Cotton Australia had an opportunity to directly interact with the “cream of the crop” of Queensland’s agriculture and textile teachers at the Food, Fibre and Agricultural Educators Conference on the Gold Coast last week.

Cotton Australia General Manager Michael Murray was able to give around 30 secondary teachers an overview of the Australia cotton industry and then introduce them to some hands-on in classroom activities, reflecting some of the real issues facing agriculture.

“The workshop session was very lively, with enthusiastic participation from the teachers, the majority of whom did not come from cotton producing regions, so their exposure to our industry had been limited,” Mr Murray said.

Mr Murray ran the participants through a water sharing game, where the participants had to make choices about how they would share the available water among all the competing needs in society.

“It starts off pretty easy with [plenty of water to go around, but then you progressively move into drought and the participants have to make real choices, and justify them, so it does lead to lively discussion.”

“We also went through a couple of versions of a game that explores the practice of Integrated Pest Management, identifying good and bad insects, and considering how the concepts help to deliver healthy crops and a healthy environment.”

“Finally, we ran a demonstration called ‘Earth is an Apple’ which highlighted just how little of the earth’s mass is available for agriculture and its associated food and fibre production.”

While not demonstrated, a number of the teachers also positively endorsed the “Soil Your Undies” activity, which innovatively highlights healthy soil activity, and also the sustainability credentials of a natural fibre like cotton.

Download kits for all of these activities will be available in the Classroom section of the Cotton Australia website in coming weeks.