STUDENTS and trainers will have an opportunity to learn more about Merino sheep later this year in a new initiative launched by Australian Wool Innovation.
The National Merino Challenge will teach senior secondary and tertiary students the basics of sheep and fleece assessment in a two-day course that will include practical demonstrations, presentations and a judging competition.
South Australians Sydney Lawrie, Tumby Bay, and Michelle Cousins, Burra, successfully applied to be on the 10-person steering committee and will have a hands-on role in running the course.
"I did an AWI leadership course last year and from that I wanted to go on and help the Merino industry and get younger people involved," Sydney said.
"Hopefully I can pass on some of my skills at being able to evaluate sheep and rams, and if they go on to be either farmers or farm managers, they'll have a better grasp of where they want to take their Merino flock, and how they're going to achieve that."
Sydney runs a 2430-hectare Poll Merino Stud and mixed farming enterprise with his wife Therese, father Graeme, and mother Kerry.
He says there will be two sections to the Merino Challenge, the first being a 'train the trainer' workshop where university lecturers, secondary school teachers, and TAFE lecturers will be given the opportunity to do skills training.
"The really good bit about that is there will be some classroom stuff and also some hands-on stuff and they will take a lot of that back to their students," Sydney said.
The second part is the Merino challenge, where the students will get hands-on with Merino sheep, and learn from the best.
"They will also be able to show-off their skills to other people and be able to mingle with like-minded agricultural students," he said.
Sydney says the challenge is all about presenting wool as offering a fantastic product that people could make a very good living from.
"It's such a natural product that's renewable and raised on sustainable pastures and I really think we should be continuing to push this project," he said.
"I would just love to see even a small percentage of students go on to work. Sometimes there seems to be a bit of a gap in getting young people into the ag industry and there's so many good jobs out there for them."
Mrs Cousins sees a real future for young people in the wool industry.
She has worked extensively with youth in her local area at Burra and recognises a need to engage young people with the industry.
"We want to ensure the challenge provides a chance for the students to be exposed to all areas," Mrs Cousins said.
"And it won't just be looking at the visual components. It will also be looking at some of the objective measurements that are used in the industry.
"As well as this it will look at some of the new technologies that are available - we want to expose participants to the whole range of opportunities that exist."
*Full report in Stock Journal, March 14 issue, 2013.