Topic: Agriculture Investment - Public School Grows $50k in Wheat (Read 187 times)

industrialized farming has taken a lot away from the olden days

instead of 9 small plot fields maintained by 9 farmers (and family as support labor) they now replaced 36 farming families with just 1 industrial sized land owner with alot of automation and modern harvesters

however in cities. where there are "food deserts" where convenience stores in deprived neighborhoods do not have fresh vegetables. these neighborhoods could be utilizing small spaces to "grow your own"

i know my balcony can grow alot of lettuce.

for cheapness experiment sake a few summers ago took a 2lire soda bottle cut some holes in it and put in 6 lettuces per bottle and stood them sun facing. i could go to the extent of stacking 25 across meaning 150 lettuces on one row

which with 30day growth accounts to 5 lettuces a day..of i staggered the seeding/harvest days out
and thats without causing any large impact to life. or space.
for eating a lettuce a week per neighbor can feed 35 neighbors all year(in good climate year round) or over 100 families in just the summer months

yes it gets more complicated when it comes to tomatoes
12 plants of about 10 vines of cherry tomatoes taking 60 days
is only 2 vine of cherry tomatoes a day

but it is possible to grow more then you need in a small space

You paint a too bleak picture for it.
You decide what you want to grow, you take care of your land and harvest, you either ally with local farmers and build storage facilities or you decide to manage it on your own, then you look at local traders and major hubs that list the price according to quality you decide to which you want to sell. Second, compliance with pesticides, seeds, humidity, and protein, will always be on the farmer's side, nobody will buy from you without all these papers unless it plans to directly use it and doesn't care, no real shipping company, and no trader will accept it with no papers.

Second, nobody can sell at market price!
Because the market price is for future deliveries in the port of choice, if you have a future contract of $300/t for shipment in a port, with delivery for the other side of the continent that's all up to you, the buyer buys x tons shipped to Alger on xx/xxx/20xx from Rotterdam, all that transport cost will be yours to bare. Plus, when it comes to transport, there is no single farmer that is able to move all its grain to the nearest port alone, just no, if you have 10-20 ha, that's already 4 fully loaded 55cm trucks, nobody is going to wait for you to make 4 trips back and forth, take 4 samples, do the papers for each load, and so on.

In America most of the people are trying to be in the race of white collar jobs. However, nobody wants to keep doing agriculture due to status symbol or whatever thinking they might have behind it.

Now I will add "a fly in the ointment in a barrel of honey"
Let me explain a little how the agricultural market works in many countries. There is a state, there are mega-agricultural holdings, there are large/medium-sized agro-holdings, and there are private farmers. The nuance is that even in today's situation, when there is a crisis and a shortage of grain due to the terrorist war unleashed by Russia, you, being a private farmer or a medium-sized agricultural holding, CANNOT sell grain at a market price .... Seriously. Firstly, you most likely will not be able to sign direct supply contracts. The reasons ? No, not even "spokes in the wheel" from major players. The final buyer is the same large companies or even the state. And from the supplier they need: commitments for volumes of supplies, all kinds of conclusions on compliance with state standards, mandatory analysis of grain before shipment, compliance with the fertilizers used, and so on and so forth. Which is extremely expensive for a private farmer, and sometimes not feasible.

Agriculture investment is quite hard to create, it doesn't like we only need land, seed and water to create it, but the other thing like fertilizer, nutrients, weather is really important. Also there's several risk like bacteria, bug, virus, stranger steal your plant or fruit etc, that's make agriculture investment isn't easy. Although agriculture wouldn't die, but to run it you need a large yard and a complete team to do that.

States and governments hold large quantities of land in trust which could be donated to these types of programs to produce higher quantities of food in emergencies. Local farmers might also be incentivized to provide equipment and manpower on an incentive basis.

This kind of statement can be eye opening to government if they want to grow the economy. Agriculture is still very important to the economy sustain. If student that have little equipment turn small agriculture into big resources to taking care of other schools, you now see it have big benefit to the economy if government can invest into it and food scarcity can reduce. The student planted few but with commercial farming, the benefit will come from more crops.

When the students at Hermidale Public School in western New South Wales planted 85 hectares of wheat at the beginning of the year, harvest seemed a lifetime away.

The children dreamed of raising enough money to fund an excursion to the beach, but never thought they'd make enough money to send the whole school around the country.

"We can't believe what we have been able to pull off," teacher Rebekah Coddington said.

Seven students from kindergarten to Year 6 attend Hermidale Public School, more than 600 kilometres west of Sydney.

The town had endured an anxious few weeks as flooding has engulfed much of western NSW, but Hermidale was spared the worst and this week the headers rolled out for the harvest.

Local farmers gave up time and machinery to strip the kids' crop.

"We didn't get bogged once, which was really great," local farmer and parent Darren Mudford said.

Ms Coddington said the children had "been given the opportunity of a lifetime".

"Every member of our small community has contributed in some way, whether it be small or large, and it's been amazing to see it come together and to finally get the crop off," she said.

Unique learning experience

For most of the year, students swapped their school uniforms for work shirts and boots to tend to the paddock.

The land was donated by a former student and while the students weren't able to be operating the machines, they watched on as their hard work paid off.

"It was so exciting to get to come down and see the headers in the paddock and learn how they work and then watch our grain go off in the trucks," Year 6 student Ruby Mudford said.

The students were then able to visit the grain depot to see their grain being tested, graded and weighed.

Hard work pays off

The students' wheat crop is expected to raise up to $50,000.

About 170 tonnes of prime hard wheat was taken to the local grain depot where it will be stored before it is sold.

Former student Elly Jeffery just happened to be working at the local grain depot when the students' crop came in.

"It's very high in protein, the protein went 13.9 and the grade of wheat went H2, which is a really good grade of wheat," she said.

About 1,700 loaves of bread can be made from 1 tonne of wheat, meaning the students at Hermidale Public School have effectively provided enough grain to make 290,000 loaves of bread.

"We can't believe the tonnage," Ms Coddington said.

Funds from the wheat sale will be given to the school's P&C for its educational, social and cultural immersion project, which sends students on excursions around the country.

The school hopes to travel to Newcastle early in the new year to see their wheat being loaded onto a ship at the port.


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-27/nsw-hermidale-public-school-wheat-crop-sale-to-fund-excursions/101688622