Bulletin

Issue: May/June 2007

News

Global classroom for agriculture

Forty-five university students from China, Thailand and Australia recently took part in the most ambitious of La Trobe University’s innovative ‘Shared-Learning Projects in Agricultural Sciences’.

The final-year students were from China’s Yunnan Agricultural University, Thailand’s Maejo University and La Trobe.

The first stage of their projects comprised field trips to south east Australia, inspecting farms from Deniliquin in New South Wales to Portland, and over the border into South Australia. This was followed by two weeks of learning in China and Thailand during April.

Project co-ordinator, Associate Professor in Agricultural Sciences, Dr Peter Sale, said the idea is to let students ‘see’ what is happening across various landscapes, rather than try to describe things in lecture theatres.

‘Here they learnt about unique aspects of Australian agriculture, land use and some of our major sustainability problems. Students worked in small teams, shared learning experiences and met agriculturalists who explained first-hand how and why things are done in certain ways.’ The program compared agricultural themes across different regions, from temperate Australia, through sub-tropical Yunnan, to tropical Thailand.

These themes included new farming systems and technologies that deliver productivity gains and comparisons of how they are managed in each country; sustainability issues where agriculture is causing environmental problems; and how farmers are being helped to improved practices.

La Trobe’s Department of Agricultural Sciences pioneered the scheme in 2000 with a visit to Papua New Guinea. This was followed by visits to Indonesia (2002), PNG (2004) and to Yunnan province in China in 2005 and 2006.

Funding support is being provided by the Victorian Committee of the Crawford Fund, the Australia-Thailand Institute, the Rotary Club of Balwyn, and the three universities involved.