Our Land, Our Future
Important Note
These resources have been redeveloped by AgITO and can be located on the new site - http://www.ruralsource.ac.nz
Teachers and students of biology, economics, history, agriculture and horticulture will find this resource useful.
For Forms 6 & 7:
Our Land, Our Future
The study of agriculture allows students to relate problems in each subject back to real situations. In the Ecosystems activity booklet, students learn about the reality of resource management decision making by watching a video and conducting a role play.
Mathew and Catherine want to take water from local stream to irrigate their dairy farm pasture so that they can increase their productivity. The local dairy company supports them, but fishermen and kayakers oppose their application, as does the local environmental group which is worried about impacts on wildlife habitat. The resource provides role cards for each party to argue through the proposal and reach a decision.
NZ exports a wide range of agricultural products for customers overseas. We need to be able to produce what those customers want. In the Marketing activity booklet, students learn how products are developed, how they are marketed, and how consumer demand influences what New Zealand produces.
Students create a new product to fill a "market niche" for a new convenience food product that has been identified. They work out how to: ensure the quality of the product, distribute the product, set the prices for the product, main supply, and promote it successfully.
Farming is about people and the land. Land use issues and their history, and people's relationship to land are explored in the People And The Land activity booklet. A New Zealand Timeline provides additional information to support the booklet.
Students carry out an historical investigation of land use and community in their area. Choosing any one of five periods in history, from before 1840, or from 1980 to the current day, students find out what crops, forests or livestock were grown or raised at that time; how the crops and livestock were harvested, processed, transported and exported, and how and where the agricultural products were sold. They also investigate what a typical farm, and the community that farm was part of, was like at that time.
Sustainable agriculture is about balancing the need to make a profit and run a viable farm with the need to maintain the natural resources like soil and water on which the farm depends - and the need for happy, healthy rural communities.
In the Sustainable Agriculture activity booklet, students explore what's needed for sustainable agriculture, and who's involved. A case study explores how one farmer in Taranaki has made his farm sustainable by introducing forestry to parts of it, safeguarding both the land, and his family's future on that farm.
The booklets are accompanied by three videos which contain items that support activities in the section booklets, an interactive computer program with its own manual called Stockpol for Schools which teaches students concepts of risk management and day to day farm decision making, a Teacher's Guide with extensive glossary and reference list, and a statistics and current research computer disk.
Every school teaching at sixth and seventh form level has received one free copy of the resource addressed to the HOD Biology. Those teaching agriculture and horticulture have received an additional copy addressed to HOD agriculture/horticulture. The resources were sent to schools in July 1996.
"Our Land, Our Future" Launched
Contact for Enquiries
MAF Communications
Level 9
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: +64 4 894 0100
Fax: +64 4 894 0300
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