Western Australian College of Agriculture Harvey students look to go green, monitoring the schools farm

Students at the Western Australian College of Agriculture Harvey are looking to go green, after undertaking carbon audits at the school’s farm. Year 12 students completing ATAR as well as Certificate III qualifications in agriculture have been looking at farm operations to conduct the audits, with the findings set to mitigate their carbon footprint. Agriculture department head Paul Dyson said a lot of industry was gearing up to target carbon neutral farming and the college was taking a holistic approach to finding solutions. “We need to come on board as well because we’re the starting point, this is where we learn, it is planting the seed,” he said. The calculated results show the carbon emissions of each respective farming area for students to address and use to find possible solutions. Agriculture student Geoff Tozer said he enjoyed the hands-on learning on the farm and the different aspects of problem solving involved in the situation they were researching. “Whether we are seeing the effects now or in 30 years, we can’t deny the fact that there are things changing within our climate and that is reducing the amount of agricultural land we can use,” he said. “We’re seeing a growing population that needs to be fed, so in order to try and preserve the land we have for agriculture at the moment and to be able to maintain the level of food production I think we really need to look at neutralising our carbon outputs. “They say everything starts in school and I think it really does, “We have to educate the up-and-coming generations because if we start here we can only get better and lead by example.”