sitting on a horse anymore. We're now in a very connected, very data intensive system. And the number of jobs is just going to blow out of control with the amount of technology in the ag at the moment. You look at the drone space and where the predicted sale is meant to go. It's just billions and billions of dollars. And if you can jump on that, you'll be set. So I just checked 20 jobs that could go up there, but there's probably hundreds and thousands. Chris gave the example of finance. I run the students association, so I'm talking to companies all the time. They come to me and say, listen, we want a graduate who's interested in this, like, have you got one? And the answer is yes. But talking to an agribusiness manager the other day, he said we can train all the economic side of things. We just want people who can understand farming systems. So my time as a student, when I went to sign up bag science, I saw the ATAR was 65 and I thought, oh, I'm a 90 ATAR student, I'm probably a bit smart for that. But when you jump into it, it's a very, oh, it's not over the top complex, but it's, you have to put a lot of hard work in. It's not just shearing sheep and patting cows. There's actually quite a lot to it, and it's fantastic. I'd also say don't do a degree unless you love doing that degree. I've had a lot of mates who jump into a degree and just because there's lots of jobs or high-paying jobs at the end of it, but it's a long work at uni when you're getting out of bed at eight o'clock in the morning, getting to uni at eight o'clock and starting something that you don't love. I'd also say, say yes. All those trips around the country is just because you've said yes to something. There's, as I said, there's so much opportunity for people in ag degrees, and you just have to say yes. But you also need to build networks with people in the industry, which is very easy to do. You just start running into the same people and you end up being great mates with people all around the country. And I guess the main thing is which that ag degree allows you to do is have a heap of fun. It's a small class, generally. By class, there's 35 people. So if you're in an economics degree, you probably get a class of 600 or 1,000. So you become a tight-knit group and it also allows, you can get to know your lecturers who are generally not too bad people. There are exceptions to the rule. But you can work with them and develop relationships and actually be a bit flexible. But I've just spent the week in Aubrey at LAM Expo, and all my lecturers said, don't worry about your assignments. We'll hand them up next week, that's no issue. If you're happy to make the effort to travel around the country and broaden your experiences, then we're happy to support you. Quick plug, we run and create the Ag Students Association. It's run and create is night in October and we're happy for, we'd love year 12 students to come along to that. So if you'd like to come along, flick me an email and we'll get you along to it. There's a sit-down dinner at that light oval and you make pay from industry and have a chat to some people who are graduating this year about the degree. So thank you. Okay, thanks Geordie. That's pretty much it for us. If you have any questions, please feel free. If not, please come and see our tent down on the main, stand down there outside the Bragg building. Lots of people in there lined up, ready to talk, ready to give you all the details you need. Thank you, thank you for coming.