Kids Go Farmin' founder igniting a passion for agriculture at school

Lincoln University Future Leader Scholar Caitlin Rhodes helps run the "Can It Ice-Cream" station during a workshop in the Kids Go Farmin' pilot scheme, being held at St Patrick's School in Kaiapoi. Photo / Supplied

A pilot scheme aiming to kindle a passion for the farming industry is being held with year 5-6 pupils at St Patrick's School in Kaiapoi.

The Kids Go Farmin' scheme is being held by Lincoln University honours students and DairyNZ.

The founder of the scheme, Luke Robb, is a city kid, who fell in love with farming when he was a pupil at St Bede's College in Christchurch.

"My agriculture teacher showed me that farming was more than just animals and a couple of fences," Robb said.

He also learnt that farming was about business, economics, science, marketing, being passionate about what you do and that being a city kid did not preclude him from having a career in the industry.

"But without that passion shown to me at high school, I would never have been able to connect the dots and draw in my passions of animals, the outdoors and science to lead me into studying something I love every day at university," he said.

Robb wanted to ignite that same passion for farming in school pupils.

Being selected for the 2021 class at the Clinton Global Initiative University helped him with that.

The university helps students formulate their ideas and provides resources, feedback, tools, and potential funding streams to turn their ideas into action.

Robb's flatmate Sam Back has also been a big help with his Kids Go Farmin' project.

"He connected me to his mentor on the DairyNZ Scholarship, Susan Stokes, who met with me to see how they could help me with my idea," Robb said.

Stokes connected Robb with the DairyNZ schools programme and it soon became clear that Kids Go Farmin' needed to be more than just a showcase of the farming industry for students. It also needed to connect teachers with the resources.

With this in mind, Robb developed a workbook that included three activities the Kids Go Farmin' team ran with the pupils, plus some in-class projects to work on without the team.

"These projects allow the teachers to take some of the learnings we taught in class and expand on the ideas so students will learn more," he said.

"Each project has the chance for students to come up with a small presentation which we will come back into class to see and once this is complete, students will go on a field trip to an active dairy farm to see what a farm is like - and at this time of year, pat some calves," he said.

At a recent workshop, the students made 10-minute ice cream in class, which was a hit, played a mix-and-match game matching products to the animal that produces them and did an activity learning about healthy food.

"These are all basic skills but the real fundamentals of what makes the industry spin," Robb said.

"The aim of the project is not to convert all students to a career in the farming industry, but just to show them the opportunities available to them by letting them see how much they already know and importantly how much fun it is.

"I am very grateful to St Patrick's for taking me on and giving me the chance to share my farming passion with their students."