Young Farmers CEO plans NI road trip to visit members
New Zealand Young Farmers’ new chief executive will “couch surf” her way around the North Island next month.
Lynda Coppersmith pictured has announced plans for a road trip to meet members in Hawke’s Bay, Taranaki and the Waikato.
She will also join 40 teachers on a Teachers’ Day Out event in Hawke’s Bay on Tuesday, November 6.
“We’re going to be visiting a sheep and beef farm, a butchery, a cider maker and a mushroom farm,” said Lynda.
“Teachers’ Day Out is a fantastic event where we get teachers out of the classroom and into fields and factories.
“The trips are designed to inspire teachers about the exciting range of career opportunities in the agri-food sector,” she said.
Teachers’ Day Out events are also planned for Raglan, Auckland, Palmerston North, Christchurch and Invercargill.
They’re part of the vital work New Zealand Young Farmers carries out in schools to promote the primary industries.
“We have a dedicated team of teachers and territory managers across New Zealand helping schools use our unique learning resources, run TeenAg clubs and get students onto farms,” she said.
Lynda started at Young Farmers on October 1 and is based in Christchurch.
“Members are the backbone of our organisation,” she said.
“Our network of almost 80 clubs are a key part of communities, helping grow leaders and keeping young people connected.
“I’m looking forward to hearing from members and understanding what’s important to them,” she said.
New research on wearable technology in high-risk work environments to help make workers safer has been given a million dollar funding boost.
The government has awarded the grant to Dr Judy Bowen and her team at the University of Waikato.
There has been a boom in fitness and personal trackers as well as smartwatches that gather personal metrics such as heartrate, activity levels and hydration levels. Add in environmental factors such as temperature and location, and you may be able to support worker safety by identifying levels of fatigue or unsafe work conditions.
But Judy says there is little scientific evidence to show that the proposed technology can be used in this way in practice.
She has already done several years of research with forestry workers — a sector in which 30 workers have been killed on the job since 2013.
Judy says it is know that heart rate variability can be a good indicator of fatigue, but wrist based devices aren’t very accurate and chest straps are uncomfortable to work in.
“We’re looking at putting that technology into a compression shirt,” she says.
“Then we’ll see what other kinds of other sensors we can put in there.”