Outstanding in their field

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The National Agricultural Field Days are being held from 13 to 16 June at Mystery Creek near Hamilton.

The field days are in their 33rd year, and these days usually attract more than 100,000 visitors, and 1,000 exhibitors – the largest such event in the Southern Hemisphere.

The theme this year is invention, innovation, and ingenuity.

According to Ministry of Agriculture (MAF) statistics, there are over 80,000 farms in New Zealand. In 1999 (the most recent year for which statistics are available on MAF's website) 38 percent of New Zealand farms were in beef and sheep, dairy cattle made up 12 percent, sheep farming 20 percent, mixed livestock nine percent, and beef cattle four percent.

Statistics New Zealand reports that sheep numbers have been declining since 1988. In 1999 there were only 45.7 million sheep in the country – the lowest number since 1957.

While sheep numbers have declined, the number of dairy cattle has risen by more than a million in the 10 years to reach an estimated 4.3 million in 1999. Between the 1995/96 and 1998/99 seasons there were 600 dairy conversions from sheep and beef farms throughout New Zealand, displacing an estimated 1.2 million beef and sheep stock units.

Farming in New Zealand is changing all the time. Organic food is becoming more popular, people aren't consuming as much red meat, or demanding as many coarse wool products as they have in the past. To stay in business, New Zealand farmers have had to innovate, change in response to fluctuations in consumer demand, and anticipate trends – especially in the last 15 years as the New Zealand government has moved towards a more free market economy and away from subsidising primary industry.

Different types of farming have different impacts on the economy and environment. The more sheep and cattle we have, the more methane is produced, which accelerates climate change. Too much nitrogen can cause problems in our groundwater or lakes. If too many farmers get into the same industry at the same time, prices for that produce can drop dramatically, as happened in the blackcurrant industry in the eighties and more recently in the kiwifruit industry.

Choose one or more ideas as brainstorm starters for a unit planning session:

Collect and grow plants or food crops to investigate different kinds of plants and how they grow.

Investigate plants as food sources for people and animals.

Design a game to show how oxygen is cycled through an agricultural ecosystem.

Investigate breeds of sheep that have been selected or bred for the New Zealand environment.

Grow lettuces or tomatoes hydroponically and investigate the effect of adding nitrate to water.

Visit a stud farm to find out about the breeding methods used.

Research the dairy industry (or other farming sector) in New Zealand over time, to see the impact on land use and changes in export flows.

Investigate a potential market for a new or existing product, consider the cultural, social, and other factors which a producer or exporter would need to take into account, and develop ideas for a marketing plan.

Visit a dairy factory, farm dairy unit, or milk processing plant, and observe and depict the systems that are used, including waste disposal. Research export standards in the dairy industry, such as hygiene, shelf-life, labelling, quality controls, relating them to their observations. Identify the work done by different technologists in the sequence of processing from farmer to consumer. Examine promotional material for a recently developed export dairy product, identifying key features.

Survey the factors influencing suitability of a crop species for development as a product for export to a discriminating market. Investigate consumer needs and preferences for taste, aesthetics, presentation, organic production, and cost-barriers. Identify the packaging and micro-environmental requirements for optimal export quality. Plan and carry through a production and marketing system for a horticultural export product, providing consumer information and point-of-sale information.

The genetic modification hot topic highlighted some of the arguments for and against the use of genetic modification technology in medicine, food production, and scientific research (www.tki.org.nz/r/hot_topics/gm_e.php).

The foot-and-mouth disease hot topic provided classroom questions, New Zealand curriculum links, and a range of websites to explore for information on the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom (www.tki.org.nz/r/hot_topics/footandmouth_e.php).

The @ScienceSchool.NZ site (available through TKI's Science Community at www.tki.org.nz/e/science/) has a resource for students to discover whether wet wool is good or bad, linked to level 3 of the physical world strand of the science curriculum.

This spreadsheet exercise integrates the use of information technology into the study of agriculture, horticulture, and forestry in a year 11 land skills course. The project involved the students learning to use a spreadsheet to record and analyse the results of an investigation into the effect of wounding on Pinus Radiata. It includes an explanation of the process and summaries of student and teacher evaluations (www.tki.org.nz/r/ict/curriculum/spreadsheet_assignment_e.php).

