A new project has been teaching primary school kids about agriculture and where their food comes from.
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The Victorian Farmers Federation's Kids to Ag project enables kids from across Victoria to visit a farm and see how it operates.
Since it began in December 2020, 28 schools and more than 1500 kids have attended an incursion or excursion event where farmers explained the intricacies of their business.
VFF vice president Danyel Cucinotta said by giving kids first-hand experience, they would ultimately learn how agriculture worked and may become inspired to pursuit a career in the industry.
"It is first-hand experience; you can't fully understand any industry until you see it face to face, and kids genuinely have an interest in where their food comes from," Ms Cucinotta said.
"To date the program has had over 1500 kids go out on farms already and already 75 per cent of the schools indicated that they then expressed an interest after the excursion to actually pursuit a career in agriculture.
"We are just finding that real positivity heading in the direction of seeing the possibility of agricultural careers from a young age."
She said farmers had also been excited to welcome kids onto their farms, with a large cohort enlisting to host a possible excursion.
"Like everything else, you sort of wait for someone else to do it, so once a couple of farms received their positive feedback and because farmers are all in great communities where they all talk, all of a sudden more farmers wanted to be involved," she said.
"When we went out at the start of the year, we really pushed the program with farmers to get on board and they were all very excited.
"There are some farmers who actually really want to be involved but simply can't because of biosecurity rules, but we have put them in the other parts [such as incursion speaking events]."
The project is supported by the Department of Agriculture and funded by the federal government's Educating Kids About Agriculture initiative.
The VFF hope the project will teach more students about the importance of agriculture and inspire them to join the industry.
Ms Cucinotta said she wanted to get every school across Victoria involved in the program and hoped more schools would implement an agricultural lesson plan in their curriculum.
"I would love to see every school in Victoria implementing an agricultural component in their curriculum," she said.
"So, whether that is incursion or excursion, that they are all implementing some form of agriculture in their curriculum and learning where their food comes from."
