Kate on farm crusade
Program aims to make agriculture more sustainable
A UNIVERSITY graduate has been tasked with helping Far North sugarcane growers become more sustainable.
Northern beaches resident Kate Armstrong, 23, is completing an extension officer traineeship with Mossman Agricultural Services.
She said she loved working with farmers to improve sustainability of agriculture.
“I didn’t really have a particular industry, but I really wanted to work in resource management and particularly conflicting resources,” she said.
“I think it is the importance of it.
“It really intrigues me how we can all live together and how we can be sustaining the Reef, but also sustaining the livelihoods and productivity of growers.”
Ms Armstrong moved from Samford in Brisbane’s northwest about four weeks ago.
She has a Bachelor of Environmental Management, majoring in natural systems and wildlife from the University of Queensland.
Family ties to Darling Downs cotton farming in areas such as St George, Dalby and Cecil Plains inspired her career in agriculture.
She is one of six new extension trainees working in the Queensland Farmers Federation’s Reef Extension Work Placement Program from Mossman to Gympie.
The program is aimed at addressing a forecast shortfall of natural resource management agriculture advisers.
Ms Armstrong works with growers from the Daintree to south of Port Douglas.
She said she had noticed a “culture of awareness” about agriculture’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef.
“From what I have seen the farmers are actually really open to doing the best management practices,” she said.
QFF says the crop of new trainees will help address a shortfall of advisers.
QFF president Stuart Armitage said that industry was excited to help the new eager cohort of trainees.
“The delivery of extension services has undergone significant change in recent years,” he said.
The Reef Extension Work Placement Program was created after to provide training opportunities for existing extension officers across the Reef catchments.