More than 200 students from the Mid North, Eyre Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula and Adelaide Hills gathered for the event hosted by the Jamestown Agricultural, Horticultural and Floricultural Society.

Shearing, wool and sheep handling and judging, cattle care and animal health and their associated careers were all on display.

Event organiser, and local farmer, Matt Scharkie said it was the third event of its kind presented by the Jamestown Show.

The aim was to give students an insight into agriculture, and hopefully encourage some into a career in the industry.

“We’ve got some really good resources and people here locally with some valuable knowledge and skills and we thought it would be great if they could share that with students,” he said.

“We really wanted to highlight that there’s plenty of opportunity in agriculture – and it’s not just about sitting on a tractor or shearing sheep – there’s so many options, and we hope we’ve been able to open their eyes to some pathways that maybe they had not thought about before.”

Riley Ridsdale, Orroroo Area School, Zara Cooper, Jamestown Community School, and Eamon Tomney, Karcultaby Area School take a closer look at some sheep fleeces. Photo: Gabrielle Hall.

Orroroo Area School year 10 student Riley Ridsdale needed little convincing that a career in agriculture was where his sights were set, but he said the education day gave him an insight into the broad range of jobs the industry could offer.

“Hopefully fresh out of school I’ll be a ringer up on a cattle station and hopefully one day I’ll own my own cattle station,” he said.

“My grandparents own a cattle station so I’ve spent a fair bit of time there and I’ve always had a passion for it.

“Today I’ve learned a lot about different areas that I didn’t really know about and there’s a lot of people here that can help me if I want to ask them about different fields and jobs.”

Jamestown Community School student Tilly Clark, year 12, participating in the Junior Education Day. Photo by Gabrielle Hall.

According to the National Farmers Federation, some of Australia’s top peak food industry bodies calculated the food supply chain was short at least 172,000 workers from paddock to plate.

This is something local farmer David ‘Seth’ Cooper knows only too well.

Running a family farming operation of seven properties across three states – with a broad range of enterprises, from a Merino stud and self-replacing flock, to a Boer goat stud, broadacre cropping and hay – staff are a vital part of the business.

Cooper spoke to students at the education day, highlighting his own path into agriculture, which took him from an agricultural science degree to cereal plant breeding and back to the family farm.

“The need for food and fibre is growing very quickly as the world population grows, and the number of people associated with rural industry is shrinking,” he said.

“As a result, there are far more jobs in agriculture than there are university graduates.

“Today was really about making these students aware that there’s a lot of opportunity out there across a wide range of disciplines.

“I wanted to emphasise they don’t need to be stressed at this point of their schooling if they haven’t got a fixed career path in place – as I didn’t – and they might have two or three or four careers in their life.

“But just take every opportunity that you can see.”

Cooper said agriculture was an exciting industry to be involved in, and the future was bright.

“We’ve just come through Covid when a lot of industries really battled, but if there’s one thing everybody needs, it’s food and clothing,” he said.

“At the end of the day you’re producing a real commodity, it’s not an intangible thing, it’s something that we all absolutely need.”