The Statistics New Zealand website (reviewed by TKI at www.tki.org.nz/r/review/stats_e.php) has a schools corner with resources on economic issues, and contains a wide range of statistical information on many aspects of life in New Zealand, including agriculture (www.stats.govt.nz/).

Agriculture resources for schools
The Agriculture ITO website (www.agricultureito.ac.nz/) has a Living with the Land series of resources designed for form 1 and 2 students in science and social studies, which introduces the concept of caring for the land and examines the factors a farmer must consider when deciding what crop to grow or animal to farm. Changing People in a Changing Land is designed for use by form 3 and 4 students in social studies. It also provides useful case studies for Form 5 Geography and Technology, and Form 6 Agriculture and Horticulture. The resource introduces the concept of sustainable agriculture and investigates six major types of farming in New Zealand, explaining how each farming system works. The site also provides tons of other resources and activities on agriculture-related subjects such as dairying, forestry, earthworms, DNA sequencing, and soil/water interface.

Landcare Research
Manaaki Whenua (Landcare Research) has published a science area on its website (www.landcare.cri.nz/), which has heaps of information on biodiversity and ecosystem processes, soil quality indicators, biosecurity and pest management, greenhouse gases, and environmental quality.

Organic farming
Organics New Zealand's website has collected news about organic farming in New Zealand and overseas. It also has plenty of publications (in pdf form) on topics as varied as investigating the market for organic food, to strategic issues for the production of genetically modified food, to alternatives to food labelling (www.organicsnewzealand.org.nz).

Trade
The World Trade Organisation's (WTO) site provides statistics on trade, research, and information about the WTO's work (www.wto.org). Not all farmers in the world are as keen on the WTO's work as New Zealanders are, for example the Dairy Trade Coalition in the Unites States (http://dairytrade.com/).

Field days and A and P shows
To find out what's on at the Field Days see www.fieldays.co.nz/, or visit the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand's website to find out when the A and P show is scheduled for your area (www.ras.org.nz).

MAF
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's website provides information about food, fibre, forestry, and associated industries. You can use the search provided to locate specific information and statistics relevant to agriculture and fisheries (www.maf.govt.nz).

Suggested relevant achievement aims and objectives

Social Studies

Resources and economic activities
Students will understand people's allocation and management of resources.

Level 1: Different types of resources that people use.
Level 2: How people participate in the production process.
Level 3: How and why people manage resources.
Level 6: Explain how and why individuals and groups make decisions about the use of resources, goods, and services.
Level 8: How the policies and actions of governments and international organisations result in economic change, and the social consequences of economic change.

Place and environment
Students will understand people's interaction with places and the environment.

At level 2, within the setting of the innovations in the New Zealand farming sector (modern farming techniques: monoculture, organic farming, genetic modification).
Processes: Inquiry: collect, process, and communicate information about human society, use questions and communicate findings.

Explore and analyse values: give reasons why people hold particular values positions. Make decisions about possible social action, through identifying issues and problems.

Students will demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how people's activities influence places and the environment and are influenced by them, by describing how people's activities can have a damaging effect on natural or cultural features of the environment.

Technology

Technological areas
Production and process technology: large-scale primary production of agricultural products.
Context: environmental, community, or business.

Technology and society
Refer to the preceding social studies suggestions.

Science

Making sense of the living world
Level 1.3: Investigate and describe the changes in a particular plant or animal over a period of time.

Level 4.4: Use simple food chains to explain the feeding relationships of familiar plants and animals, and investigate effects of human intervention on these relationships.

Level 5.2: Investigate and describe structural, physiological, and behavioural adaptations which ensure the survival of animals and flowering plants in their environment.

Level 6.2/3b Investigate examples of the contemporary application of genetics.

Level 6.4: Investigate a New Zealand example of how people apply biological principles to plant and animal management.

Science in the New Zealand curriculum (www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/toc_e.php), Technology in the New Zealand curriculum (www.tki.org.nz/r/technology/curriculum/contents_e.php), and Social Studies in the New Zealand curriculum (www.tki.org.nz/r/socialscience/curriculum/index_e.php) are available on TKI.