Congratulations AgriEducate Essay Competition Winners

December 9, 2019

As part of our Next Gen activities, the Crawford Fund is once again proud to have sponsored the inaugural AgriEducate Essay Competition’s Science category.

AgriEducate aims to re-engage urban Australia with agriculture and the competition encouraged students from a broad range of degrees to look for new ways of thinking about how to address global food security. The topic addressed was:

Discuss the current and future opportunities to apply theories and skills from your academic discipline to the practice of agriculture. How could greater involvement from your chosen academic discipline in agriculture enhance productivity and sustainability within Australian agriculture and help global food security?

With the future of our food systems under the spotlight, this competition calls on students from all disciplines to share their solutions for the challenge of sustainably feeding a growing global population while minimising the impact on the environment.

Demonstrating the diversity in careers in the industry was a key outcome of the essay writing, inspiring students in degrees not typically considered agricultural to apply their knowledge to the problem. The competition received entries from universities around Australia with topics ranging from law to agribusiness, through to robotics and biomimicry.

The winners of the 2019 AgriEducate Essay Competition have just been announced, with Cassandra Howell from the University of Western Australia taking out the top spot in the Science category with her essay “Tucker In: Feeding the world with an Australia flavour.” Congratulations Cassandra.

Second place went to Andrew Reagan from University of New England for his essay titled “Soil science and crop nutrient management” and third place was won by Kitty Cheng from the University of Melbourne whose essay focused on “Sustainable Intensification in Agriculture.”

We would like to thank Matt Champness and Nicole McDonald who helped run the competition this year. Matt Champness, an Australian Volunteer Program participant, joined the Crawford Fund’s Laos Mentoring program under our lead mentor Deirdre Lemerle.

All the winners can be viewed in the Essay Compilation available on the AgriEducate website and they will be publishing them separately in the coming weeks. Follow them on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

And a very big thank you to AgriEducate for this terrific initiative!