Anthony Lee

AN agricultural leader says he is keen to see action following the release of a national strategy aimed at getting an accurate picture of the industry into classrooms.

The National Food and Fibre Education Strategy process started three-years-ago with a speech from Australian Country Choice CEO Anthony Lee at the Rural Press Club Ekka breakfast, who argued that a coordinated industry effort was needed to agriculture into schools – particularly the younger years.

Speaking to the Week in Beef podcast this week, Mr Lee said educating young people was essential to industry maintaining a “social license” with the public.

“I’m a person who lives in the city and runs an ag business, so I see both sides of the coin. There was a lot of misinformation, things that just weren’t true and topics of conversation in schools that I really disagreed with,” he said.

“Then when I looked into further, I was pleased to see that in the National Curriculum food and fibre was in there. So, the question was ‘why isn’t it being taught?’.

“As we saw through COVID, it is an essential industry, we are the second largest industry in Australia contributing massively to GDP and obviously food security is going to become more important with this rising population.”

Mr Lee said one of the most important ways of turning the narrative around was to give young people in schools an accurate picture of the industry.

“There is no point waiting until school is over, having a whole lot of negative things being spoken about, then expecting people to come into the industry,” he said.

“We had to start young and we had to make sure what was being taught was accurate. Not only to grab people into our industry, but to educate people that there’s regional jobs, there is on the tool, there’s off the tools.”

Mr Lee’s speech was followed by an industry summit, which then led to the release of last week draft report, which is now calling for feedback before August. Mr Lee said he was keen to see work start and continue for the long-term.

“It is not a project for me, it is actually a never-ending journey that we need to be on. This thing is the start of what should be a constant improving plan overtime,” Mr Lee said.

“Where this will fall over is if we don’t maintain the rage and we don’t maintain the energy to actually bring it to life and start working through the challenges.”