Nuffield Scholars making a difference to Australian Ag
- By: "Farm Tender" News
- US & World News
- Aug 19, 2018
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It’s been a busy year for Katanning’s Lara Ladyman, who is the CBH Group’s 2017 Nuffield Scholar.
The Nuffield Australia Farming Scholarships aim to make a difference in the world of agriculture and assist in skill development and build capacity within the industry. It provides Australian farmers with an opportunity to travel overseas and study farm-to-fork issues they believe will add value to the industry
During the past 18 months, Lara has travelled to the United States, Brazil, Qatar, India, Singapore the United Kingdom and Europe. She most recently travelled to the UK and Europe where she visited researchers at the ‘Hands Free Hectare’, which last year made headlines around the globe as the world’s first hectare of crop (barley) grown without operators on the machines or even the agronomist going into the field.
She also attended the World Retail Congress in Spain to learn about the future consumer and the vision of retail and grocery, from the likes Chinese e-commerce companies JD.com and Alibaba. In Milan, Lara attended the “Seeds and Chips” agri-food tech conference, meeting with a host of start-ups developing everything from seaweed pasta to blockchain technologies, controlled growing environment vertical farms and satellite monitoring of crops as an early warning for disease. She also had the opportunity to eat an insect burger in the Netherlands, meet with Mark Post the creator of the world’s first lab grown burger and visit high-tech greenhouses.
The worldwide travel is all in aid of her project as part of her Nuffield Scholarship, where she is investigating the ‘Future of Food’ from the lab to the paddock to the plate, and the technologies or drivers of change that will shape how, and what, we will be farming and eating in the future.
She has a keen interest in understanding the dramatic changes that are predicted to occur throughout the food production chain over the next two decades, and what that will mean for farmers in an increasingly digital world.
Her scholarship comes some four years after Lara returned to the farm full-time following a career in agricultural journalism. Together with her father Rob, she manages Tennisdale Grazing - a 5680-hectare diversified cropping and livestock business, at Katanning and Lake King.
CBH has been a long-time supporter of the Nuffield Scholarship, which is a part of our commitment to building capacity in Western Australian regions by providing opportunities to individuals to extend their learning and experience in several areas including leadership and subject matter expertise.
We look forward to hearing more about Lara’s project over the coming months. Scholars present their findings at the Nuffield’s National Conference in Melbourne from 18-20 September 2018.
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