Johanna Couchman is using digital communications to keep Victorian grain growers up to speed with information on emerging diseases, crop planning and more.
The time spent on the family’s Condobolin NSW farm sparked her love for agriculture. Even though they moved away when she was eight years old, Johanna continued talking about agriculture with her dad and missed living in the country.
Johanna thanks her parents for suggesting a career in agriculture.
“I had always thought I could be a nurse or a teacher or something that would allow me to live in the country, but I’d never even thought about agriculture. But then I thought, ‘That sounds really good,’ and I ran with it.”
She picked a broad range of subjects in the Bachelor of Science in Agriculture at The University of Sydney.
Johanna secured a position in the Agriculture Victoria science graduate program. She did a year working in Horsham, six months in Melbourne, six months in Bendigo and has been back in Horsham for a year.
She said the number of graduates the department took on changes year to year, and in recent years an agronomy development program had been added too.
“The graduate program was a lot of fun and you get to experience living in different parts of the state and working in different sectors of the department, which gives you different connections and networks, and a broader perspective.”
She has continued to work with people in different roles in her job as a Knowledge Broker. She does extension and communication work in grains, with a focus on online communications.
She manages social media accounts and is also working on a project to help pathologists throughout Australia develop online extension material, such as web-based articles or short videos. These deal with disease issues or share the latest research.
“It was something I never realised was a job in agriculture,” she said.
Johanna said digital-focused jobs would increase in agriculture, as farmers, particularly those in the grains industry, used digital technology to innovate and seek information for their businesses. A great thing about communicating online is the speed at which Johanna and her colleagues can reach farmers with timely and relevant information.
She said the kinds of jobs agriculture graduates could go into were limitless.
“You can sit in the office in the CBD and do policy work; you can be an agronomist and be out in the paddocks every day and talking to farmers and helping them plan their operations; you can work in a government department and work on projects that are always changing and evolving… people are always looking for young, bright minds.”
Johanna loves the variety of her job and that she’s constantly learning and keeping up to date with the latest agricultural research and news.
“I get to work with people from different jobs, like software developers and other communications professionals, that I might not have thought I would get to work with and you get to learn new skills.”
And Johanna finds the job satisfying: “When you hit send on an article about an emerging disease issue there’s job satisfaction, because feel like you’re making a difference.”
