Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/111460
forefront "They're ... showing that exciting young people farm, and that there are exciting, innovative and diverse career pathways in the agrifood sector." "These Young Farming Champions aren't just showcasing themselves, they're also showcasing rural and regional Australia and they're putting a real face to our food and fibre industries," says Strong. "What they're doing is showing that exciting young people farm, and that there are exciting, innovative and diverse career pathways in the agrifood sector." "Other sectors are largely able to promote themselves," says Brett de Hayr, National Landcare Facilitator. "If you take the mining industry, for example, it's able to promote its sector largely through big corporates being able to buy media space. It's been very effective in doing that, and that's what it should be doing." Landcare works across regional Australia through thousands of locally based community groups that care for Australia's natural resources. What's been difficult for the agriculture sector when it comes to self-promotion, says de Hayr, is farming and agribusiness have long been more about smaller enterprises and family businesses that have been unable to promote their sector as well as other industries. This is changing with the advent and proliferation of personal communications technologies such as social media. "Social media, I think, has given people the avenue to, in essence, tell their own story and to partner with mainstream media as well, so it's given that extra depth and clarity that's not been there before," says de Hayr. "Agriculture has sort of been out of sight, out of mind, in a lot of cases," he adds, "but it has become a lot more proactive at telling its own story in recent years." Professor Young agrees, saying, "I think that's really helped us over the past four years to build agriculture up … Speaking of my own university [UNE], we spend a large sum of money and time going out into a wide variety of primary and secondary schools spreading the good news about agriculture." The goal of these people acting on behalf of the industry isn't to convince every high school leaver to apply for an agriculture degree. They're simply looking to boost favour for one of our vital industries that is suffering from a damaged public image. "Realistically we only need somewhere between eight and 10 per cent of the population engaged in the agrifood sector," says Strong. "What we want is the other 90 per cent of people coming out of schools as ambassadors for agriculture." 54 Right: Young Farming Champions from across Australia at the Archibull ceremony.